"Finding it to come thus scantily," said Howard, "it breeds a marvellous alteration among them." But more dangerous than the pestilence or the discontent was the misunderstanding which existed at the moment between the leading admirals of the English fleet.

Not only was Seymour angry with Howard, but Hawkins and Frobisher were at daggers drawn with Drake; and Sir Martin--if contemporary, affidavits can be trusted--did not scruple to heap the most virulent abuse upon Sir Francis, calling him, in language better fitted for the forecastle than the quarter-deck, a thief and a coward, for appropriating the ransom for Don Pedro Valdez in which both Frobisher and Hawkins claimed at least an equal share with himself.
And anxious enough was the Lord-Admiral with his sailors perishing by pestilence, with many of his ships so weakly manned that as Lord Henry Seymour declared there were not mariners enough to weigh the anchors, and with the great naval heroes, on whose efforts the safety of the realm depended, wrangling like fisherwomen among themselves, when rumours came, as they did almost daily, of the return of the Spanish Armada, and of new demonstrations on the part of Farnese.

He was naturally unwilling that the fruits of English valour on the seas should now be sacrificed by the false economy of the government.

He felt that, after all that had been endured and accomplished, the Queen and her counsellors were still capable of leaving England at the mercy of a renewed attempt, "I know not what you think at the court," said he; "but I think, and so do all here, that there cannot be too great forces maintained for the next five or six weeks.

God knoweth whether the Spanish fleet will not, after refreshing themselves in Norway; Denmark, and the Orkneys, return.