So fares St. James's-day, as Baal's did on Carmel in old time, "Either
he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey; or peradventure
he sleepeth, and must be awaked." At least, the only fire by which he
has answered his votaries, has been that of English cannon: and the
Armada, "gathering itself into a roundel," will fight no more, but make
the best of its way to Calais, where perhaps the Guises' faction may
have a French force ready to assist them, and then to Dunkirk, to join
with Parma and the great flotilla of the Netherlands.
So on, before "a fair Etesian gale," which follows clear and bright
out of the south-southwest, glide forward the two great fleets, past
Brighton Cliffs and Beachy Head, Hastings and Dungeness. Is it a battle
or a triumph? For by sea Lord Howard, instead of fighting is rewarding;
and after Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Townsend, and Frobisher
have received at his hands that knighthood, which was then more
honorable than a peerage, old Admiral Hawkins kneels and rises up Sir
John, and shaking his shoulders after the accolade, observes to the
representative of majesty, that his "old woman will hardly know herself
again, when folks call her My Lady."
And meanwhile the cliffs are lined with pike-men and musketeers, and by
every countryman and groom who can bear arms, led by their squires and
sheriffs, marching eastward as fast as their weapons let them, towards
the Dover shore.
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