Farther along the coast, invisible, but known to be performing a post perilous and vital service, was a squadron of Dutch vessels of all sizes, lining both the inner and outer edges of the sandbanks off the Flemish coasts, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of that intricate and dangerous cruising-ground between Dunkerk and Walcheren.  Those fleets of Holland and Zeeland, numbering some one hundred and fifty galleons, sloops, and fly-boats, under Warmond, Nassau, Van der Does, de Moor, and Rosendael, lay patiently blockading every possible egress from Newport, or Gravelines; or Sluys, or Flushing, or Dunkerk, and longing to grapple with the Duke of Parma, so soon as his fleet of gunboats and hoys, packed with his Spanish and Italian veterans, should venture to set forth upon the sea for their long-prepared exploit.

It was a pompous spectacle, that midsummer night, upon those narrow seas.  The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a scene of anxious expectation.  Would she not be looking, by the morrow’s night, upon a subjugated England, a re-enslaved Holland—­upon the downfall of civil and religious liberty?  Those ships of Spain, which lay there with their banners waving in the moonlight, discharging salvoes of anticipated triumph and filling the air with strains of insolent music; would they not, by daybreak, be moving straight to their purpose, bearing the conquerors of the world to the scene of their cherished hopes?

That English fleet, too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously on the watch—­would that swarm of, nimble, lightly-handled, but slender vessels,—­which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultory skirmishes—­be able to cope with their great antagonist now that the moment had arrived for the death grapple?  Would not Howard, Drake, Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins, be swept out of the straits at last, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, and Farnese?  Would those Hollanders and Zeelanders, cruising so vigilantly among their treacherous shallows, dare to maintain their post, now that the terrible ‘Holofernese,’ with his invincible legions, was resolved to come forth?

So soon as he had cast anchor, Howard despatched a pinnace to the Vanguard, with a message to Winter to come on board the flag-ship.  When Sir William reached the Ark, it was already nine in the evening.  He was anxiously consulted by the Lord-Admiral as to the course now to be taken.  Hitherto the English had been teasing and perplexing an enemy, on the retreat, as it were, by the nature of his instructions.  Although anxious to give battle, the Spaniard was forbidden to descend upon the coast until after his junction with Parma.  So the English had played a comparatively easy game, hanging upon their enemy’s skirts, maltreating him as they doubled about him, cannonading him from a distance, and slipping out of his reach at their pleasure.  But he was now to be met face to face, and the fate of the two free commonwealths of the world was upon the issue of the struggle, which could no longer be deferred.