and harquebusiers of crock were then infinite, yet could they not be discerned nor heard for that the great ordnance came so thick that a man would have judged it to have been a hot skirmish of small shot, being all the fight long within half musket shot of the enemy.”
On the 24th fresh ammunition arrived, and the fleet was divided into four squadrons, of which Revenge was to lead the second.
On Thursday the 25th, in a calm, the galleasses ventured again and were finally knocked out of the fight. For the next two days “the Spaniards went always before the English Army like sheep” until on Saturday evening they suddenly came to an anchor off Calais.
On the night of Sunday the 28th, the Lord Admiral “caused eight ships to be fired and let drive amongst the Spanish fleet; whereupon they were forced to let slip or cut cables at half and to set sail.” When day came, Howard stopped to take a prize, and it was the Revenge who led the last great chase northwards, pounding Sidonia himself in the huge San Martin, sinking, scattering and driving ashore his followers. “It was the hour,” says Mr Corbett, “for which Francis Drake had been born.” But glorious as it was, it was not yet the hour for which the Revenge had been built.
III
Drake was beyond doubt the greatest man who ever set foot in the Revenge, but it was not for him, or any like him, to sail her to the fulfilment of her unparalleled destiny. The imagination of two great peoples has made of him an almost supernatural hero, a gigantic figure of romance; but in spite of his inexhaustible courage,