privateersman, Van der Waecken, with his squadron of twelve
or fourteen armed cruisers. In vain had the States exerted themselves to
destroy the robbers cave, Dunkirk. Shiploads of granite had been brought
from Norway, and stone fleets had been sunk in the channel, but the
insatiable quicksands had swallowed them as fast as they could be
deposited, the tide rolled as freely as before, and the bold pirates
sailed forth as gaily as ever to prey upon the defenceless trading
vessels and herring-smacks of the States. For it was only upon
non-combatants that Admiral Van der Waecken made war, and the fishermen
especially, who mainly belonged to the Memnonite religion, with its
doctrines of non-resistance--not a very comfortable practice in that
sanguinary age--were his constant victims. And his cruelties might have
almost served as a model to the Christian warriors on the Turkish
frontier. After each vessel had been rifled of everything worth
possessing, and then scuttled, the admiral would order the crews to be,
thrown overboard at once, or, if he chanced to be in a merry mood, would
cause them to be fastened to the cabin floor, or nailed crossways on the
deck and then would sail away leaving ship and sailors to sink at
leisure. The States gave chase as well as they could to the miscreant--a
Dutchman born, and with a crew mainly composed of renegade Netherlanders
and other outcasts, preying for base lucre on their defenceless
countryman--and their cruisers were occasionally fortunate enough to
capture and bring in one of the pirate ships. In such cases, short shrift
was granted, and the buccaneers were hanged without mercy, thirty-eight
having been executed in one morning at Rotterdam. The admiral with most
of his vessels escaped, however, to the coast of Spain, where his crews
during the autumn mainly contrived to desert, and where he himself died
in the winter, whether from malady, remorse, or disappointment at not
being rewarded by a high position in the Spanish navy.

The war was in its old age. The leaf of a new century had been turned,
and men in middle life had never known what the word Peace meant. Perhaps
they could hardly imagine such a condition. This is easily said, but it
is difficult really to picture to ourselves the moral constitution of a
race of mankind which had been born and had grown up, marrying and giving
in marriage, dying and burying their dead, and so passing on from the
cradle towards the grave, acc