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More screams came from underfoot as the Spanish roundshot which had found their mark crashed into Amelia's side. The shrieks rose like the Devil's own chorus, but Tromp's was an experienced ear. Terrible as the sounds were, they were far less terrible than they might have been, and he knew Amelia's fire had hurt Santiago far more than she had been injured herself.

Mastenbroek knew it, too. The flagship's captain strode back and forth across his deck, waving his hat to encourage his crew even as he shouted the orders that edged Amelia still closer to her target. The Dutch ship turned on her heel, ranging up directly alongside the Spanish flagship to run parallel at a range of barely a hundred yards. Her port broadside belched fresh fury, and Santiago fired back, barely visible even at this range, a poorly seen ghost in the rolling bank of gun smoke. Tromp waved his own hat, adding his encouragement to Mastenbroek's while the gun crews bent to their pieces like damned souls laboring in the flames and stench of Hell itself.

The firing became increasingly ragged on both sides. The precisely coordinated, concentrated blows of the initial broadsides gave way to a fierce pounding match, crews firing independently, as quickly as they could serve their guns. The concussions of scores of guns-hundreds of them, as more and more of Tromp's fleet scrambled into action-hammered the ear like mallets, and in the fleeting intervals between them, the lieutenant-admiral could hear the cheers-and screams-from other ships.

Two more Dutch ships, Joshua and Halve Maan, came charging in to support Amelia against Santiago. The Spanish Argonauta intercepted Joshua, and the two of them squared off in a furious duel of their own, but Halve Maan took station just astern of Amelia and began hammering away at Santiago's starboard quarter. The Spaniard fired back at both her foes with the courage and determination only to be expected of Oquendo's flagship, but even that stouthearted ship found herself in increasingly desperate straits as the two Dutchmen pounded her.

Tromp dragged his concentration away from Santiago by sheer force of will and made himself look up at the sun. It seemed incredible, but the two fleets had already been engaged for the better part of an hour, and their units had become hopelessly intermingled, smashing away at one another as they stood literally yardarm-to-yardarm. Santiago was barely twenty yards clear of Amelia's side now, and still the guns bellowed their hate back and forth.

He shook himself like a drunken man and then turned to stare up to windward, searching for his allies. The rolling pall of smoke to port was all but impenetrable, but looking to starboard he could see both the French and English squadrons, still out of action but closing rapidly now. The French seemed to have fallen a bit further astern of the English, but they were making up for it now, crowding on sail with an almost Dutch-like eagerness. Indeed, he was surprised and more impressed than he might have cared to admit by the way the two squadrons were massing together. They might not yet have come into action, but that was about to change, and when they hit it would be as a concentrated fist, punching into the center of the Spanish formation almost directly behind Amelia.

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.