king's admiral, though he was a man of great natural courage and of an enterprising character, could not accept it, for his vessels were in no condition to take the sea without the stores burned at Cadiz. From Cascaes Drake stood across to the Azores, and lay there undisturbed on the track of the carracks, the great merchant ships employed by the Portuguese at that time in the trade with the East Indies. One of these, named the _St. Philip_, fell into his hands. She was the first of these ships ever taken by us, and the sight of her cargo must have had a good deal to do with arousing the desire of English merchants to share in the trade of the East. This capture, added to the plunder taken at Cadiz, secured the profits of the voyage, and therefore Drake made sail for England with his fleet and the prize, where they all arrived "to their own profit and due commendation, and the great admiration of the whole kingdom." This check did not make Philip any wiser than before, but neither did it in any way damp his determination to collect such a fleet as should make an end of the English pirates. He began the work of getting his stores together again with imperturbable patient industry. Drake described his feat in the outer harbour of Cadiz as the singeing of the King of Spain's beard, and the phrase was accurate as well as humorous. He had insulted the enemy, and had done him as much injury as would compel him to abstain from action for the time being, but he had not seriously crippled his power. By the spring of the following year the Spanish fleet was ready for service, and if Don Álvaro de Bazan had lived, it might have sailed sooner than it actually did. The old man's own plan, communicated to the king some years before, had been to embark a sufficient army in Spain, and sail direct to the coast of England, but the resources of King Philip were not adequate to a scheme of the scale proposed by his admiral. He had to maintain an army under the Prince of Parma in Flanders, and could not meet the expense of organising another. He had therefore decided to make the fleet he was collecting in Spain co-operate with the army he already had in the Low Countries. It was indeed to carry reinforcements to the Prince of Parma, but it was on him that the task of providing an army for the invasion of England was to be laid. The Spaniards have always counted it fortunate for England that the Marquis de Santa Cruz died on the 9th February 1588. Perhaps it was, though it may be doubted whether the very complicated task set by the king could have been successfully performed even by him. To bring a fleet from Spain into the Channel, to carry it to the Low Countries, to embark an army there and transport it to the coast of England, would have made a long and complicated operation, to be conducted in difficult seas, of which the Spaniards had little knowledge, and in the face of the most determined opposition from Dutch and English seamen. However that may be, the