He paused and looked again toward the galleons, their sails swelling on the horizon. "But today I think the Portuguese will spare us the trouble." Hawksworth examined the pilot, struggling to decipher his words. "Let me tell you something about England. All we ask is trade, for you and for us, and we don't have any priests to send. Only Catholic traders do that. And if you think we'll not stand well today, you know even less about the English. The thing we do best is fight at sea. Our sea dogs destroyed the entire navy of Spain twenty years ago, when they sent their Armada to invade England, and even to this day the Spaniards and Portugals have never understood our simple strategy. They still think a warship's merely a land fortress afloat. All they know to do is throw infantry against a ship and try to board her. The English know sea battles are won with cannon and maneuverability, not soldiers." Hawksworth directed the pilot's gaze down the _Discovery_. The ship was of the new English "race-built" class, low in the water and swift. Absent were the bulky superstructures on bow and stern that weighed down a galleon, the "castles" that Spanish and Portuguese commanders used to stage infantry for boarding an enemy vessel. A full thirty years before, the English seaman and explorer John Hawkins had scoffed at these, as had Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. They saw clearly that the galleons' towering bow and stem, their forecastle and poop, slow them, since the bluff beamy hull needed to support their weight wouldn't bite the water. A superstructure above decks serves only to spoil a warship's handling in a breeze, they declared, and to lend a better target to an English gunner. "Your ships assuredly are smaller than Portuguese galleons, I agree," the pilot volunteered after a pause, "but I see no advantage in this." "You'll see soon enough. The _Discovery _may be low, but she'll sail within six points of the wind, and she's quicker on the helm than anything afloat." Hawksworth raised the glass and studied the galleons again. As he expected they were beating to windward, laboring under a full head of canvas. Good. Now the _Resolve_ can make her move. The longboat was returning, its prow biting the trough of each swell, while on the _Resolve_ seamen swarmed the shrouds and rigging. Hawksworth watched with satisfaction as his sister ship's main course swiveled precisely into the breeze and her sprits'l bellied for a run down the wind. Her orders were to steer to leeward, skirting the edge of the galleons' cannon range. And if I know the Portugals, he told himself, they'll be impatient enough to start loosing round after round of shot at her, even from a quarter mile off. It takes courage to hold fire till you're under an enemy's guns, but only then do you have accuracy. Noise and smoke are battle enough for most Portugals, but the main result is to overheat and immobilize their cannon.