Then the wind forced us northward from the fight; We could not ship the army nor return; We held the sea in trouble through the night, Watching the English signals blink and burn. The English in a dim cloud kept astern; All night they signalled, while our shattered ships Huddled like beasts beneath the drovers’ whips. * * * * * At dawn the same wind held; we could not strive. The English drove us north as herdsmen drive. * * * * * Under our tattered flags, With rigging cut to rags, Our ships like stricken stags Were heaped and hounded. Caught by the unknown tide, With neither chart nor guide, We fouled the Holland side, Where four more grounded. Our water-casks were burst, The horses died of thirst, The wounded raved and curst, Uncared, untended. All night we heard the crying Of lonely shipmates dying; We had to leave them lying. So the fight ended. PHILIP. God gives His victory as He wills. But this Was not complete destruction. What thing worse Came to destroy you? MESSENGER. An avenging curse, Due for old sins, destroyed us. PHILIP. Tell the tale. MESSENGER. O King, when morning dawned it blew a gale, But still the English followed, and we fled Till breakers made the dirty waters pale. We saw the Zeeland sandbanks right ahead, Blind in a whirling spray that gave us dread; For we were blown there, and the water shoaled. The crying of the leadsmen at the lead, Calling the soundings, were our death-bells tolled. We drifted down to death upon the sands; The English drew away to watch us drown; We saw the bitter breakers with grey hands Tear the dead body of the sandbank brown. We could do nothing, so we drifted down Singing the psalms for death; we who had been Lords of the sea and knights of great renown, Doomed to be strangled by a death unclean. PHILIP. So there the ships were wrecked? MESSENGER. Time had not struck. O King, we learned how blessed mercy saves: Even as our forefoot grounded on the muck, Tripping us up to drown us in the waves, A sudden windshift snatched us from our graves And drove us north; and now another woe, Tempest unending, beat our ships to staves-- A never-dying gale with frost and snow. Now our hearts failed, for food and water failed; The men fell sick by troops, the wounded died. They washed about the wet decks as we sailed For want of strength to lift them overside. Desolate seas we sailed, so grim, so wide, That ship by ship our comrades disappeared. With neither sun nor star to be a guide, Like spirits of the wretched dead we steered.