CHAPTER XVI.
Situation of Sluys--Its Dutch and English Garrison--Williams writes from Sluys to the Queen--Jealousy between the Earl and States-- Schemes to relieve Sluys--Which are feeble and unsuccessful--The Town Capitulates--Parma enters--Leicester enraged--The Queen angry with the Anti-Leicestrians--Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst punished-- Drake sails for Spain--His Exploits at Cadiz and Lisbon--He is rebuked by Elizabeth.
When Dante had passed through the third circle of the Inferno--a desert of red-hot sand, in which lay a multitude of victims of divine wrath, additionally tortured by an ever-descending storm of fiery flakes--he was led by Virgil out of this burning wilderness along a narrow causeway.
This path was protected, he said, against the showers of flame, by the lines of vapour which rose eternally from a boiling brook.

Even by such shadowy bulwarks, added the poet, do the Flemings between Kadzand and Bruges protect their land against the ever-threatening sea.
It was precisely among these slender dykes between Kadzand and Bruges that Alexander Farnese had now planted all the troops that he could muster in the field.

It was his determination to conquer the city of Sluys; for the possession of that important sea-port was necessary for him as a basis for the invasion of England, which now occupied all the thoughts of his sovereign and himself.
Exactly opposite the city was the island of Kadzand, once a fair and fertile territory, with a city and many flourishing villages upon its surface, but at that epoch diminished to a small dreary sand-bank by the encroachments of the ocean.
A stream of inland water, rising a few leagues to the south of Sluys, divided itself into many branches just before reaching the city, converted the surrounding territory into a miniature archipelago--the islands of which were shifting treacherous sand-banks at low water, and submerged ones at flood--and then widening and deepening into a considerable estuary, opened for the city a capacious harbour, and an excellent although intricate passage to the sea.

The city, which was well built and thriving, was so hidden in its labyrinth of canals and streamlets, that it seemed almost as difficult a matter to find Sluys as to conquer it.

It afforded safe harbour for five hundred large vessels; and its possession, therefore, was extremely important for Parma.