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Near the coast of the Red Sea are two Arab towns which are as holy and full of memories to Mohammedans all over the world as Jerusalem and Rome to Christians. At Mecca the prophet Mohammed was born in the year A.D. 570, and at Medina he died and was buried in 632.
Medina the Admiral, finding his ships scattering fast, gathers them into a half-moon; and the Armada tries to keep solemn way forward, like a stately herd of buffaloes, who march on across the prairie, disdaining to notice the wolves which snarl around their track. But in vain.
Obada had done all this to clear out of his path the hated man whose statements and impeachments might ruin him. The wretch had met a less ignominious death than his judges would have granted him. The wealth found hoarded in his dwelling was sent to Medina; and even Orion was forced to see the vast sums of which the Negro had plundered his treasury, appropriated by the Arabs.
Perseus, in the shape of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, after a week of disastrous battles, found himself at the end of it in an exposed roadstead, where he ought never to have been, nine-tenths of his provisions thrown overboard as unfit for food, his ammunition exhausted by the unforeseen demands upon it, the seamen and soldiers harassed and dispirited, officers the whole week without sleep, and the enemy, who had hunted him from Plymouth to Calais, anchored within half a league of him.
Among the curious papers cited by Alcantara is one existing in the archives of the House of Medina Celi, giving the account of the treasurer of Don Diego Fernandez as to the sums expended by his lord in the capture of the king, the reward given to some soldiers for a standard of the king's which they had taken, to others for the wounds they had received, etc.
Already there were but six and a-half fathoms of water, rapidly shoaling under their keels, and the pilots told Medina that all were irretrievably lost, for the freshening north-welter was driving them steadily upon the banks. The English, easily escaping the danger, hauled their wind, and paused to see the ruin of the proud Armada accomplished before their eyes.
As soon as it was clear that he meant to descend the steps to the floor of the hall, the chief courtiers came forward, Ruy Gomez de Silva, Prince of Eboli, Alvarez de Toledo, the terrible Duke of Alva, the Dukes of Medina Sidonia and of Infantado, Don Antonio Perez the chief Secretary, the Ambassadors of Queen Elizabeth of England and of France, and a dozen others, bowing so low that the plumes of their hats literally touched the floor beside them.
Limestone was at first chosen, but found not to answer, and Medina sandstone was finally adopted, with which all the stone paving of the streets has been since done. Within two or three years the Nicholson wood pavement has been introduced, and has been laid extensively on the streets above the bluff. On the low land along the river valley the paving still continues to be of stone.
What would these proud prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the people.
Here the great junction of Medina Sidonia with the Duke of Parma was to be effected; and now at last the curtain was to rise upon the last act of the great drama so slowly and elaborately prepared. That Saturday afternoon, Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron of sixteen lay between Dungeness and Folkestone; waiting the approach of the two fleets.
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