diplomatists and their English dupes, interchanging protocols so
decorously month after month on the sands of Bourbourg, had been drowned
by the peremptory voice of English and Spanish artillery, suddenly
breaking in upon their placid conferences. It had now become
supererogatory to ask for Alexander's word of honour whether he had,
ever heard of Cardinal Allan's pamphlet, or whether his master
contemplated hostilities against Queen Elizabeth.

Never, since England was England, had such a sight been seen as now
revealed itself in those narrow straits between Dover and Calais. Along
that long, low, sandy shore, and quite within the range of the Calais
fortifications, one hundred and thirty Spanish ships--the greater number
of them the largest and most heavily armed in the world lay face to face,
and scarcely out of cannon-shot, with one hundred and fifty English
sloops and frigates, the strongest and swiftest that the island could
furnish, and commanded by men whose exploits had rung through the world.

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.