How gloriously, and to what purpose, against what was then the greatest Power in the world, they used their inferior instrument, with its improvised auxiliaries, is the birth-story of British admiralty. Pitted not only for life, but, as it was to turn out, for the common freedom of the seas, they showed the world a spectacle of such a victory against odds as it had scarcely beheld since the Homeric ages. On the one hand, it saw an empire, one of the greatest ever known, under the ablest of statesmen and soldiers--an empire including Spain and Portugal, most of the Netherlands, and nearly the whole of Italy; Tunis, Oran, Cape Verde, and the Canary Islands in Africa; {xxv} Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Cuba in America; the mastery of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; and a yearly revenue ten times that of England--and on the other a little island, of which Wales and Scotland were still largely independent, containing a population less by two million than that of London and its suburbs to-day, and possessing beyond its own coast not a yard of territory overseas. Such were the odds, and the issue was but one more instance of the inevitable decisiveness of the human factor--a factor that to-day, perhaps, such has been the extravagant growth in the weight and precision of modern weapons, has tended to become once more a little obscured. That history has revealed it again, just as it revealed it for us in the case of the Elizabethans, we hope to show; and, if fortune fought for them, it was not until they had proved themselves superior to it in skill, courage, and equanimity. "Touching my poor opinion," wrote Sir Francis Drake to Queen Elizabeth on April 15, 1588, _how strong your Majesty's Fleet should be to encounter this great force of the enemy, God increase your most excellent Majesty's forces both by sea and land daily; for this I surely think there was never any force so strong as there is now ready or making ready against your Majesty and true religion, but that the Lord of all strength is stronger and will defend the truth of His word, for His own name's sake, unto the which be God all glory given. Thus all humble duty, I continually will pray to the Almighty to bless and give you victory over all His, and your enemies._