It was time for day to break, but the fog was so thick that a man at the distance of five yards was quite invisible.

The creaking of waggon-wheels and the measured tramp of soldiers soon became faintly audible however to Sir John Norris and his five hundred as they sat there in the mist.

Presently came galloping forward in hot haste those nobles and gentlemen, with their esquires, fifty men in all--Sidney, Willoughby, and the rest--whom Leicester had no longer been able to restrain from taking part in the adventure.
A force of infantry, the amount of which cannot be satisfactorily ascertained, had been ordered by the Earl to cross the bridge at a later moment.

Sidney's cornet of horse was then in Deventer, to which place it had been sent in order to assist in quelling an anticipated revolt, so that he came, like most of his companions, as a private volunteer and knight-errant.
The arrival of the expected convoy was soon more distinctly heard, but no scouts or outposts had been stationed to give timely notice, of the enemy's movements.

Suddenly the fog, which had shrouded the scene so closely, rolled away like a curtain, and in the full light of an October morning the Englishmen found themselves face to face with a compact body of more than three thousand men.