and imprison the men.  The order was executed.  One English ship only was lucky enough to escape by the adroitness of her commander.  The Primrose, of London, lay in Bilbao Roads with a captain and fifteen hands.  The mayor, on receiving the order, came on board to look over the ship.  He then went on shore for a sufficient force to carry out the seizure.  After he was gone the captain heard of the fate which was intended for him.  The mayor returned with two boatloads of soldiers, stepped up the ladder, touched the captain on the shoulder, and told him he was a prisoner.  The Englishmen snatched pike and cutlass, pistol and battleaxe, killed seven or eight of the Spanish boarders, threw the rest overboard, and flung stones on them as they scrambled into their boats.  The mayor, who had fallen into the sea, caught a rope and was hauled up when the fight was over.  The cable was cut, the sails hoisted, and in a few minutes the Primrose was under way for England, with the mayor of Bilbao below the hatches.  No second vessel got away.  If Philip had meant to frighten Elizabeth he could not have taken a worse means of doing it, for he had exasperated that particular part of the English population which was least afraid of him.  He had broken faith besides, and had seized some hundreds of merchants and sailors who had gone merely to relieve Spanish distress.  Elizabeth, as usual, would not act herself.  She sent no ships from her own navy to demand reparation; but she gave the adventurers a free hand.  The London and Plymouth citizens determined to read Spain a lesson which should make an impression.  They had the worst fears for the fate of the prisoners; but if they could not save, they could avenge them.  Sir Francis Drake, who wished for nothing better than to be at work again, volunteered his services, and a fleet was collected at Plymouth of twenty-five sail, every one of them fitted out by private enterprise.  No finer armament, certainly no better-equipped armament, ever left the English shores.  The expenses were, of course, enormous.  Of seamen and soldiers there were between two and three thousand.  Drake’s name was worth an army.  The cost was to be recovered out of the expedition somehow; the Spaniards were to be made to pay for it; but how or when was left to Drake’s judgment.  This time there was no second in command sent by the friends of Spain to hang upon his arm.  By universal consent he had the absolute command.  His instructions were merely to inquire at Spanish ports into the meaning of the arrest.  Beyond that he was left to go where he pleased and do what he pleased on his own responsibility.  The Queen said frankly that if it proved convenient she intended to disown him.  Drake had no objection to being disowned, so he could teach the Spaniards to be more careful how they handled Englishmen.  What came of it will be the subject of the next lecture.  Father Parsons said the Protestant traders of England had grown effeminate and dared not fight.  In the ashes of their own smoking cities the Spaniards had to learn that Father Parsons had misread his countrymen.  If Drake had been given to heroics he might have left Virgil’s lines inscribed above the broken arms of Castile at St. Domingo: