Therefore he sends these in and sells them for what they will bring, cargoes and ships, in the town of Flushing, which is now safe in the hands of the Prince of Orange, whose banner many more towns and cities in the Netherlands are hoisting at this time, some to their undoing and the butchery of their inhabitants—men, women and children. The money received for these forced sales of stolen goods is hardly a tenth of their value, for coin is very scarce in the Netherlands under Alva’s tenth penny tax, though it gives Chester a sufficiency to do what he wishes in Antwerp. All this business takes time, and it is nearly a month after he has possessed himself of Paciotto’s secret that Guy Chester overhauls and captures the caravel Esperanza, commanded by one Andrea Blanco, whose log shows she has never been in Antwerp, having been employed chiefly in the West Indies. This Captain Blanco he finds by deft questionings, fearful threats, and a guess at his patois, comes from Hispaniola—in fact, the whole crew have never been in Flemish waters before. The vessel is the one for his purpose, being a strong barque of something over three hundred tons, and Guy notes rather a fast sailor, though not to be compared with the Dover Lass, and is armed, having seven demi-culverins on each broadside. In fact, she has made some little show of resistance to the Dover Lass, which in these desperate times would generally have insured the butchery of the crew, especially as it is now to their captors’ interests to put them where they will never tell any tales upon the Antwerp docks. Against his judgment, Chester cannot bring himself to in cold blood destroy them. Therefore, summoning Dalton to him, he says curtly to his chief officer: “It is necessary that I in person take our prize, the Esperanza, act as her captain, and with thirty of my men sail her to Antwerp.” “Going to Antwerp!” growls his lieutenant bluntly. “Going to the devil! And who’ll go with you into Alva’s very jaws?” “You would, if I asked you, Dalton,” answers his commander. “Call up the crew.” And these coming aft to the mainmast, Chester looks over his hundred and twenty-five “Dover Lasses,” devil-may-care’s, from cook and cabin boy up, and says to them without palaver: “Now, my men, I’ve got the best job on hand we ever had—more plunder in it. To do it I must take thirty of you and sail our prize to Antwerp. If we don’t succeed you know what Alva will do with us. It’ll be fire, not water. If I win, it’ll be twenty doubloons to every man of the crew of the Dover Lass, and two hundred to you, Dalton, and the other officers in proportion. But every man of the Esperanza’s crew gets twenty doubloons extra for his risk, and it is a desperate one—therefore I ask for volunteers. All willing to go with me to the devil step onto the quarter-deck.”