a few months he had fifty
siege-guns in position, and had constructed a practicable road all around
the place, connecting his own fortifications on the west and south with
those of Bucquoy on the east.

Albert's leading thought however was to cut off the supplies. The freaks
of nature, as already observed, combined with his own exertions, had
effectually disposed of the western harbour as a means of ingress. The
tide ebbed and flowed through the narrow channel, but it was clogged with
sand and nearly, dry at low water. Moreover, by an invention then
considered very remarkable, a foundation was laid for the besiegers'
forts and batteries by sinking large and deep baskets of wicker-work,
twenty feet in length, and filled with bricks and sand, within this
abandoned harbour. These clumsy machines were called sausages,21 and were
the delight of the camp and of all Europe. The works thus established on
the dry side crept slowly on towards the walls, and some demi-cannon were
soon placed upon, them, but the besieged, not liking these encroachments,
took the resolution to cut the pea-dyke along the coast which had
originally protected the old harbour. Thus the sea, when the tides were
high and winds boisterous, was free to break in upon the archduke's
works, and would often swallow sausages, men, and cannon far more rapidly
than it was possible to place them there.

Yet still those human ants toiled on, patiently restoring what the
elements so easily destroyed; and still, despite the sea; the cannonade,
and the occasional sorties of the garrison, the danger came nearer and
nearer. Bucquoy on the other side was pursuing the same system, but his
task was immeasurably more difficult. The Gullet, or new eastern
entrance, was a whirlpool at high tide, deep, broad, and swift as a
millrace. Yet along its outer verge he too laid his sausages, protecting
his men at their work as well as he could with gabions, and essayed to
build a dyke of wicker-work upon which he might place a platform for
artillery to prevent the ingress of the republican ships.

And his soldiers were kept steadily at work, exposed all the time to the
guns of the Spanish half-moon from which the besieged never ceased to
cannonade those industrious pioneers. It was a bloody business. Night and
day the men were knee-deep in the trenches delving in mud and sand,
falling every instant into the graves which they were thus digging for
themselves, while ever and anon the