He sailed on the morning of the 12th of April.  Off Ushant he fell in with a north-west gale, and he flew on, spreading every stitch of canvas which his spars would bear.  In five days he was at Cape St. Vincent.  On the 18th he had the white houses of Cadiz right in front of him, and could see for himself the forests of masts from the ships and transports with which the harbour was choked.  Here was a chance for a piece of service if there was courage for the venture.  He signalled for his officers to come on board the Buonaventura.  There before their eyes was, if not the Armada itself, the materials which were to fit the Armada for the seas.  Did they dare to go in with him and destroy them?  There were batteries at the harbour mouth, but Drake’s mariners had faced Spanish batteries at St. Domingo and Carthagena and had not found them very formidable.  Go in?  Of course they would.  Where Drake would lead the corsairs of Plymouth were never afraid to follow.  The vice-admiral pleaded danger to her Majesty’s ships.  It was not the business of an English fleet to be particular about danger.  Straight in they went with a fair wind and a flood tide, ran past the batteries and under a storm of shot, to which they did not trouble themselves to wait to reply.  The poor vice-admiral followed reluctantly in the Lion.  A single shot hit the Lion, and he edged away out of range, anchored, and drifted to sea again with the ebb.  But Drake and all the rest dashed on, sank the guardship—­a large galleon—­and sent flying a fleet of galleys which ventured too near them and were never seen again.

Further resistance there was none—­absolutely none.  The crews of the store ships escaped in their boats to land.  The governor of Cadiz, the same Duke of Medina Sidonia who the next year was to gain a disastrous immortality, fled ‘like a tall gentleman’ to raise troops and prevent Drake from landing.  Drake had no intention of landing.  At his extreme leisure he took possession of the Spanish shipping, searched every vessel, and carried off everything that he could use.  He detained as prisoners the few men that he found on board, and then, after doing his work deliberately and completely, he set the hulls on fire, cut the cables, and left them to drive on the rising tide under the walls of the town—­a confused mass of blazing ruin.  On the 12th of April he had sailed from Plymouth; on the 19th he entered Cadiz Harbour; on the 1st of May he passed out again without the loss of a boat or a man.  He said in jest that he had singed the King of Spain’s beard for him.  In sober prose he had done the King of Spain an amount of damage which a million ducats and a year’s labour would imperfectly replace.  The daring rapidity of the enterprise astonished Spain, and astonished Europe more than the storm of the West Indian towns.  The English had long teeth, as Santa Cruz had told Philip’s council, and the teeth would need drawing before Mass would be heard again at Westminster.