in possession of the island than he set about fortifying the position as best he could to ward off any attack by a raiding force. That there was urgent necessity for defensive measures was made clear by every boat that came into port. The Dutch, flushed with their successes against the Portuguese, were throughout the Indian Ocean carrying things with a strong hand, and they made a special boast that when the opportunity offered they would wipe out the newly formed English settlement.
The blow, though anticipated with apprehensive feelings by Oxenden and his fellows at Surat, never fell. It is not easy to understand why the Hollanders held their hand. They had both in 1665 and 1666 powerful fleets at Surat and could have made short work of the small garrison of about one hundred men which Cooke had under his charge if they had gone seriously into the business. The advantages to them of the possession of Bombay at the time would have been enormous. The occupation of the place would have ensured the downfall of Goa and have completed a chain of stations which would have stretched from the northern confines of the Indian Ocean to the Far East. It would also probably have turned the scale so markedly in favour of Dutch supremacy that the English could never have secured a substantial foothold in India. But Providence ordained matters otherwise, and so this little handful of men, lodged in the ruins of the old Portuguese town at Bombay, became a nucleus around which gathered in due course a flourishing settlement, the progenitor of mighty interests on the adjacent continent of India.
Charles II, who had never been greatly interested in the Eastern portion of the dower of his unhappy bride, in March,
