tch vessels of all sizes,
lining both the inner and outer edges of the sandbanks off the Flemish
coasts, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of that intricate
and dangerous cruising-ground between Dunkerk and Walcheren. Those fleets
of Holland and Zeeland, numbering some one hundred and fifty galleons,
sloops, and fly-boats, under Warmond, Nassau, Van der Does, de Moor, and
Rosendael, lay patiently blockading every possible egress from Newport,
or Gravelines; or Sluys, or Flushing, or Dunkerk, and longing to grapple
with the Duke of Parma, so soon as his fleet of gunboats and hoys, packed
with his Spanish and Italian veterans, should venture to set forth upon
the sea for their long-prepared exploit.

It was a pompous spectacle, that midsummer night, upon those narrow seas.
The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a scene of
anxious expectation. Would she not be looking, by the morrow's night,
upon a subjugated England, a re-enslaved Holland--upon the downfall of
civil and religious liberty? Those ships of Spain, which lay there with
their banners waving in the moonlight, discharging salvoes of anticipated
triumph and filling the air with strains of insolent music; would they
not, by daybreak, be moving straight to their purpose, bearing the
conquerors of the world to the scene of their cherished hopes?

That English fleet, too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously on the
watch--would that swarm of, nimble, lightly-handled, but slender
vessels,--which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultory
skirmishes--be able to cope with their great antagonist now that the
moment had arrived for the death grapple? Would not Howard, Drake,
Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins, be swept out of the straits at
last, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, and Farnese?
Would those Hollanders and Zeelanders, cruising so vigilantly among their
treacherous shallows, dare to maintain their post, now that the terrible
'Holofernese,' with his invincible legions, was resolved to come forth?

So soon as he had cast anchor, Howard despatched a pinnace to the
Vanguard, with a message to Winter to come on board the flag-ship. When
Sir William reached the Ark, it was already nine in the evening. He was
anxiously consulted by the Lord-Admiral as to the course now to be taken.
Hitherto the English had been teasing and perplexing an enemy, on the
retreat, as it were, by the nature of his instructi