About two o’clock Monday morning eight ships smeared all over the outside with pitch and rosin, their ordnance loaded with stones and bullets and filled with sulphur and other materials suddenly combustible glided out from among the English fleet and took their way silently toward the Spanish ships lying so serenely at anchor. The night was cloudy. The moon was late in its last quarter and did not rise till morning. The darkness favored their enterprise. The wind blew in long, low gusts from the westward which drove them full upon the Armada. Presently as the dark forms of the ships bore full upon the Spanish vessels a tiny spark of light gleamed like a twinkling star at the stern of the boats. For a second it wavered and flickered and then in a moment more a red glare lighted up the heavens and cast a lurid glow upon the two fleets, the cliffs of England and the sea and 318 showing plainly two boats—with Young and Prowse, the two men of Devon in one; Francis and Edward in the other.
With a rush and roar the flames leaped madly from stem to stern and up through all the rigging sending out great tongues of fire forward, backward, sideways threatening total destruction to anything that came within their reach.
“Pull, Francis,” cried Devereaux bending with desperate strength to the oars. “Pull for your life.”
The girl obeyed with a will. And now from the ships of Spain there went up a fearful cry. A panic seized upon them at sight of those awful burning vessels. They cried out that not only was there danger of fire but that they contained deadly engines also. Everything was in confusion. Panic-stricken they weighed anchor, cut their cables, hoisted their sails and struck for the open sea, every ship afoul of her neighbor. A huge galleass had her rudder broken and drifted helplessly with the tide.
“PULL, PULL FOR YOUR LIFE!”
With shouts and cries of joy the English fleet sailed after the Armada. Meantime the small boats pulled hastily for the nearest English vessel, but so suddenly did the Spanish scatter, and the English change to take advantage of their flight, that the position of the boats became dangerous in the extreme: for what with the high wind, the burning ships, the rolling of the deep, the helter-skelter flight of the Armada and the pursuit of the English their position was, to say the least, precarious.