The Morning Star was the next galley attacked, Captain Sael, in a stout galleot, driving at her under full sail, with the same accuracy and solidity of shock as had been displayed in the encounter with the St. Philip and with the same result.  The miserable, top-heavy monster galley was struck between mainmast and stern, with a blow which carried away the assailant’s own bowsprit and fore-bulwarks, but which—­completely demolished the stem of the galley, and crushed out of existence the greater portion of the live machinery sitting chained and rowing on the benches.  And again, as the first enemy hauled off from its victim, Admiral pant came up once more in the Half-moon, steered straight at the floundering galley, and sent her with one crash to the bottom.  It was not very scientific practice perhaps.  It was but simple butting, plain sailing, good steering, and the firing of cannon at short pistol-shot.  But after all, the work of those unsophisticated Dutch skippers was done very thoroughly, without flinching, and, as usual, at great odds of men and guns.  Two more of the Spanish galleys were chased into the shallows near Gravelines, where they went to pieces.  Another was wrecked near Calais.  The galley which bore Frederic Spinola himself and his fortunes succeeded in reaching Dunkirk, whence he made his way discomfited, to tell the tale of his disaster to the archduke at Brussels.  During the fight the Dutch admiral’s boats had been active in picking up such of the drowning crews, whether galley-slaves or soldiers, as it was possible to save.  But not more than two hundred were thus rescued, while by far the greater proportion of those on board, probably three thousand in number, perished, and the whole fleet, by which so much injury was to have been inflicted on Dutch commerce, was, save one damaged galley, destroyed.  Yet scarcely any lives were lost by the Hollanders, and it is certain that the whole force in their fleet did not equal the crew of a single one of the enemy’s ships.  Neither Spinola nor the archduke seemed likely to make much out of the contract.  Meantime, the Genoese volunteer kept quiet in Sluy’s, brooding over schemes to repair his losses and to renew his forays on the indomitable Zeelanders.

Another winter had now closed in upon Ostend, while still the siege had scarcely advanced an inch.  During the ten months of Governor Dorp’s administration, four thousand men had died of wounds or malady within the town, and certainly twice as many in the trenches of the besieging force.  Still the patient Bucquoy went on, day after day, night after night, month after month, planting his faggots and fascines, creeping forward almost imperceptibly with his dyke, paying five florins each to the soldiers who volunteered to bring the materials, and a double ducat to each man employed in laying them.  So close were they under the fire of the town; that a life was almost laid down for every ducat, but the Gullet, which it