riotic heart in Antwerp,
and perhaps causing many a renegade cheek on this occasion to tingle with
shame.

Frederic Spinola, a volunteer belonging to the great and wealthy Genoese
family of that name, had been performing a good deal of privateer work
with a small force of galleys which he kept under his command at Sluys.
He had succeeded in inflicting so much damage upon the smaller
merchantmen of the republic, and in maintaining so perpetual a panic in
calm weather among the seafaring multitudes of those regions, that he was
disposed to extend the scale of his operations. On a visit to Spain he
had obtained permission from Government to employ in this service eight
great galleys, recently built on the Guadalquivir for the Royal Navy. He
was to man and equip them at his own expense, and was to be allowed the
whole of the booty that might result from his enterprise. Early in the
autumn he set forth with his eight galleys on the voyage to Flanders,
but, off Cezimbra, on the Portuguese coast, unfortunately fell in with
Sir Robert Mansell, who; with a compact little squadron of English
frigates, was lying in wait for the homeward-bound India fleet on their
entrance to Lisbon. An engagement took place, in which Spinola lost two
of his galleys. His disaster might have been still greater, had not an
immense Indian carrack, laden with the richest merchandize, just then
hove in sight, to attract his conquerors with a hope of better
prize-money than could be expected from the most complete victory over
him and his fleet.

With the remainder of his vessels Spinola crept out of sight while the
English were ransacking the carrack. On the 3rd of October he had entered
the channel with a force which, according to the ideas of that day, was
still formidable. Each of his galleys was of two hundred and fifty slave
power, and carried, beside the chain-gang, four hundred fighting men. His
flag-ship was called the St. Lewis; the names of the other vessels being
the St. Philip, the Morning Star, the St. John, the Hyacinth, and the
Padilla. The Trinity and the Opportunity had been destroyed off Cezimbra.
Now there happened to be cruising just then in the channel, Captain Peter
Mol, master of the Dutch war-ship Tiger, and Captain Lubbertson,
commanding the Pelican. These two espied the Spanish squadron, paddling
at about dusk towards the English coast, and quickly gave notice to
Vice-Admiral John Kant, who in the States' ship Half-moon, with