"hater of idleness,"
was steadily doing his work; unloading, rifling, scuttling, sinking, and
burning those transportships which contained a portion of the
preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise.
Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutlasses,
wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a miscellaneous mass of
ingredients long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into
the harbour, and before the second night, the blaze of a hundred and
fifty burning vessels played merrily upon the grim walls of Philip's
fortresses. Some of these ships were of the largest size then known.
There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz of 1500 tons, there was a
Biscayan of 1200, there were several others of 1000, 800, and of nearly
equal dimensions.

Thence sailing for Lisbon, Sir Francis, captured and destroyed a hundred
vessels more, appropriating what was portable of the cargoes, and
annihilating the rest. At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, lord high admiral
of Spain and generalissimo of the invasion, looked on, mortified and
amazed, but offering no combat, while the Plymouth privateersman swept
the harbour of the great monarch of the world. After thoroughly
accomplishing his work, Drake sent a message to Santa Cruz, proposing to
exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen as might then be confined in
Spain. But the marquis denied all prisoners. Thereupon Sir Francis
decided to sell his captives to the Moors, and to appropriate the
proceeds of the sale towards the purchase of English slaves put of the
same bondage. Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century.

Having dealt these great blows, Drake set sail again from Lisbon, and,
twenty leagues from St. Michaels, fell in with one of those famous
Spanish East Indiamen, called carracks, then the great wonder of the
seas. This vessel, San Felipe by name, with a cargo of extraordinary
value, was easily captured, and Sir Francis now determined to return. He
had done a good piece of work in a few weeks, but he was by no means of
opinion that he had materially crippled the enemy. On the contrary, he
gave the government warning as to the enormous power and vast
preparations of Spain. "There would be forty thousand men under way ere
long," he said, "well equipped and provisioned;" and he stated, as the
result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic
in, its measures of resistance. He had done something wit