beyond all remedy. Thereupon bewailing their misfortune, they tried
to seek confession, as quickly as possible. They thought that all
efforts were useless; therefore they cared for nothing else. However
they tried to cast the line, but uselessly, for their lines were cut,
and they the more confounded by their slight hopes of life. The ship
went ahead into that chasm [_rebentacon_]--as it is called--as if
it were passing through a strait; and after having sailed a goodly
stretch without accident, among so many reefs, they found themselves
on the high sea, free from everything.

Father Fray Andres de San Nicolas had preached the previous afternoon
with great energy against the great licentiousness and shameless
conduct of the passengers and the other people, who had no fear of
God. He severely censured their excesses, and the little anxiety
that they showed in that time of greatest danger. With burning words,
he exhorted them to do better, representing to them their danger and
begging them, finally, to confess, since they did not know what was
to happen that night. The fruit that proceeded from that sermon was
large, for, his audience becoming terrified and contrite, many of
them confessed, and others proposed to do the same by having their
entangled consciences examined as soon as possible. After a few hours,
what is described above was experienced, whereby all thought that the
good preacher had had a revelation of that event; and they could not
thank our Lord sufficiently for having granted to them the company
of so good religious, but more especially the company of him who
preached to them of their danger--whom they regarded as a distinguished
servant of God, as he was. Some certified afterward that that place
through which the boat had passed had been a rocky islet, and that
they had seen it on other voyages; and they were astonished at having
escaped on that occasion with life, attributing it, beyond doubt, to a
manifest miracle, which the Lord wrought at the intercession of those
fathers. They desired, therefore, to listen to their teaching daily,
and especially to that of the father who announced to them what we
have seen. Consequently, not sparing themselves at all, the fathers
gave in alternation their inspired discourses, which were the health
and medicine of the many who were there--the ship so conforming itself
to these that it seemed a reformed convent, where before it had been
a house of confusion and bluste