De Ruyter again turned his attention to The Saint Michael, she the while keeping up a murderous cannonade on the frigates opposed by the Dutch.
The sharp, short rattle of musketry was heard above the steady roar of the great guns, and little threads of flame and puffs of white smoke sprang out and vanished against the curtain of yellow fog as the marines on board The Seven Provinces, under cover of the nets, picked off the sailors in the rigging of The Saint Michael.
Two other high Dutch vessels, looming up out of the noise and darkness of battle, silenced the starboard guns of the English flagship with a close-range volley; her poop was swept bare with a cannonade from de Ruyter, and her disabled rigging and rent canvas swayed through the smoke that belched on her from all sides.
For the second time the English standard fell.
De Ruyter strove to press his advantage, and sent out two frigates to sink or burn The Saint Michael; but her pilot and captain brilliantly managed the wounded vessel, and, wreck as she was, steered her out of the line of battle.
Again the Duke of York was forced to abandon his ship; again he was rowed through the wreckage, the seething, stained sea, and the ragged flag was hoisted on The London.
De Ruyter, having vanquished those ships immediately in duel with him, turned his attention to the other parts of the battle.
The French Fleet, beaten in a first engagement, and wishing to leave the brunt of the battle to their allies, had withdrawn towards the south, hotly pursued by Van Banckert, whose distant guns could be heard in the lulls of the nearer firing.
Van Ghent had begun the fight on the left wing with a fury that had brought the Squadron of the Blue to retreat in confusion and terror; but as de Ruyter was fighting his way through a circle of fire-ships to second him, a young lieutenant came up in a little galiot and announced to Cornelius de Witt that Admiral Van Ghent was dead. In the midst of his victorious onset he had been killed by a cannon-ball.