Next, four galleys attacked the stout little galleot of Captain Logier, and with a very similar result.  Their prows stuck fast in the bulwarks of the ship, but the boarders soon found themselves the boarded, and, after a brief contest, again the iron bowsprits snapped like pipe-stems, and again the floundering and inexperienced Spaniards shrank away from the terrible encounter which they had provoked.  Soon afterwards, Joost de Moor was assailed by three galleys.  He received them, however, with cannonade and musketry so warmly that they willingly obeyed a summons from Spinola, and united with the flag-ship in one more tremendous onset upon the Black Galley of Zeeland.  And it might have gone hard with that devoted ship, already crippled in the previous encounter, had not Captain Logier fortunately drifted with the current near enough to give her assistance, while the other sailing ships lay becalmed and idle spectators.  At last Spinola, conspicuous by his armour, and by magnificent recklessness of danger, fell upon the deck of his galley, torn to pieces with twenty-four wounds from a stone gun of the Black Galley, while at nearly the same, moment a gentle breeze began in the distance to ruffle the surface of the waters.  More than a thousand men had fallen in Spinola’s fleet, inclusive of the miserable slaves, who were tossed overboard as often as wounds made them a cumbrous part of the machinery, and the galleys, damaged, discomfited, laden with corpses and dripping with blood, rowed off into Sluys as speedily as they could move, without waiting until the coming wind should bring all the sailing ships into the fight, together with such other vessels under Haultain as might be cruising in the distance.  They succeeded in getting into the Gut of Sluys, and so up to their harbour of refuge.  Meantime, baldheaded, weather-beaten Joost de Moor—­farther pursuit being impossible—­piped all hands on deck, where officers and men fell on their knees, shouting in pious triumph the 34th Psalm:  “I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth . . . .  O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.”  So rang forth the notes of humble thanksgiving across the placid sea.  And assuredly those hardy mariners, having gained a victory with their little vessels over twelve ships and three thousand men—­a numerical force of at least ten times their number,—­such as few but Dutchmen could have achieved; had a right to give thanks to Him from whom all blessings flow.

Thus ended the career of Frederic Spinola, a wealthy, gallant, high-born, brilliant youth, who might have earned distinction, and rendered infinitely better service to the cause of Spain and the archdukes, had he not persuaded himself that he had a talent for seamanship.  Certainly, never was a more misplaced ambition, a more unlucky career.  Not even in that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown by any restless patrician.  Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom which so rapidly befell him.