He had seen six of his guard fall beside him, and been all day exposed to the hottest fire of the enemy. The Admiral’s ship had been always in the fiercest part of the battle.
For twelve hours Cornelius de Witt had listened to the thunder of the cannon and watched the smoke and flame arising from the struggle.
Now, in the hour of victory, he simply thanked God, and slipped his sword into its scabbard.
The sailors were carrying the wounded below, throwing the dead overboard, and washing the decks.
The stars came out, pale gold and luminous, and a gentle wind played with the drooping canvas.
On a hundred ships the lanterns gleamed at mast and prow, and from a hundred decks arose a service of thanksgiving.
“The Lord be praised!” said Cornelius de Witt.
The lieutenant who had escaped from The Royal James, and who had been brought on board the flagship as a prisoner, was amazed at all that he saw: at the discipline among the large, silent sailors, at the dexterous fashion in which they cleaned the ship that had started that morning fresh as a lady’s chamber, at their care of the wounded and their respect to M. de Witt and de Ruyter, and, most of all, at their gathering on the quarter-deck, where every man, even to the pilot behind his shining brass rails, joined in a strong and lusty singing of psalms that Michael de Ruyter selected from his leathern Prayer-book.
“They are an extraordinary people,” the Englishman wrote home. “M. de Ruyter is everything in one—admiral, captain, pilot, sailor, soldier, and preacher, too, it seems.…”
Now that the last shot had been fired, and the song of thanksgiving sent up by all, no matter to which of the seven sects he belonged, and the blue-eyed sailors were mending the sails and tarring the holes in the boats, Cornelius de Witt was carried below, and before touching food or drink added to the letter to his brother the news of the victory.