The English watched her go by without interfering, then the little fleet was put to sea and followed the Armada, harassing her in the rear and cutting off a vessel here and there.
For fully a week this running fight was kept up; then the two fleets came face to face with each other off the town of Calais. The first day's encounter was indecisive; the Spanish fired over the heads of the English, while the little vessels, low down in the water, poured their broadsides full into the huge bulk of the Spanish galleons; yet when night came it was discovered that the English were running short of powder, while comparatively little harm had been done to the enemy.
During the night an unpleasant surprise was prepared for the Spaniards.
Half a dozen of the oldest vessels in the English fleet filled with pitch, resin, tarry ropes, and anything else that would burn well, were taken by two gallant Devonshire sailors, Young and Prowse, into the very heart of the Armada and set on fire. Then the men who had steered the 'fire ships' took to their boats and rowed quickly back to safety, while the burning vessels were left to drift about among the Spanish fleet.
In a panic the Spaniards cut their cables, hoisted sail, and made for the open sea, each vessel getting in the way of her neighbours; and by morning the entire fleet was in confusion.
Now was the opportunity of the English; the gallant little vessels darted in among the great galleons, and attacked them like little game-cocks fighting huge unwieldy cochinchinas.
From morning until sundown the battle raged; and it was the small vessels which had the advantage.
Many of the Spanish ships sank or ran aground—'the feathers of the Armada were plucked one by one'; then the remainder of the fleet made wildly for the northern seas, the little English ships in pursuit.
When the English had followed the Spaniards sufficiently far, Drake wrote from the deck of his vessel, 'We have driven the Spanish admirals so far apart, that we hope they shall not shake hands these many days; and whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will rejoice greatly at this day's service.'
A great storm completed the destruction which the English had begun, and of the hundred and thirty-two ships that had set out for the invasion of England, only fifty-three returned to Spain. The others lay beneath the waters of the English Channel or had been wrecked upon the islands of Scotland and the coasts of Ireland and Devonshire.