Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/231

 *deck of the British flagship amid a hail of shot.

"Stand to it, my sons, as if Father Van Tromp were with you still!" cried the brave old Dutch commandant, Pieter Van Gebhardt, as he leveled a gun with his own hands over the fast-crumbling parapet. "Fear not for the fire and smoke; it is but the Englishman lighting his pipe."

Both sides fought stoutly, and men began to fall fast; but it seemed as if on the whole the Dutch were getting the best of it. The ships, lying out upon the smooth water, made an excellent mark, while the rock-cut batteries could hardly he distinguished from the cliff itself.

But just at that moment a very unexpected turn of fortune changed the whole face of the battle.

To explain clearly how this happened we must go back a little way.

The Dutch garrison had given their whole attention to the attack in front, feeling sure that this was the only point from which they could be assailed. And they reasoned well; for everywhere else the coast was merely one great precipice of several hundred feet, rising