was met with determined resistance, but
the Zeeland sailors clambered like cats upon the bowsprits of the Spanish
galleys, fighting with cutlass and handspike, while a broadside or two
was delivered with terrible effect into the benches of the chained and
wretched slaves. Captain Michelzoon was killed, but his successor,
Lieutenant Hart, although severely wounded, swore that he would blow up
his ship with his own hands rather than surrender. The decks of all the
vessels ran with blood, but at last the Black Galley succeeded in beating
off her assailants; the Zeelanders, by main force, breaking off the
enemy's bowsprits, so that the two ships of Spinola were glad to sheer
off, leaving their stings buried in the enemy's body.

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.