CHAPTER VI
SINGEING THE KING OF SPAIN'S BEARD
Queen Elizabeth was seated in her private apartment, her white forehead puckered in anxious lines.
The trouble between herself and her great rival the King of Spain had reached its height.
Throughout her reign English and Spaniards had been contending for the mastery of the new countries which had been discovered on the other side of the ocean, and for supremacy upon the seas. In South America the Spanish king possessed rich mines of silver and precious stones: and Queen Elizabeth's adventurers, half explorers, half pirates, gloried in making descents upon the coast towns, waiting there until the convoys came down from the mountains, and then seizing the treasure, burning the town, and departing.
Another frolicsome adventure of the English sailors was to hang about the rear of the Spanish 'silver fleet' on its way from America to Spain, and when any vessel became separated from her fellows, to fall upon her, remove the precious cargo to their own vessel, and then set fire to the Spanish ship and send her adrift upon the high seas.
No wonder that after several years of these proceedings the Spanish king had made up his mind that the pride of the audacious islanders must be lowered, and a clean sweep made of the English pirates.
And it was no wonder that Queen Elizabeth was uneasy, for she had received tidings that even then the Spaniards had a great fleet in the harbour of Cadiz, ready for the invasion of England. At that time the Spanish navy was the greatest in the world, while the English only had a few hundred small vessels.
While the Queen was occupied with these gloomy thoughts, there was a knock at the door, and a short, pleasant-looking man stood on the threshold.