Nothing of note is recorded to have happened on the 24th, unless it be that complaints were heard of want of powder in the fleet. In the meantime the country had become thoroughly aroused. The Spaniards had seen the beacon fires blazing on the hills of Devon on the night of the 20th, and before daylight those flames had leapt from hill-top to hill-top-- "From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay." Volunteers swarmed down to the fleet. As English and Spaniards rolled heavily along the Channel, ships slipped out from the different ports to reinforce Howard. To the eastward, Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter were concentrating their squadrons in the Downs, while the squadrons of Holland and Zeeland, united under the command of Justinus of Nassau, were blocking every port in Spanish Flanders. It was one of the most fatal of the misconceptions of the Spaniard that he had hoped to draw help from those very harbours which the son of William the Silent was blockading. On the 25th of July, Medina Sidonia despatched a quick-sailing ship in advance to the Duke of Parma, informing him of his own approach, and begging him to come out, in order that they might combine their forces. The Spanish fleet was then off the Isle of Wight. It was the day of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, and a member of the house of Guzman. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, as was only natural in a Roman Catholic, and a gentleman of a family which had produced so eminent a saint, was in expectation that the anniversary would be marked by some signal manifestation of divine assistance. But none came. Lord Howard was so little disturbed by his enemy, and, we may add, was so little anxious to force on a battle with him, that he spent some part of the day in conferring the honour of knighthood on Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Roger Townsend, Hawkins, and Frobisher. There was indeed some fighting, but the day was calm, with very light breezes from the west, and the engagement was a mere artillery duel, which in times of rude gunnery meant a great waste of powder and shot. On the 26th there was no action, and next day the Spaniards anchored in the Roads of Calais.