eeland during tranquil weather.

The locomotive force of these vessels consisted of galley-slaves, in
which respect the Spaniards had an advantage over other nations; for they
had no scruples in putting prisoners of war into chains and upon the
benches of the rowers. Humanity--"the law of Christian piety," in the
words of the noble Grotius--forbade the Hollanders from reducing their
captives to such horrible slavery, and they were obliged to content
themselves with condemned criminals, and with the few other wretches whom
abject poverty and the impossibility of earning other wages could induce
to accept the service. And as in the maritime warfare of our own day, the
machinery--engines, wheels, and boilers--is the especial aim of the
enemy's artillery, so the chain-gang who rowed in the waist of the
galley, the living enginry, without which the vessel became a useless
tub, was as surely marked out for destruction whenever a sea-fight took
place.

The Hollanders did not very much favour this species of war-craft, both
by reason of the difficulty of procuring the gang, and because to a true
lover of the ocean and of naval warfare the galley was about as clumsy
and amphibious a production as could be hoped of human perverseness. High
where it should be low. Exposed, flat, and fragile, where elevation and
strength were indispensable--encumbered and top-heavy where it should be
level and compact, weak in the waist, broad at stem and stern, awkward in
manoeuvre, helpless in rough weather, sluggish under sail, although
possessing the single advantage of being able to crawl over a smooth sea
when better and faster ships were made stationary by absolute calm, the
galley was no match for the Dutch galleot, either at close quarters or in
a breeze.

Nevertheless for a long time there had been a certain awe produced by the
possibility of some prodigious but unknown qualities in these outlandish
vessels, and already the Hollanders had tried their hand at constructing
them. On a late occasion a galley of considerable size, built at Dort,
had rowed past the Spanish forts on the Scheld, gone up to Antwerp, and
coolly cut out from the very wharves of the city a Spanish galley of the
first class, besides seven war vessels of lesser dimensions, at first
gaining advantage by surprise, and then breaking down all opposition in a
brilliant little fight. The noise of the encounter summoned the citizens
and garrison to the walls, only to witnes