in the fight. The close and desperate fighting told sorely on both sides; 100 men were killed or wounded on the British admiral's flagship, its masts were gone, its hull little more than a wreck, and other ships of his squadron were in little better condition. But of the Dutch ships one was burnt, one blown up, and seven taken or sunk.

Night by this time had fallen. Van Tromp swept past the British line, and, a fine tactician, threw his own fleet into a half-moon formation, with the huge convoy held in its embrace, and steadily drifted, a great island of canvas, along the French coast. But at daybreak the English, bringing the wind with them, were thundering on the Dutch rear, and striving fiercely to pierce their line. All day long the fleet ran, with the tumult and roar of battle, eastwards. The advantage was slightly with the British, and the Dutch rear-admiral's ship was captured. A Dutchman, however, according to Penn, is never so dangerous as when he is desperate, and never was sterner fighting than on that historic Saturday. When the next day dawned, Tromp, still holding his steadfast half-moon formation, was bearing up for the shallows off Calais, the inexorable Blake, with loudbellowing guns, thundering on his rear. One Dutch captain, grappled on each side by an English ship, set fire to his own vessel that the three might sink together. The British, however, drew off, and left the Dutchman to blow up in solitude. At last Penn, with a cluster of his faster ships, broke through the stubborn line of the Dutchmen, and when Sunday night fell, the British frigates were ravaging like wolves amongst the helpless merchantmen. During the night Van Tromp gave his

captains orders to scatter, and when day broke again the Dutch ships had disappeared, or were discoverable only as tips of vanishing sails on the sea rim. That great three days' fight off Portland-a "stupendous action," as Clarendon calls it was the turning-point in the long duel for the sovereignty of the seas betwixt Great Britain and Holland.

In 1654-55 Blake sailed with a powerful fleet for the Mediterranean. Cromwell had demanded from Spain the right of trade with America, and the exemption of Englishmen from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. "My master," said the Spanish ambassador in reply, "has but two eyes, and you ask him for both!" Drake, some eighty years before, had “singed the King of Spain's beard," and Blake was now despatched to put out one or both of the King of Spain's eyes! For Cromwell's foreign politics were of a daring temper. "I will make the name of Englishman," he said, "to be as much dreaded as ever was the name of civis Romanus." Blake's commission was, in general terms, "to see that the foreigners do not fool us." Blake extracted from the Duke of Tuscany, and even from his Holiness the Pope, solid sums in compensation for wrongs done to British commerce. He visited Tunis, then, as in Lord Exmouth's time, the torment and scandal of the civilised world, and his performance anticipates and outshines even Exmouth's great deed at Algiers a hundred and fifty years later.

Finding negotiation useless, Blake, on April 4, led in his ships, anchored within half musket-shot of the Dey's batteries, and opened a terrific fire on them. Nine great ships of war lay within the harbour. When the

cannonade was at its height Blake lowered his boats, manned each with a picked crew, and sent them in to fire the Dey's ships. The British boats rowed coolly, but at speed, through the eddying smoke, fell upon the enemy's ships, and fired them. The flames leaped up the masts, and spread from ship to ship, and when night fell the skies above Tunis shone, as bright almost as at noonday, with the flames of the burning ships and batteries. Taking warning by the fate of Tunis, Algiers hastened to surrender its Christian captives. cruise in the Mediterranean was epoch-making.

Blake's

Clarendon, speaking of the fight at Tunis, says that Blake "first taught British sailors to despise castles on shore"; and that is true. But Blake first carried the British flag, as a symbol of terror and power, round the Mediterranean ports, and established in the great midland sea a supremacy which has never been lost since. His cruise, indeed, marks that assumption of what may be called the police of the seas which Great Britain has ever since maintained.

Blake's object, next, was to strike at the Spanish plateships. The great galleons creeping eastward to Spain, with their freight of sugar and dye-wood, of quicksilver and precious stones, of gold and silver and pearls, fed the financial strength of Spain. To cut them off was to snap all the sinews of its strength at a stroke. Blake, through most of 1655-56, was blockading Cadiz, and watching for the plate-ships to heave in sight from Santa Cruz. For a great fleet to keep the sea through the winter was, at that period, a thing undreamed of. Yet, practically for twenty-seven months, in spite of scurvy and tempest, Blake maintained his iron blockade of Cadiz.

Every few days a storm would blow his ships across the foam-edged horizon; but when the storm had blown. itself out the British topsails surely hove in sight again. The ships' hulls grew thick with barnacles and sea grass, their rigging rotted, their supplies were exhausted, and scurvy raged through the crews. The men, for two months, ate their vegetables boiled in sea water. · Our ships," wrote Blake, " are extremely foul, our stores failing, our men fallen sick through badness of drink. Our only comfort is that we have a God to lean upon, although we walk in darkness and see no light." And yet Blake's iron will kept the ships for nearly two years on their watch outside Cadiz. Nelson's long watch off Toulon, or Collingwood's off Cadiz in the year previous to Trafalgar, is not so wonderful as Blake's blockade in the seventeenth century.

Then came that amazing dash at Santa Cruz, which formed the last and greatest of Blake's exploits. Stayner had intercepted one squadron of treasure-ships immediately off Cadiz. With three ships he had attacked six, sunk some, and captured the rest. They were a magnificent prize, no less than £600,000 being found in one ship alone. But the largest squadron of plate-ships lay at Santa Cruz, under the great peak of Teneriffe, kept by the terror of Blake's name from attempting to reach the Spanish coast, and upon these Blake made his famous dash.

Santa Cruz is a deep and narrow bay, guarded by heavy batteries, with a difficult approach. Owing to the high land a fleet might easily be becalmed under the heavy guns of the batteries and so be destroyed; or if the wind carried the ships into the bay, while