Opposite Cadiz, on the other side of the outer harbor, was Port St. Mary, and within the Puntal channel, at the extreme end of the inlet, stood Port Royal. Both places, however, were so protected by shoals as to be unapproachable except to the port pilots. It was an ideal scene of action for galleys to develop their full capabilities. Two had already appeared to reconnoitre, and how many more there were no one could tell. Galleys, it must be remembered, were then considered the most formidable warships afloat, and quite invincible in confined waters or calms. By all the rules of war, on which Borough was the first authority in the service, to attack was suicide; but Drake had spent his life in breaking rules. He did not care. The enemy was there, his authority was in his pocket, the wind was fair, his officers believed in him, and as the sun sank low behind them the fleet went in.
A scene of terror and confusion followed. Every ship in the harbor cut its cables and sought safety in flight, some to sea, some across the bay to St. Mary's, some through the Puntal passage to the inner harbor and Port Royal. To cover the stampede ten galleys came confidently out from under the Cadiz batteries. All was useless. While the chartered cruisers swooped on the fugitives, the Queen's ships stood in, to head off the advancing galleys, as coolly as though they had fought them a hundred times before. In a few minutes the English admiral had taught the world a new lesson in tactics. Galleys could only fire straight ahead; and, as they came on line abreast, Drake, passing with the Queen's four battle-ships athwart their course, poured in his heavy broadsides. Never before had such gunnery been seen. Ere the galleys were within effective range for their own ordnance they were raked and riddled and confounded, and to the consternation of the Spaniards they broke for the cover of the batteries. Two had to be hauled up to prevent their sinking; the rest were a shambles, and nothing was now thought of but how to protect the city from the assault which seemed inevitable. Hardly any troops were there: a panic seized the population; and Drake was left alone to do the work for which he had come.
Beyond the batteries the fleet anchored with its prizes, plundering and scuttling with all its might, till the flood came in again. Then all that remained were fired, and, by the flare of the blazing hulks as they drifted clear with the tide, Drake moved the fleet into the mouth of the Puntal channel, out of range of the batteries. He himself took up a position seaward of the new anchorage, to engage the guns which the Spaniards were bringing down from the town and to keep off the galleys; for as yet the work was but half done. In the inner harbor lay the splendid galleon of the Marquis de Santa Cruz, and a crowd of great ships too big to seek the refuge of the shoals about Port Royal, and at daylight the Merchant Royal went boldly in, with all the tenders in company. Then, in spite of the labors of the past night, the plundering, scuttling, and burning began again. Outside, the galleys were making half-hearted demonstrations against the English anchorage, but they were easily kept at bay. By noon it was all over, and Drake attempted to make sail. In the past thirty-six hours he had entirely revictualled his fleet with wine, oil, biscuit, and dried fruits. He had destroyed some twelve thousand tons of shipping, including some of the finest vessels afloat, and four ships laden with provisions were in possession of his prize crews.[1] ] It was enough and more than enough. But the wind would not serve, and all day long he lay where he was, in sight of the troops that were now pouring along the isthmus into Cadiz.
Again and again the galleys attempted to approach, and every time Drake's broadsides swept them back before they reached their effective range. Vainly, too, the Spaniards strove to post guns near enough to annoy the fleet. Nor did the struggle cease till at midnight a land-wind sprang up, and, brushing from his path the galleys that sought to block the way, Drake made sail. By two o'clock he had cleared the batteries and was safe outside without losing a single man. Boldly enough then the galleys gave chase, but, unfortunately, the wind suddenly shifted completely round. Drake at once went about, and the galleys fled in most undignified haste, leaving the English fleet to complete its triumph by anchoring unmolested in full view of the town.
Such an exploit was without precedent. The chivalry of Spain was as enthusiastic in its admiration of Drake's feat of arms as it was disgusted at the cumbrous organization which condemned it to inactivity. A whole day Drake waited where he was, to try and exchange his prisoners for English galley-slaves, but, getting nothing but high compliments and dilatory answers for his pains, on the morrow he sailed. There was no time to lose. By his captures he had discovered the whole of Philip's plan. Out of the Mediterranean the divisions of Italy, Sicily, and Andalusia were to come and join the head-quarters at Lisbon, where the Grand Admiral of Spain, the Marquis de Santa Cruz, was busy with the bulk of the armada. At Cape St. Vincent was the road where ships coming out of the Straits waited for a wind to carry them north, and there he had resolved to take his stand, and fight everything that attempted to join Santa Cruz's flag in the Tagus.
Such light airs prevailed that it was not till the end of the month that the fleet reached the road. By that time its water was exhausted, and, as every headland was crowned with works commanding the anchorage and the watering-places, Drake at once saw he must take them. In his usual off-hand way he summoned his council, and told them over the dinner-table what he was going to do. It was more than the vice-admiral's dignity and caution could endure. In high dudgeon he returned to his ship, and, in the midst of a gale which suddenly arose and drove the fleet to the north of the cape, he indited a long and solemn protest, not only against the contemplated operation, but against the unprecedented despotism with which Drake was conducting the whole expedition. Borough, though no doubt jealous of Drake, certainly believed he was doing nothing beyond his right and duty. He felt he had been attached to the expedition as the most complete sailor in the kingdom, and he valued and deserved his reputation. In the scientific knowledge of his art he was unrivalled, and he was the only officer in the service who had fought and won a purely naval action. No one, therefore, can fairly blame him for resenting the revolutionary manner in which his commander was ignoring him in contempt of the time-honored privileges of the council of war.
Drake, in his hot self-confidence, thought otherwise. As he rode out the gale under the lee of St. Vincent, and the tempest howled through his rigging, once more there fell upon him the shadow of the tragedy which could never cease to darken his judgment. Already, in Cadiz harbor, he had thought his vice-admiral too careful of his ship when the shot were flying; and now he saw in him another Doughty sent by the friends of Spain to hang on his arm. "In persisting," he told Lord Burleigh, "he committed a double offence, not only against me, but it toucheth further." To his embittered sense the querulous protest was a treasonable attack on his own authority, and in his fury he brutally dismissed the old admiral from his command and placed him under arrest on his flag-ship. In vain the astonished veteran protested his innocence, apologized, and made submission. Drake would not listen. The ring of the heads-man's sword upon the desolate shores of Patagonia had deafened his ears to such entreaties forever.
Two days later he was back in Lagos Bay, landing a thousand men for an attempt upon the town, but in the evening, after vainly endeavoring to induce the bodies of cavalry which hovered on their line of march to come within reach, the troops reëmbarked, reporting the place too strong to be taken by assault. Such reports were not to Drake's liking. It was no mere cross-raiding on which he was bent, but a sagacious stroke that was essential to the development of his new ideas. To get the command of the seas it was necessary that he should be able to keep the seas, and for this a safe anchorage and watering-places were necessary. In default of Lagos, strategy and convenience both indicated St. Vincent road for his purpose. It was commanded by forts, but that did not deter him; and, resolved to have his way, he next day landed in person near Cape Sagres.
On the summit of the headland was a castle accessible on two sides only. The English military officers declared that a hundred determined men could hold it against the whole of Drake's force. But he would not listen; it commanded the watering-place, and he meant to have it. Detaching part of his force against a neighboring fort, which was at once evacuated, he himself advanced against the castle, and at the summit of the cliff found himself confronted with walls thirty feet high, bristling with brass guns and crowded with soldiers. The garrison had just been reënforced by that of the evacuated fort, and to every one but the admiral the affair was hopeless. He attacked with his musketeers, and, when they had exhausted their ammunition, in the name of his queen and mistress he summoned the place to surrender. In the name of his lord and master the Spanish captain laughed at him. Whereupon Drake, more obstinate than ever, sent down to the fleet for fagots, and began piling them against the outer gate to fire it. So desperate was the resistance that again and again the attempt failed. For two hours the struggle lasted. As fast as the defenders threw down the fire, the English piled it up again; and in the midst of the smoke and the bullets the admiral toiled like a common seaman, with his arms full of fagots and his face black with soot. How long his obstinacy would have continued it is impossible to say, but at the end of the two hours the Spanish commandant sank under his wounds and the garrison surrendered. Daunted by a feat which every one regarded as little short of a miracle, the castle and monastery of St. Vincent, together with another fort near it, capitulated at the magician's first summons, and left him in complete possession of the anchorage to water the fleet undisturbed.
Having fired the captured strongholds, and tumbled their guns over the cliffs into the sea, Drake returned to the fleet to find the sailors had not been idle. Between St. Vincent and a village some nine miles to the eastward which they had been ordered to burn, they had taken forty-seven barks and caravels laden with stores for the Armada, and destroyed between fifty and sixty fishing-boats with miles of nets. The tunny-fishery, on which the whole of the adjacent country chiefly depended for its subsistence, was annihilated. For the time Drake's work on the Algarve coast was done, and, having watered the fleet and fished up the captured guns, he sailed for Lisbon.