e reserved masses supporting the attack,
drawn up in solid clumps of spears, with their gay standards waving above
them, and with a strong force of cavalry in iron corslet and morion
stationed in the rear to urge on the infantry and prevent their faltering
in the night's work, became visible--phantom-like but perfectly distinct.
At least four thousand men were engaged in this chief attack, and the
light now permitted the besieged to direct their fire from cannon,
demi-cannon, culverin, and snaphance, with fatal effect. The assailants,
thinned, straggling, but undismayed, closed up their ranks, and still
came fiercely on. Never had Spaniards, Walloons, and Italians, manifested
greater contempt of death than on this occasion. They knew that the
archduke and the infanta were waiting breathlessly in Fort St. Albert for
the news of that victory of which the feigned negotiations had defrauded
them at Christmas, and they felt perfectly confident of ending both the
siege and the forty years' war this January night. But they had reckoned
without their wily English host. As they came nearer--van, and at last
reserve--they dropped in great heaps under the steady fire of the
musketry--as Philip Flaming, looking on, exclaimed--like apples when the
autumn wind blows through the orchard. And as the foremost still pressed
nearer and nearer, striving to clamber up the shattered counterscarp and
through every practicable breach, the English, Hollanders, and
Zeelanders, met them in the gap, not only at push of pike, but with their
long daggers and with flaming pitchhoops, and hurled them down to instant
death.
And thus around the Sand Hill, the Porcupine, and Hell's Mouth, the
battle raged nearly two hours long, without an inch of ground being
gained by the assailants. The dead and dying were piled beneath the
walls, while still the reserves, goaded up to the mark by the cavalry,
mounted upon the bodies of their fallen comrades and strove to plant
their ladders. But now the tide was on the flood, the harbour was
filling, and cool Auditor Fleming, whom nothing escaped quietly asked the
general's permission to open the western' sluice. It was obvious, he
observed, that the fury of the attack was over, and that the enemy would
soon be effecting a retreat before the water should have risen too high.
He even pointed out many stragglers attempting to escape through the
already deepening shallows. Vere's consent was at once given, the
flood-g
|