Then, on that same Sunday afternoon a memorable council of war was held in the Ark’s main cabin.  Howard, Drake, Seymour, Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, and two or three others met to consult, knowing that on them at that moment the liberties of England were depending.  Their resolution was taken promptly.  There was no time for talk.  After nightfall a strong flood tide would be setting up along shore to the Spanish anchorage.  They would try what could be done with fire-ships, and the excursion of the pinnace, which was taken for bravado, was probably for a survey of the Armada’s exact position.  Meantime eight useless vessels were coated with pitch—­hulls, spars, and rigging.  Pitch was poured on the decks and over the sides, and parties were told off to steer them to their destination and then fire and leave them.

The hours stole on, and twilight passed into dark.  The night was without a moon.  The Duke paced his deck late with uneasy sense of danger.  He observed lights moving up and down the English lines, and imagining that the endemoniada gente—­the infernal devils—­might be up to mischief ordered a sharp look-out.  A faint westerly air was curling the water, and towards midnight the watchers on board the galleons made out dimly several ships which seemed to be drifting down upon them.  Their experience since the action off Plymouth had been so strange and unlooked for that anything unintelligible which the English did was alarming.

The phantom forms drew nearer, and were almost among them when they broke into a blaze from water-line to truck, and the two fleets were seen by the lurid light of the conflagration; the anchorage, the walls and windows of Calais, and the sea shining red far as eye could reach, as if the ocean itself was burning.  Among the dangers which they might have to encounter, English fireworks had been especially dreaded by the Spaniards.  Fire-ships—­a fit device of heretics—­had worked havoc among the Spanish troops, when the bridge was blown up, at Antwerp.  They imagined that similar infernal machines were approaching the Armada.  A capable commander would have sent a few launches to grapple the burning hulks, which of course were now deserted, and tow them out of harm’s way.  Spanish sailors were not cowards, and would not have flinched from duty because it might be dangerous; but the Duke and Diego Florez lost their heads again.  A signal gun from the San Martin ordered the whole fleet to slip their cables and stand out to sea.

Orders given in panic are doubly unwise, for they spread the terror in which they originate.  The danger from the fire-ships was chiefly from the effect on the imagination, for they appear to have drifted by and done no real injury.  And it speaks well for the seamanship and courage of the Spaniards that they were able, crowded together as they were, at midnight and in sudden alarm to set their canvas and clear out without running into one another.  They buoyed their cables, expecting to return for them at daylight, and with only a single accident, to be mentioned directly, they executed successfully a really difficult manoeuvre.