They were all
wrecked at various places between Donegal and the Blaskets. Something
like eight thousand half-drowned wretches struggled on shore alive. Many
were gentlemen, richly dressed, with velvet coats, gold chains, and
rings. The common sailors and soldiers had been paid their wages before
they started, and each had a bag of ducats lashed to his waist when he
landed through the surf. The wild Irish of the coast, tempted by the
booty, knocked unknown numbers of them on the head with their
battle-axes, or stripped them naked and left them to die of the cold. On
one long sand strip in Sligo an English officer counted eleven hundred
bodies, and he heard that there were as many more a few miles distant.
The better-educated of the Ulster chiefs, the O'Rourke and O'Donnell,
hurried down to stop the butchery and spare Ireland the shame of
murdering helpless Catholic friends. Many--how many cannot be
said--found protection in their castles. But even so it seemed as if
some inexorable fate pursued all who had sailed in that doomed
expedition. Alonzo de Leyva, with half a hundred young Spanish nobles of
high rank who were under his special charge, made his way in a galleass
into Killibeg.
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