to believe that he would go over to the Spanish cause in Ireland if his claims for damages were only paid in full and all his surviving men in Mexico were sent home.  The cold and crafty Philip swallowed this tempting bait; sent the men home with Spanish dollars in their pockets, and paid Hawkins forty thousand pounds, the worth of about two million dollars now.  Then Hawkins used the information he had picked up behind the Spanish scenes to unravel the Ridolfi Plot for putting Mary on the throne in 1572, the year of St. Bartholomew.  No wonder Philip hated sea-dogs!

Things new and old having reached this pass, the whole of England, bar the Marians, were eager for the great ‘Indies Voyage’ of 1585.  Londoners crowded down to Woolwich ‘with great jolitie’ to see off their own contingent on its way to join Drake’s flag at Plymouth.  Very probably Shakespeare went down too, for that famous London merchantman, the Tiger, to which he twice alludes—­once in Macbeth and once in Twelfth Night—­was off with this contingent.  Such a private fleet had never yet been seen:  twenty-one ships, eight smart pinnaces, and twenty-three hundred men of every rank and rating.  The Queen was principal shareholder and managing director.  But, as usual in colonial attacks intended for disavowal if necessity arose, no prospectus or other document was published, nor were the shareholders of this joint-stock company known in any quite official way.  It was the size of the fleet and the reputation of the officers that made it a national affair.  Drake, now forty, was ‘Admiral’; Frobisher, of North-West-Passage fame, was ‘Vice’; Knollys, the Queen’s own cousin, ‘Rear.’  Carleill, a famous general, commanded the troops and sailed in Shakespeare’s Tiger.  Drake’s old crew from the Golden Hind came forward to a man, among them Wright, ’that excellent mathematician and ingineer,’ and big Tom Moone, the lion of all boarding-parties, each in command of a ship.

But Elizabeth was just then weaving the threads of an unusually intricate diplomatic pattern; so doubts and delays, orders and counter-orders vexed Drake to the last.  Sir Philip Sidney, too, came down as a volunteer; which was another sore vexation, since his European fame would have made him practically joint commander of the fleet, although he was not a naval officer at all.  But he had the good sense to go back; whereupon Drake, fearing further interruptions from the court, ordered everything to be tumbled into the nearest ships and hurried off to sea under a press of sail.

The first port of call was Vigo in the northwestern corner of Spain, where Drake’s envoy told the astonished governor that Elizabeth wanted to know what Philip intended doing about embargoes now.  If the governor wanted peace, he must listen to Drake’s arguments; if war—­well, Drake was ready to begin at once.  A three-days’ storm interrupted the proceedings; after which the English intercepted