When it should become known that they were threatened with submersion in the ocean, in addition to all the other horrors of war, he had reason to believe that they would retire ignominiously from that remote and desolate sand hook, where, by remaining, they could only find a watery grave.

These views having been discussed in a council of officers, the result was reached that sufficient had been already accomplished for the glory of the Spanish arms.

Neither honour nor loyalty, it was thought, required that sixteen thousand soldiers should be sacrificed in a contest, not with man, but with the ocean.
"On the 8th of October, accordingly, the siege, which had lasted seven weeks, was raised, and Don Frederic rejoined his father in Amsterdam.

Ready to die in the last ditch, and to overwhelm both themselves and their foes in a common catastrophe, the Hollanders had at last compelled their haughty enemy to fly from a position which he had so insolently assumed." Every one is agreed that Hoorn should be approached by water, because it rises from the sea like an enchanted city of the East, with its spires and its Harbour Tower beautifully unreal.

And as the ship comes nearer there is the additional interest of wondering how the apparently landlocked harbour is to be entered, a long green bar seeming to stretch unbrokenly from side to side.