LIFE OF LIEUT. ADMIRAL DE RUYTER.

APPRENTICESHIP IN NAVIGATION.

YOUTH-ARMED TRADING-MATRIMONY.

MICHIEL ADRIAANSZOON DE RUYTER sprang from the very poorest of the people.

There is a story told by "J. B.” in Dorman Newman's book, to the effect that he was descended from a Scotch trooper serving in Holland, but this is not countenanced by the Dutch writers.

His grandfather was certainly a man called Michiel, who had no surname, and therefore styled himself from his own father's name, the son of Adriaan, or in full, Michiel Adriaanszoon. This Michiel Adriaanszoon served his time in the army, and did his share of fighting against the Spaniards through that most heroic of all struggles, in which Holland made herself a great

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nation. He had settled on a very small farm at Bergen op Zoom, in the province of Brabant.

One incident of his life is preserved. Besides his wife, he had one servant to help him; two horses formed his principal stock in trade. These were stolen from him, so violent were the manners of the time, by men of his own regiment, which seemed to be short of horses; but when he had discovered their whereabouts, he promptly stole them back, and hid them at a distance from his own buildings. The military robbers, suspecting Michiel, and unable to get the animals again, now set fire to his house. In the excitement of the moment the little household forgot the baby, but the wife, rushing through the flames, found the child and threw him out of the window to Michiel, who, with the servant, stood below, and caught him in the blanket. The mother jumped out afterwards, and was also saved.

The kindness of the townsmen of Bergen op Zoom alone helped Michiel through his troubles.

The child was named Adriaan Michielszoon, and he, after commencing life as a sailor, in time became a beer carrier in Flushing. He had married in 1598 Alida Jans, who died with her first child, and, if we may credit Brandt, he

married again (in 1601) another Alida Jans. By this last marriage he had eleven children, of whom the fourth Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter, born at eight in the morning on the 24th of March, 1607, alone concerns us. The boy got the surname of de Ruyter from his mother, whose father was a trooper, and was therefore called de Ruyter, i.e. the rider.

No spot could have been chosen fitter to nurse the spirit of a future admiral than Flushing. Looking out morning or evening across the yellow sands of the Isle of Walcheren, on which the town is built, his eye could catch sight of the Dutch Argosies returning laden with the wealth of the Indies, or passing down channel with the output of Dutch markets.

The province of Zealand had produced its full share of the famous "Zee helden" (sea heroes), who carried the guardian flag of Holland to protect her commercial fleets.

In the streets of the old town the solid burgers, whose traffic was across sea, would impress the young mind with the wonders of the world beyond the water, and encourage that business energy so firmly rooted in the Dutch, and because associated with a character so simple and so

open, often misread by the more complex English nature, which constantly clothes the idea of a Dutchman in a short square body seated on a barrel, and eternally engaged in the study of a clay pipe of abnormal dimensions.

Never was there a lazier, more inattentive schoolboy than young de Ruyter, but was a trick to be played on the master or a boy to be fought, none more ready for the fun that he. At ten years of age, when workmen were repairing the principal steeple of Flushing, he climbs the scaffolding, and then mounts the ladder to the cross on the dizzy pinnacle above. Honest burgers of the good town see a little figure there, calling out some boyish impertinence, while he waves his cap without the slightest indication of fear. Now, tired of his fun, he prepares to descend. The upturned faces of the crowd afford no encouragement, for it can be seen that the workmen have removed the ladder, and the boy must slide down the steeple as best he can. With his nail-shod boot he kicks away a slate, and his foot rests on the wooden bar that was under it, then his other foot is lowered, and again a slate crashes into the street, while he still finds footing on the thin supports beneath, and so as slate by

slate falls, de Ruyter slowly moves down the steeple, reaches the scaffolding, and from thence the street, where his father takes possession of him. Little did the stolid townsmen realize that a great admiral had signalled his good morrow to the world, and if they had known so much, they would wrongly have argued an overweening ambition in the boy, the very thing which was not to be a feature in the character of the man. Courage and cool-headed, unerring resource in the presence of great danger, then and always were the characteristics of de Ruyter. Soon after the incident of the steeple, the boy was put to work in the rope-making business of the Lampens, at a stuiver (a penny) a day; but as he was still longing for the sea, and as the ropemakers were quite willing to let him go, he went in his eleventh year, as boatswain's mate's boy. At once the restless ne'er-do-well is converted into a hard-working, willing, intelligent sailor. He has found his path in life-a tempestuous one-but he is content to follow it.

His companion in the first voyage is said to

*The old rope-making establishment, now disused, still stands, and the wheel de Ruyter worked, long known as "het Ruitertje," the little Ruyter, has been preserved, and is the property of the Zeeuwsche Genootschap, in Middelburgh.