It was in vain that Drake and the other friends of England prayed and entreated and stormed and swore. In vain they pointed across the Narrow Seas to Parma in the Netherlands at the head of 30,000 of the finest troops in Europe, and to the ports of Spain and Portugal, once more swarming with shipping and echoing with the noise of warlike preparations. For a time the liars and traitors had things their own way again. Drake and Howard implored her to let them get their ships fitted and go and fight the Armada in its own ports. No, she would do nothing. And she did nothing till at last arrived that fatal evening on which-- “There came a gallant merchant-ship full sail to Plymouth Bay.” Golden weeks and priceless opportunities had been wasted by the fatal lethargy of the Court. Drake and Howard, instead of falling, as they longed to do, on the wind-bound Armada in Vigo Bay, and doing with it as Drake had done at Cadiz, were kept on the defensive, straining like bloodhounds at the leash, knowing that every moment that the good wind lasted was heavily fraught with fate for England and perhaps the world. At length the wind went round, and Drake, marvelling in angry wonder “how God could have sent a south-west wind just then,” found himself baffled and beaten back, while Medina-Sidonia with his released Armada sailed triumphantly for the Channel. There was only one thing now to do if England was to be saved. Valour and heroism, self-devotion and skill, must repair the damage that treason, lying, and weakness of head or heart had done. By this time the Armada should have been a crushed and tangled mass of burning wreckage, and so it would have been if Drake had had his way, and now here it was stronger than ever, its ships covering the hitherto Inviolate Sea; and there was Parma, with his transports still undestroyed, only waiting to join hands with Sidonia to once for all strangle the Heretic in their pitiless grip. In the mighty and memorable fight that followed, our Little Pirate commanded on his own ship, the immortal _Revenge_. With almost incredible labour and skill the English fleet was somehow worked and warped out to the westward until, when that famous Sunday morning dawned, the sun looked, as has been truly said, upon a sight glorious for England. There was the great Armada, crescent-shaped, rolling up the Channel, and there, right in the wind’s eye and on its rear, were two English squadrons, and a third was gallantly advancing out of Plymouth. This one, with true Elizabethan insolence, steered right across the front of the huge fleet, firing into such of the Dons as came within range. Then it went about, and joined the other English ships to windward.