without missing, at those great and unwieldy Spanish ships.”  “This was the most furious and bloody skirmish of all” (though ending only, it seems, in the capture of a great Venetian and some small craft), “in which the lord admiral fighting amidst his enemies’ fleet, and seeing one of his captains afar off (Fenner by name, he who fought the seven Portugals at the Azores), cried, ’O George, what doest thou?  Wilt thou now frustrate my hope and opinion conceived of thee?  Wilt thou forsake me now?’ With which words he being enflamed, approached, and did the part of a most valiant captain;” as, indeed, did all the rest.

Night falls upon the floating volcano; and morning finds them far past Purbeck, with the white peak of Freshwater ahead; and pouring out past the Needles, ship after ship, to join the gallant chase.  For now from all havens, in vessels fitted out at their own expense, flock the chivalry of England; the Lords Oxford, Northumberland, and Cumberland, Pallavicin, Brooke, Carew, Raleigh, and Blunt, and many another honorable name, “as to a set field, where immortal fame and honor was to be attained.”  Spain has staked her chivalry in that mighty cast; not a noble house of Arragon or Castile but has lent a brother or a son—­and shall mourn the loss of one:  and England’s gentlemen will measure their strength once for all against the Cavaliers of Spain.  Lord Howard has sent forward light craft into Portsmouth for ammunition:  but they will scarce return to-night, for the wind falls dead, and all the evening the two fleets drift helpless with the tide, and shout idle defiance at each other with trumpet, fife, and drum.

The sun goes down upon a glassy sea, and rises on a glassy sea again.  But what day is this?  The twenty-fifth, St. James’s-day, sacred to the patron saint of Spain.  Shall nothing be attempted in his honor by those whose forefathers have so often seen him with their bodily eyes, charging in their van upon his snow-white steed, and scattering Paynims with celestial lance?  He might have sent them, certainly, a favoring breeze; perhaps, he only means to try their faith; at least the galleys shall attack; and in their van three of the great galliasses (the fourth lies half-crippled among the fleet) thrash the sea to foam with three hundred oars apiece; and see, not St. James leading them to victory, but Lord Howard’s Triumph, his brother’s Lion, Southwell’s Elizabeth Jonas, Lord Sheffield’s Bear, Barker’s Victory, and George Fenner’s Leicester, towed stoutly out, to meet them with such salvoes of chain-shot, smashing oars, and cutting rigging, that had not the wind sprung up again toward noon, and the Spanish fleet come up to rescue them, they had shared the fate of Valdez and the Biscayan.  And now the fight becomes general.  Frobisher beats down the Spanish admiral’s mainmast; and, attacked himself by Mexia and Recalde, is rescued by Lord Howard; who, himself endangered in his turn, is rescued in his turn; “while after that day” (so sickened were they of the English gunnery) “no galliasse would adventure to fight.”