One or two seamen in our army were watching the weather with experienced eyes. The galleys were mobile so far as oaring took them, but this dead on-shore wind would make it difficult for them to get clear away. If it strengthened they would be pinned within the bay and if any English force appeered to windward of them they would be trapped. But of course no one knew what superior Spanish forces hovered below the horizon: if Drake suddenly appeared and engaged the galleys he might himself be trapped in turn.
Meantime to wait. We camped on the grass, making the best of the thin driving rain and the lack of food and shelter. Twenty women who had come in were sent to scour the countryside for bread and bare necessities. In the evening some sheep and chicken were slaughtered and roasted over spits, and enough ale was found to keep the damp at bay.
About seven with the fine rain still falling and the wind coming firmly out of the south-east, the leading galley was seen to move. Its oars lapped the water and it turned its snout towards the shore west of us where the inlet of Penzance lay. At once the near-finished meal was abandoned, men cried to each other, horses were saddled, calivers and muskets and pikes were shouldered, swords buckled. The galley slid through the water followed by its three lesser creatures, and the motley band of men kept company with them along the shore.
Short of the Penzance inlet the first galley turned inshore. The pinnaces were lowered. At that moment Captain Poor on the flank and Sir Francis Godolphin on the other gave the order to open fire. There was an intermittent rattle of guns, and some of the men on the first ship retreated from the rail to less exposed positions. The galley replied with small arms fire. We could see a consultation going on on the poop. If the galleys employed their cast pieces they could of course clear the shore while the first wave of troops were landed. It all depended whether they considered they could spare the powder and shot.
In the meantime the halfdozen men ashore who were armed with modern muskets continued to fire, and another halfdozen with long bows climbed down on a projecting point and strove to outdo the musketeers.
While this issue was in the balance I noticed an old man and an old woman a hundred yards farther along the beach. He was digging in the sand for bait and she was shovelling seaweed into a basket. I do not know if they were unaware of the imminent conflict or if they were deaf to the sound of gunfire but it seemed they were indifferent to both. They reminded me of the man of whom I had asked the way yesterday. The struggle to exist had reduced them so low that they cared nothing for larger and more general dangers. They had no enemy greater than hunger, no fear beyond an empty belly.
The wind was strengthening and waveless were breaking all along the shore. Then a man in the crowded bows of the first ship crumpled and fell among his fellows. It was one of the bowmen who had made his mark. Within five minutes of the soldier’s fall the galleys began to move away out of range.
A straggling cheer broke out and ran along the groups of defenders.
“They’d best go if they be going,” said the man next to me. “Tis blowin’ up dirty.”
But once out of range the four ships anchored again in line astern. They were not giving up.
We posted sentries along the beaches, and the main body retired to the grassy slopes behind. Dark fell and two bonfires were set upon the beaches, to give light and comfort. I dozed off for a time leaning back against a dank and mossy boulder. I dreamed about Sue, nothing else, not Spaniards, nor war, nor burning churches, just Sue. The strength of my desire for her kept waking me and I would start up and shake myself, trying to throw off the fancies. I do not know what alchemy gets to work in a man that one woman’s face and lips and hands and body alone will satisfy him and no other. Beauty is an ingredient but not the main one.
In the middle of the night I went along to the tent where Sir Francis Godolphin sat writing a despatch. After two nights without sleep he was looking his sixty-odd years. I offered to write the despatch for him, and this he agreed to and leaned back in a chair speaking the rest to me. It was a straightforward account of his actions and of the movements of the enemy, destined for the Privy Council at Westminster. Added was a calm appraisal of the future. I realised as I wrote why the Privy Council set more store by the counsel of Sir Francis Godolphin than that of Mr John Killigrew.
We had finished and he had sealed the report when there were shouts in the distance, and one of his servants came running across the grass with news that it was reinforcements from Plymouth at last.
Into the tent came a tall vigorous young man called Sir Nicholas Clifford. He brought with him, he said, 200 troopers under the command of two experienced captains, and reassurances from Drake that a portion of his fleet would be off the Lizard by dawn. It remained only to concert action here to meet any emergency which the day would bring.
“Captain Poor was wakened, and the two new captains came into the tent for a counsel of war. Because I had been in the tent when they arrived they did not question my presence.
Nicholas Clifford’s plan was different from Francis Godolphin’s: it was a strategy stemming from strength instead of weakness. If the force of the enemy were no more than four galleys, they should be encouraged to land not prevented. Although they had got fresh water on Wednesday, they had had none since and might now be in need of more. The whole camp should be moved in the night.
By three we were in transit. By five we were in our new positions. About thirty men armed with pikes and bows guarded the beaches on which the Spanish had tried to land yesterday, the remaining seven hundred of us, including the mounted troopers who had arrived overnight, were out of sight in the valleys of Gulval and Ludgvan. If the enemy landed they could land almost unimpeded. If they ventured into the green country behind the beaches they would be attacked from all sides.
Clifford reckoned that Drake’s fleet would be in Mount’s Bay by noon or soon after. Seven hours to go.
From a vantage point in the hills we watched the four black smears offshore grow into the warships we now knew so well. The sky was lightening with more than the dawn. It was to be a better day.
For a time there was no movement apparent, then the longest galley shook out a sail or two as if trying them against the wind. They were quickly furled. Except by oar, the four warships were incapable of moving out of Mount’s Bay, and unless the slaves were flogged until they died, they would not make open water at all.
No fires were lighted in our camps, but we saw the men left on the beaches gathering round their fires, and though the morning was not cold we munched bread and cheese and shivered in the wind.
About eight three small companies which had been sent out to test conditions to the west of us reported that no Spanish remained at Penzance or Mousehole and that the inhabitants were drifting back. Because they had fled at the first alarm casualties had been few.
By now the day was bright and I watched the sky suspiciously. In this sea-surrounded peninsula changes of weather can be rapid. The wind which had blown from the south-east for twenty-six hours was still strong but was becoming hesitant, lifting and falling in gusts. Broken blue sky let through a fitful sun. The horizon, which had been misty from one cause or another ever since the invasion began, was showing as a hard rim. Complete surprise was now impossible, but if the wind would only hold, the Spaniards were still caught.
At nine Clifford and Lavelis and four others of whom I was one, rode down the valley to within half a mile of the beach. Where we stopped it was sheltered and Clifford transferred his attention from the galleys to the horizon. Just then I felt a breath of wind on the back of my neck.