"Soldiers, citizens, and all--they were like mad bulldogs." Hollanders, Italians, Scotchmen, Spaniards, Englishmen, fell thick and fast.

The contest was about the entrenchments before they were completed, and especially around the sappers and miners, in whose picks and shovels lay the whole fate of Antwerp.

Many of the dyke-breakers were digging their own graves, and rolled, one after another, into the breach which they were so obstinately creating.

Upon that slender thread of land the hopes of many thousands were hanging.

To tear it asunder, to roll the ocean-waves up to Antwerp, and thus to snatch the great city triumphantly from the grasp of Philip--to accomplish this, the three thousand had come forth that May morning.