twithstanding their helpless plight, made a desperate fight for two hours
before they surrendered. Don Diego de Pimentel was in command, with several
nobles among his officers and volunteers. These were spared, for the sake
of the ransom they might fetch, but no quarter was given to the common
crowd. William Borlas, one of the captors, wrote to Secretary Walsingham:
"I was the means that the best sort were saved; and the rest were cast
overboard and slain at the entry."[12] These Elizabethan sea-fighters were
as cruel as they were brave.

[12] "Entry" = boarding the ship.

Other ships drifted ashore or found their way into ports along the low
coast to the north-eastward, but all these were taken by Prince Maurice of
Nassau, admiral of the United Provinces, who with some thirty sail gleaned
up the wreckage of the Armada, though he had taken no part in the fighting,
only blockading Parma's flotillas as his share of the service.

Meanwhile, saved by the shift of the wind, the main body of the Armada was
speeding into the North Sea, led by Medina-Sidonia in the leaky "San
Martin." Howard and the English fleet held a parallel course, shepherding
the enemy without closing in to fire a single shot. Howard was again, to
use the phrase of the time, "putting on a brag countenance," for he was in
no condition for serious fighting, even against such crippled opponents.
The magazines of the English fleet were all but empty, its "cannon,
demi-cannon, sakers, and falconets" doomed to useless silence, food and
water short in supply, and much sickness among the tired crews, who were
complaining that they were badly fed and that the beer was undrinkable.

In the evening Medina-Sidonia held a council of war on board the "San
Martin." Soldiers and sailors, veterans of many wars, and the chief pilots
of the fleet sat round his cabin table, and there was anxious debate. No
one could say how long it would be before Parma's army was ready;
ammunition and provisions were short, men falling sick, ships badly
damaged, though only a dozen had been actually lost. The wind was
increasing from the south-south-west, and the pilots urged that the best
course was to run up the North Sea, round the north of Scotland, reach the
open Atlantic, and so return to Spain without further fighting.

Some of the best of the officers, men who had been throughout in the thick
of the fighting, protested against this course, to which their admiral was
evidently