long as history endures--were capes and promontories already familiar to
legend and romance.

Those Netherlanders had come forth from their slender little fatherland
to offer battle at last within his own harbours and under his own
fortresses to the despot who aspired to universal monarchy, and who
claimed the lordship of the seas. The Hollanders and Zeelanders had
gained victories on the German Ocean, in the Channel, throughout the
Indies, but now they were to measure strength with the ancient enemy in
this most conspicuous theatre, and before the eyes of Christendom. It
was on this famous spot that the ancient demigod had torn asunder by main
strength the continents of Europe and Africa. There stood the opposite
fragments of the riven mountain-chain, Calpe and Abyla, gazing at each
other, in eternal separation, across the gulf, emblems of those two
antagonistic races which the terrible hand of Destiny has so ominously
disjoined. Nine centuries before, the African king, Moses son of Nuzir,
and his lieutenant, Tarik son of Abdallah, had crossed that strait and
burned the ships which brought them. Black Africa had conquered a
portion of whiter Europe, and laid the foundation of the deadly mutual
repugnance which nine hundred years of bloodshed had heightened into
insanity of hatred. Tarik had taken the town and mountain, Carteia and
Calpe, and given to both his own name. Gib-al-Tarik, the cliff of Tarik,
they are called to this day.

Within the two horns of that beautiful bay, and protected by the fortress
on the precipitous rock, lay the Spanish fleet at anchor. There were ten
galleons of the largest size, besides lesser war-vessels and carracks,
in all twenty-one sail. The admiral commanding was Don Juan Alvarez
d'Avila, a veteran who had fought at Lepanto under Don John of Austria.
His son was captain of his flag-ship, the St. Augustine. The vice-