with the reply that his Highness would not allow them to be opened. So Norris and Essex had their bravado for nothing, and went without their fight. In Lisbon the common people were as disturbed as ever, doubtless feeling that their chance of freedom was slipping away from them, and alarms were constantly raised that the English were returning. But Spanish reinforcements were arriving now. The Duke of Braganza, head of the Portuguese nobility, arrived in royal state with a great body of retainers to help the Archduke, and all hope for Dom Antonio gradually ebbed away. The English commanders in Cascaes began now to think it high time to put themselves right with the angry Queen, who continued to send furious messages about their disobedience and about Essex and Sir Roger Williams. On the 2nd of June they wrote from Cascaes a full account of all that had happened in the best light they could devise, and saying they knew not what to do unless {69} supplies came at once from England. Everybody was terribly seasick, they said, and well-nigh starving. Seeing that no more provisions could be expected, they wrote, on the 5th of June, that they had decided to go to St. Michaels; and then, for the first time, they confessed that Essex was with them. They had met him, they said, to their great surprise, off Cape Finisterra, but could not send him home before, as they could not spare the _Swiftsure_; but still no word about Sir Roger Williams.[29] If Drake could not or would not burn the Spanish fleet on this occasion, he was always a splendid hand at plundering merchantmen, and during the six days that his fleet lay before Cascaes he scoured the sea for miles round in search of prizes, taking as many as forty German hulks loaded with Spanish merchandise. Into these prizes the men from the Dutch flyboats were transhipped, and the Dutch captains sent off without being paid their freights, glad, no doubt, to get away from such company on any terms. In the meanwhile Lisbon was gradually settling down. People who had been hiding in churches and cellars for the last ten days crept out, nearly all under the impression that the Spaniards had all been murdered, and that King Antonio had come to his own again. Dire was their {70} disappointment when they found that they were not the only people who had skulked in hiding, and that none of all the city had dared to strike the blow that would have made Portugal free again. So they patiently bent their neck to the yoke and cheered his Highness the Archduke at the top of their voices as he went in state to the cathedral to hear a solemn _Te Deum_ of victory.