Having suffered severely during a gale of wind, which he encountered in the Gulf of Mexico, and finding also that the bottoms of his ships, foul with sea-weed and barnacles, required cleaning, he put into St. Jean d’Ulloa to refit; but the day after he entered a Spanish fleet made its appearance at the mouth of the harbour, consisting of thirteen men of war, the smallest of them larger than the _Jesus_; and though Hawkins, if he had been on the open sea, might have managed to make his escape from this very formidable force, it was sheer madness to seek an engagement. “If he could,” remarks Froude,[135] “have made up his mind to dispute the entrance of a Spanish admiral into one of his own harbours, he believed that he could have saved himself, for the channel was narrow and the enemy’s numbers would give him no advantage. But neither his own nor Elizabeth’s ingenuity could have invented a pretext for an act of such desperate insolence; at best he would be blockaded, and, sooner or later, would have to run. The Spaniards passed in and anchored close on board the Englishmen. For three days there was an interchange of ambiguous courtesies. On the fourth, Philip’s admiral had satisfied himself of Hawkins’ identity.” He had been commissioned specially to look for him, “and by the laws of nations he was unquestionably justified in treating the English commander as a pirate.” The formality of summoning him to surrender was dispensed with. The name of Hawkins had become so terrible, that the Spanish admiral dare not give him any warning of his intentions. But, taking possession of the mole during the night, and mounting batteries upon it, and guns on every point of land where they could be brought to bear, the Spaniards opened fire upon the _Jesus_ and her comrades. Though taken by surprise, and while many of their boats’ crews were in the town, “the English fought so desperately, that two of the largest of the Spanish ships were sunk, and another set on fire.” The men on shore forced their way on board to their companions, and, notwithstanding the tremendous odds, the result of the action still seemed uncertain, when the Spaniards sent down two fire ships, and then Hawkins saw that all was over, and that vessels and treasures were lost. “The only hope now,” continues Froude in his graphic description of the encounter, “was to save the men. The survivers of them now crowded on board two small tenders, one of fifty tons, the other rather larger, and leaving the _Jesus_ and the other ships, the gold and silver bars, the negroes, and their other spoils to burn or sink, they crawled out under the fire of the mole, and gained the open sea. There their position scarcely seemed less desperate. They were short of food and water. Their vessels had suffered heavily under the fire; they were choked up with men, and there was not a harbour on the western side of the Atlantic into which they could venture to run; in this emergency a hundred seamen