ight times as many men as he
commanded. Nevertheless, after a combat of but brief duration Heemskerk
was master of the carrack: He spared the lives of his seven hundred
prisoners, and set them on shore before they should have time to discover
to what a handful of Dutchmen they had surrendered. Then dividing about a
million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such
cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the
North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no
difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the
friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating. There was soon to
be work in other regions for the hardy Hollander--such as was to make the
name of Heemskerk a word to conjure with down to the latest posterity.
Meantime he returned to his own country to take part in the great
industrial movements which were to make this year an epoch in commercial
history.

The conquerors of Mendoza and deliverers of Bantam had however not paused
in their work. From Java they sailed to Banda; and on those volcanic
islands of nutmegs and cloves made, in the name of their commonwealth, a
treaty with its republican antipodes. For there was no king to be found
in that particular archipelago, and the two republics, the Oriental and
the Germanic, dealt with each other with direct and becoming simplicity.
Their convention was in accordance with the commercial ideas of the day,
which assumed monopoly as the true basis of national prosperity. It was
agreed that none but Dutchmen should ever purchase the nutmegs of Banda,
and that neither nation should harbour refugees from the other. Other
articles, however; showed how much farther, the practice of political and
religious liberty had advanced than had any theory of commercial freedom.
It was settled that each nation should judge its own citizens according
to its own laws, that neither should interfere by force with the other in
regard to religious matters, but that God should be judge over them all.
Here at least was progress beyond the system according to which the Holy
Inquisition furnished the only enginry of civilization. The guardianship
assumed by Holland over these children of the sun was at least an
improvement on the tyranny which roasted them alive if they rejected
religious dogmas which they could not comprehend, and which proclaimed
with fire, sword, and gibbet that the Omnipotent especia