CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
HOW THE DONS SAILED UP CHANNEL.
For a long while we could discern only a blue haze on the horizon.
Then, towards noon, when the sun stood higher, and the wind behind us freshened, there appeared a grey line through the mist, and above that a gleam of green.
The sight was hailed by the gay young Spaniards who crowded the deck with a mighty shout and a defiant blare of the trumpets.

And, ere the noise died away, we caught a faint answering echo from the vessels nearest us.

Then, acting on some arranged signal, the whole fleet seemed to gather itself together, and closing into a great crescent, at about cable distance, advanced with sails full of wind--a majestic sight, and, to me, who gazed with dismay from end to end of the magnificent line, fraught with doom to my poor country.
The _Rata_ held a post near to the left of the line, and was thus a league, or thereabouts, nearer to the coast than the ships of the other flank.

Already out of the mist the black headlands were rising grim and frowning to front us; and already, betwixt us and them, a keen eye might detect the gleam of the afternoon sun on a little white sail here and there.

But except for a fishing-boat or two which cruised along our line, taking a good eyeful of us, and then darting ahead before the galliasses could give chase, we saw no sign of the Queen's ships anywhere.
Towards dusk we opened a great break in the coast, which we knew presently to be Plymouth Sound.