their sails torn,
their masts shot away, the crowded galleons had become mere
slaughter-houses. Four thousand men had fallen, and bravely as the
seamen fought, they were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himself
was in despair. "We are lost, Senor Oquenda," he cried to his bravest
captain; "what are we to do?" "Let others talk of being lost," replied
Oquenda, "your Excellency has only to order up fresh cartridge." But
Oquenda stood alone, and a council of war resolved on retreat to Spain
by the one course open, that of a circuit round the Orkneys. "Never
anything pleased me better," wrote Drake, "than seeing the enemy fly
with a southerly wind to the northwards. Have a good eye to the Prince
of Parma, for, with the grace of God, I doubt not ere it be long so to
handle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia, as he shall wish himself at
St. Mary Port among his orange trees." But the work of destruction was
reserved for a mightier foe than Drake. The English vessels were soon
forced to give up the chase by the running out of their supplies. But
the Spanish ships had no sooner reached the Orkneys than the storms of
the northern seas broke on them with a fury before which all concert and
union disappeared. In October fifty reached Corunna, bearing ten
thousand men stricken with pestilence and death. Of the rest some were
sunk, some dashed to pieces against the Irish cliffs. The wreckers of
the Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the Scottish Isles, the
kernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their part in the work of murder
and robbery. Eight thousand Spaniards perished between the Giant's
Causeway and the Blaskets. On a strand near Sligo an English captain
numbered eleven hundred corpses which had been cast up by the sea. The
flower of the Spanish nobility, who had been sent on the new crusade
under Alonzo da Leyva, after twice suffering shipwreck, put a third time
to sea to founder on a reef near Dunluce.

[Sidenote: Its effect on England.]

"I sent my ships against men," said Philip when the news reached him,
"not against the seas." It was in nobler tone that England owned her
debt to the storm that drove the Armada to its doom. On the medal that
commemorated its triumph were graven the words, "The Lord sent his wind,
and scattered them." The pride of the conquerors was hushed before their
sense of a mighty deliverance. It was not till England saw the broken
host "fly with a southerly wind to the north" that she kne