The Queen still stoutly held the Duke of Alva's treasure, which she had seized; our ports were closed to Spain, and those of Spain to us. Sir William Winter was fitting out his expedition to relieve Rochelle, with victuals, men, and furniture for the Huguenots. Papist prizes, Spanish, French, no matter what, were daily pouring into our ports upon the narrow seas, and Don Gueran de Espes, the Spanish Ambassador, was a prisoner in his own house in London. It was said at all hands that the times could not long endure the strain, and we looked for war to burst out every day.
What wonder then, if, when the whole host of Anti-christ seemed to be gathering about us, I, like Francis Drake, saw the finger of God in the hurricane which had put it in our power to make so big a blow at His enemies, and read in the disaster that followed a judgment on those who spared to spoil the Egyptians? That was what the scholar Said to the sailor; ay, and honestly believed it too.
'Have no doubt, Frank,' said I, 'it was the Lord's will that you had smitten and spared not. It was His plain and manifest mercy to you to put it in your power to bruise the serpent's head. Would God Captain Hawkins had listened with your ears!'
'That is what I tell Harry, but he scorns it,' said Drake eagerly; and Harry, to my inquiring look, only laughed a little low laugh, so full of complete amusement that it made me shudder, and there rushed to my mind the horrid Italian proverb that we heard so often—Inglese Italianato è Diavolo incarnato.
'Do you not think, then,' I asked of Harry, 'that it is God's will that we should smite Antichrist and all his host?'
'Well, let that pass, lad,' said Harry, laying his hand gently upon my knee. 'I know not too well what God thinks of us; but it is my will, and England's will, that we should smite, as you say, the King of Spain, and that is why I sent for you. Ever since he came home Frank has been striving to get redress from Spain through the Council, but things have come to such a pass with embargoes and imprisoned ambassadors that all hope of that is at an end. So Frank is going to fry his own fish. Tell him what you are going to do, Frank.'
Drake looked at Culverin and Lashmer, who had remained in the room, with that same strange stare of his, as though to see whether he might safely speak before them.
'Shall they go?' said Harry.
'No,' said Frank, after a pause, and the Sergeant saluted him, and Lashmer looked like a happy sheep. 'They are neither men to blab, yet we must be close; for it would seem there is a Spanish ear grows on every village cross.'
Therewith Frank Drake unfolded to us his mighty project, of which I think none but his heroic soul had yet dreamed—that glorious enterprise which, before a few more years were gone, was to make England's heart to leap with pride like a young stag, and set her fair body throbbing with the wild untamable life that was to make her what she is.