Oquendo's advice would have, perhaps, been the safest if the Duke could
have taken it. There were still seventy ships in the Armada little hurt.
The English were 'bragging,' as Drake said, and in no condition
themselves for another serious engagement. But the temper of the entire
fleet made a courageous course impossible. There was but one Oquendo.
Discipline was gone. The soldiers in their desperation had taken the
command out of the hands of the seamen. Officers and men alike
abandoned hope, and, with no human prospect of salvation left to them,
they flung themselves on their knees upon the decks and prayed the
Almighty to have pity on them. But two weeks were gone since they had
knelt on those same decks on the first sight of the English shore to
thank Him for having brought them so far on an enterprise so glorious.
Two weeks; and what weeks! Wrecked, torn by cannon shot, ten thousand of
them dead or dying--for this was the estimated loss by battle--the
survivors could now but pray to be delivered from a miserable death by
the elements. In cyclones the wind often changes suddenly back from
north-west to west, from west to south. At that moment, as if in answer
to their petition, one of these sudden shifts of wind saved them from
the immediate peril.
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