He nodded in satisfaction and turned back to the battle, squinting as he peered through the smoke, trying to make out details even though an admiral of his experience knew how futile the effort must be. As always in a sea action, the universe of each combatant shrank to the world of his own ship, or perhaps two or three more on either side. It was literally impossible to see any more than that in a fight this close and furious, but he could just barely make out de With's Brederode, locked in a brutal close-ranged hammering match with the San Nicolas. Brederode seemed to be beating down the Spaniard's fire, but she'd lost her own mainmast in the process. Other ships on both sides had taken damage aloft, as well. Indeed, it seemed to Tromp-although he couldn't be positive, under the circumstances-that even more than usual of the Spanish fire had gone high. Amelia's own spars had taken relatively little damage, although strands of severed rigging blew out in the smoke and her topsails seemed to be almost more hole than canvas, but Brederode was far from the only Dutchman to have lost a mast.

Yet whatever rigging damage Tromp's ships might have suffered, the Spaniards were in far worse condition. While their fire was going high, punching through canvas and severing cordage, the Dutch guns were lacerating their hulls and massacring their crews. The Dutch ships might be becoming progressively less manageable, but that wasn't going to be enough to save Oquendo's fleet. Here and there an individual Dutchman, especially among the armed merchantmen, was hard pressed, but the tide of battle was setting strongly in Tromp's favor. He could feel it, sense the pulse and rhythm, the steady decline in the weight of Spanish fire as his own gunners beat it down. Frankly, he was amazed at the way the Spaniards continued to stand and fight; under similar conditions in other fights Oquendo's fleet would have been shedding entire handfuls of ships by now. But not today. Today, they stood to their guns, pounding back with a determination that fully matched the Dutchmen's own.

Which was going to make their ultimate defeat even more crushing, Tromp realized. His fleet might have been brutally hammered, but the Spanish had taken even more damage, and even those which might have escaped from his own lamed ships were too damaged themselves to escape the French and English now beginning to thrust vengefully into the fringes of the battle.

Santiago's fire finally began to falter, and he peered at her. Amelia's deck was littered with bodies, screaming wounded, severed limbs, broken cordage, and huge bloodstains. Her bulwarks were holed and feathered with splinters where enemy roundshot had chewed pieces from them, and he heard the doleful clank of the pumps in the fleeting instants between gunshots. But as the smoke thinned slightly he could see that the Spanish flagship was in a far worse state. Her starboard side seemed to have been beaten in with hammers-indeed, it was so badly damaged that three of her upper gundeck ports had been smashed into a single, gaping wound-and he could see thick, glistening tendrils of blood seeping from her scuppers, as if the ship herself was leaking away her life. Bodies were heaped at the feet of her masts, heaved there by the surviving members of her crew in order to clear the recoil of her deck guns, and at least half a dozen of those guns had been dismounted by Amelia's fire. Tromp could make out officers moving amidst the carnage and confusion, fighting to impose some order upon it, and one officer-he rather thought it was Oquendo himself-clung to the shattered poop deck rail, supporting himself while blood streamed steadily down one of his legs.

It was obvious to Tromp that even that stoutly fought ship had no option but to surrender. It might take a little longer, cost a few more Spanish lives, but Santiago was too badly wounded to run and her crew was too savagely maimed to continue the fight.

He turned away from her once more, listening to the howling bedlam of the battle, and looked back at Brederode as Revenge, Tobias' flagship, altered course very slightly in order to cross astern of de With. Obviously, Tobias intended to rake San Nicolas as he crossed her stern, then range up on the Spaniard's disengaged side and smash the already crippled ship into submission.

The Englishman's bowsprit was no more than sixty or seventy feet clear of Brederode's high, ornate poop as Revenge started across her wake…

And then Maarten Harpentzoon van Tromp's face went bone-white under the soot and grime of powder smoke coating it, as the English flagship poured a deadly broadside through Brederode's stern.

For perhaps two heartbeats, Tromp told himself it had to be an accident. A colossal blunder. But no "accident" would have been that accurate. The Englishman's guns fired two by two, upper and lower deck together, carefully aimed, and the impact of those deadly shots turned Brederode's stern windows into the gaping cavern mouth of an abattoir.

De With's flagship was over four hundred yards from Amelia, but even at that range Tromp could hear the English roundshot hammering home, crashing the full length of her hull in maiming, mangling fury. An entire twenty-four pounder slammed forward, flung two-thirds of the way out its port as a screaming roundshot dismounted it and shattered its carriage. Even as Tromp realized in horror that the attack was deliberate, Brederode's foremast toppled like a weary tree. It pitched over the side while the ship wallowed in agony, and Tromp heard English voices baying in triumph.

The Americans were right, a small, numb corner of his brain told him. Richelieu's offer was too good to be true.

He spun around as fresh, concentrated broadsides thundered, and his belly knotted as more of his "allies" poured fire into his own ships. The French flagship surged past Dordrecht, firing as she went, and Dordrecht staggered. Her already damaged mizzen mast toppled into the smoke, splinters flew from her "disengaged" side, and she began to fall away to leeward as the French fire killed her helmsman and smashed her wheel.

From triumph to despair. The transformation required no more than a minute-two, at the most. That was how long it took Maarten Tromp to realize that the Dutch Navy had just been destroyed. It might take some time still to accomplish that, but the outcome was inevitable, and he knew it. Everywhere he looked, as far as he could see through the smoke and spray and splinters, French and English warships vomited flame and fury as their fresh, carefully aimed broadsides crashed into his weary, already damaged vessels. And he understood now why the Spanish fire had been so "badly aimed." With their rigging mangled and crippled by Oquendo's gunners, his ships would be unable to outrun their undamaged "allies."

Fresh cheers went up, this time from the Spaniards' bloodsoaked decks as they saw the trap they had paid so much in life and limb to bait spring. And then Tromp flinched in shocked disbelief as Revenge's fire found Brederode's magazine and de With's flagship vanished in a single, terrible explosion.

The explosion, and the sudden blow of realizing his friend and Brederode's entire crew had just died, shocked Tromp out of his immobility. He shook himself savagely and spun away from the horrible vision while broken fragments of Brederode's hull were still rising in lazy arcs above her fireball death. Mastenbroek stood no more than fifteen feet from him, but Amelia's captain was frozen, mesmerized by the spectacle of Brederode's destruction. He didn't seem to hear the lieutenant-admiral when Tromp shouted at him, didn't even blink until Tromp seized him and shook him brutally.