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* Tromp's Life. D'Estrades February 5, 1665. The English likewise continued in the same disposition, though another more grievous calamity had joined itself to that of war. The plague had broken out in London; and that with such violence as to cut off, in a year, near ninety thousand inhabitants. The king was obliged to summon the Parliament at Oxford.
We followed, eager to engage, as did the rest of the squadron, and were soon in the midst of it. Among the ships we perceived the James, Vice-Admiral Penn, alongside the well-known Brederode, with Van Tromp's flag flying aloft.
This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a character for vice?
Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink, struck a pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought to take his auditors entirely into his confidence, and tell them his inmost conviction about himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was considerable, and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a strange hybrid animal, and called it by his own name.
Having disengaged his squadron from the numerous enemies with whom he was every where surrounded, and having joined Sir John Chichely, his rear-admiral, who had been separated from him, he made haste to the relief of Sprague, who was hard pressed by Tromp's squadron. The Royal Prince, in which Sprague first engaged, was so disabled, that he was obliged to hoist his flag on board the St.
"I could wish," he wrote, "to be so fortunate as to have only one of these two duties to seek out the enemy, or to give convoy, for to do both is attended with great difficulties." The indecisive campaign which naturally resulted from this lack of strategical grip and concentration of effort came to an end with Tromp's partial defeat of Blake off Dungeness on 30th November 1652.
Ah, if she had not been whisked back to New York by her people, it would not now be a question of Betty or of the Jasmine lady. He took out Miss Van Tromp's portrait and sat looking at it: it was admirable, the fearless poise of the head, the laughing eyes, the full pouting lips. Then Betty's face and the face of the Jasmine lady came between him and Miss Van Tromp.
Morning discovered them off the Isle of Wight, with the English on the north side of the Channel. As Tromp's chief business was to save his convoy and as the English force was now united, he took a defensive position. He formed his own ships in a long crescent, with the outward curve toward his enemy, and in the lee of this line he placed his convoy.
'I see you don't care much for art. 'Not much, he admitted; 'but I know that many people are glad to buy Mr. Van Tromp's pictures. 'Call him the Admiral! she cried. 'It sounds kindly and familiar; and I like to think that he is appreciated and looked up to by young painters.
Blake came back so depressed by his defeat that he offered to resign his command, but the Council of State would not hear of such a thing, handsomely admitted their responsibility for the weakness of the fleet, and set at work to refit. Meanwhile for the next three months the Channel was in Tromp's hands. This is the period when the legend describes him as hoisting a broom to his masthead.
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