Next morning Drake was safely out at sea in the Channel, with fifty-four ships, when he sighted a dim blur toward the west. This was the Great Invincible Armada. Rain killed the wind, and the English lay under bare poles, unseen by the Spaniards, who still left some of their idle sails swinging to and fro. The great day had come at last. Philip's Armada had drunk to _Der Tag_ (the day) of England's overthrow just as the Germans did three centuries later; and nearly all the Spaniards thought that thirty thousand Spaniards on the water were more than a match for fifteen thousand English. But the Spaniards were six thousand short, through sickness and desertion, and of the remaining twenty-four thousand little more than a quarter were seamen. The rest were soldiers, with many camp-followers. The fifteen thousand English, on the other hand, were nearly all on board; and most of them had been trained to sea fighting from their youth up. The Spaniards were one-quarter seamen and three-quarters landsmen. The English were three-quarters seamen and one-quarter landsmen; and most of these landsmen were like the Marines of the present day, "soldier and sailor too." Nor was this the only difference that helped to seal the fate of the doomed Armada. For not only were the English seamen twice as many and twice as good as the Spanish seamen, but in the numbers of their trained seamen-gunners the English beat the Spaniards no less than ten to one: and guns were the weapons that decided the issue of the day, just as they did at Jutland in our recent war against the Germans. A little before sunset the mist lifted, and the Spaniards, to their intense surprise, saw the whole English fleet together. Every big ship in the Armada sent boats hurrying off to know what orders Sidonia had to give them. But Sidonia had none. That the Sea-Dogs had worked out of Plymouth so quickly and were all together in a single fleet was something he had not reckoned on, and something Philip's silly plan had not provided for. Still, the Armada had one advantage left, the weather-gage; for the southwest wind was piping up again, blowing from the Armada to the English. Yet even this advantage was soon lost, not by any change of wind, but by English seamanship. For while eight English vessels held the attention of the Armada, by working about between it and the shore, the rest of Drake's fleet stole off to sea, got safely out of sight, tacked to windward with splendid skill, edged in toward the Armada when sea-room west of it was gained, and then, next morning, to the still more intense surprise of the Armada, came down to attack it, having won the weather-gage by sailing round behind it in the night.