"Myga has been rescued! The ship has been taken! Tell that to them in hell!"
With that he stabbed his deadly enemy through the neck with a long knife.
In the meantime the other Genoans, who had not saved themselves by running away, had also been killed. The skirmish on the Andrea Doria was now at an end and already the sea beggars were busy loosening the chains which bound the ship to the quayside.
Myga van Bergen lay prostrate in the cabin in the arms of Jan who now carried his betrothed out of that terrible room, away from the proximity of the dead body of Antonio Valani up into the freedom of the upper air.
Fighting was still going on on one of the sea-going vessels that had fallen to the Dutch, but already some of her crew were sliding into the water, pushed there by the hands of sea beggars and fiercely and harmoniously the song of the victors resounded through the night:
William of Nassau,
I am of German blood.
Faithful to my fatherland
I shall remain till death.
The black galley's bugler from the stern of the Andrea Doria was now blowing the same tune townwards and, revelling in the chorus, the galley's victorious crew sang for all they were worth:
That you are by the Spaniards,
Oh Netherlands of mine,
Harmed and injured, just to think,
It makes my poor heart bleed.
Even mortally wounded beggars who could no longer sing sat up on the ground, washed over by these harmonious and solemn sounds, and moved their lips in time with the words of the song. Myga van Bergen too was recalled by them to life and she sang, laughing and crying, held in Jan's arms, the same song of freedom.
"Look, Myga, how I keep my word—I'm taking you home with the sounds of cannon fire and jubilant bells and a flourish of trumpets in my ear! Saved! Saved from a fate worse than death!" Jan Norris was ecstatic.