The international hatred, already germinating between England and Holland, shot forth in these flaming regions like a tropical plant.  It was carefully nurtured and tended by both peoples.  Freedom of commerce, freedom of the seas, meant that none but the Dutch East India Company—­so soon as the Portuguese and Spaniards were driven out—­should trade in cloves and nutmegs.  Decrees to that effect were soon issued, under very heavy penalties, by the States-General to the citizens of the republic and to the world at large.  It was natural therefore that the English traders should hail the appearance of the Dutch fleets with much less enthusiasm than was shown by the King of Ternate.

On the other hand, the King of Tydor, persisting in his oriental hatred towards the rival potentate in the other island, allowed the Portuguese to build additional citadels, and generally to strengthen their positions within his dominions.  Thus when Cornelius Sebastian, with his division of Ver Hagen’s fleet, arrived in the Moluccas in the summer of 1605, he found plenty of work prepared for him.  The peace recently concluded by James with Philip and the archdukes placed England in a position of neutrality in the war now waging in the clove islands between Spain and the republic’s East India Company.  The English in those regions were not slow to avail themselves of the advantage.  The Portuguese of Tydor received from neutral sympathy a copious supply of powder and of pamphlets.  The one explosive material enabled them to make a more effective defence of their citadel against the Dutch fleet; the other revealed to the Portuguese and their Mussulman allies that “the Netherlanders could not exist without English protection, that they were the scum of nations, and that if they should get possession of this clove monopoly, their insolence would become intolerable.”  Samples of polite literature such as these, printed but not published, flew about in volleys.  It was an age of pamphleteering, and neither the English nor the Dutch were behind their contemporaries in the science of attack and self-defence.  Nevertheless Cornelius Sebastian was not deterred by paper pellets, nor by the guns of the citadel, from carrying out his purpose.  It was arranged with King Zaida that the islanders of Ternate should make a demonstration against Tydor, being set across the strait in Dutch vessels.  Sebastian, however, having little faith in oriental tenacity, entrusted the real work of storming the fortress to his own soldiers and sailors.  On a fine morning in May the assault was delivered in magnificent style.  The resistance was obstinate; many of the assailants fell, and Captain Mol, whom we have once before seen as master of the Tiger, sinking the galleys of Frederic Spinola off the Gat of Sluys, found himself at the head of only seven men within the interior defences of the citadel.  A Spanish soldier, Torre by name, rushed upon him with a spear.  Avoiding the blow, Mol grappled with his antagonist,