Beveren. Aroused at day-break by the
roar of the cannon, he had hastily thrown on his armour, mounted his
horse, and, at the head of two hundred pikemen, set forth for the scene
of action. Detained on the bridge by a detachment of the Antwerp fleet,
which had been ordered to make a diversion in that quarter, he had, after
beating off their vessels with his boat-artillery, and charging Count
Charles Mansfeld to heed well the brief injunction of old Peter Ernest,
made all the haste he could to the Kowenstyn. Arriving at Fort Holy
Cross, he learned from Mondragon how the day was going. Three thousand
rebels, he learned, were established on the dyke, Fort Palisade was
tottering, a fleet from both sides was cannonading the Spanish
entrenchments, the salt water was flowing across the breach already made.
His seven months' work, it seemed, had come to nought. The navigation was
already open from the sea to Antwerp, the Lowenstyn was in the rebels'
hands. But Alexander was not prone to premature despair. "I arrived,"
said he to Philip in a letter written on the same evening, "at the very
nick of time." A less hopeful person might have thought that he had
arrived several hours too late. Having brought with him every man that
could be spared from Beveren and from the bridge, he now ordered Camillo
del Monte to transport some additional pieces of artillery from Holy
Cross and from Saint James to Fort Saint Georg. At the same time a sharp
cannonade was to be maintained upon the rebel fleet from all the forts.

Mondragon, with a hundred musketeers and pikemen, was sent forward
likewise as expeditiously as possible to Saint George. No one could be
more alert. The battered veteran, hero of some of the most remarkable
military adventures that history has ever recorded,' fought his way on
foot, in the midst of the fray, like a young ensign who had his first
laurels to win. And, in truth, the day was not one for cunning
manoeuvres, directed, at a distance, by a skillful tactician. It was a
brisk close contest, hand to hand and eye to eye--a Homeric encounter, in
which the chieftains were to prove a right to command by their personal
prowess. Alexander, descending suddenly--dramatically, as it were--when
the battle seemed lost--like a deity from the clouds-was to justify, by
the strength of his arm, the enthusiasm which his name always awakened.
Having, at a glance, taken in the whole situation, he made his brief
arrangements, going from r