Fifteen weary miles over rough ground, and with Villa Dorta's troops harassing their flank and rear, the English managed to cover during the day, and at last, late in the evening, they marched into Cascaes.[28] We may well imagine that the meeting between Drake and Norris was not very cordial. The officers threw the whole blame for failure upon Drake for not coming up the river to support them before Lisbon; the sailors, on the other hand, saying that the march overland was against Drake's advice, and that his ships, without men-at-arms to defend them and work the guns, would have been at the mercy of the enemy. At all events, it was {67} clear they had failed in two of the objects of the voyage--namely, to burn the King of Spain's ships and restore Dom Antonio; and one other only remained to be attempted, which was to take the Azores. I have already said that the raising of the siege of Lisbon took the defenders by surprise. They fully believed it to be an attempt to draw the Spanish troops out of the town in order that the citizens might rise and massacre the few Spaniards left. So certain were they of this that an unfortunate Portuguese noble--Count Redondo--who arrived that day and went to pay his respects to the Archduke, was immediately seized and beheaded _pour encourager les autres_. As soon as they saw the English had really gone, Count de Fuentes with his six or seven thousand men again made a reconnaissance almost to the English position at Cascaes, and finding the invaders well entrenched, with the fleet behind them, decided that it would be too risky to attack them, and hastened back again to Lisbon. News of the nearness of the Spaniards was brought in by some friars, of whom great numbers hung about Dom Antonio's quarters, and Norris and Essex each promised the messengers a hundred crowns if they found the enemy in the place reported, as they were spoiling for a fight in the open before embarking. But Fuentes had gone to Lisbon, and the friars lost their reward. Norris, however, still eager, sent a page who spoke French, and a trumpeter, post-haste to Lisbon, with a challenge to Fuentes and his army to come into the open and fight. The opportunity was too good for Essex to miss, so he too sent a cartel by the page {68} on his own account, giving every one the lie in a general way and offering to fight anybody in single combat. The messenger came back again without an answer, only that the Spaniards had threatened to hang him for bringing such vapouring insolence to them; but the Spaniard tells the story in another way, less honourably for himself. He says, whilst the messengers were being entertained "as if they were great gentlemen" at breakfast by some of the captains who spoke French, the letters (which they had said could only be opened by the Archduke's permission) were surreptitiously steamed, read, and re-sealed, and handed back again as if unopened,