island
unchallenged and unseen, had effected with petards a small breach through
the western gate of the city, and with a large number of his followers,
creeping two and two through the gap, had found himself for a time master
of Sluys.

The profound silence of the place had however somewhat discouraged the
intruders. The whole population were as sound asleep as was the excellent
commandant, but the stillness in the deserted streets suggested an
ambush, and they moved stealthily forward, feeling their way with caution
towards the centre of the town.

It so happened, moreover, that the sacristan had forgotten to wind up the
great town clock. The agreement with the party first entering and making
their way to the opposite end of the city, had been that at the striking
of a certain hour after midnight they should attack simultaneously and
with a great outcry all the guardhouses, so that the garrison might be
simultaneously butchered. The clock never struck, the signal was never
given, and Du Terrail and his immediate comrades remained near the
western gate, suspicious and much perplexed. The delay was fatal. The
guard, the whole garrison, and the townspeople flew to arms, and
half-naked, but equipped with pike and musket, and led on by Van der Noot
in person, fell upon the intruders. A panic took the place of previous
audacity in the breasts of Du Terrail's followers. Thinking only of
escape, they found the gap by which they had crept into the town much
less convenient as a means of egress in the face of an infuriated
multitude. Five hundred of them were put to death in a very few minutes.
Almost as many were drowned or suffocated in the marshes, as they
attempted to return by the road over which they had come. A few
stragglers June, of the fifteen hundred were all that were left to tell
the tale.

It would seem scarcely worth while to chronicle such trivial incidents in
this great war--the all-absorbing drama of Christendom--were it not that
they were for the moment the whole war. It might be thought that
hostilities were approaching their natural termination, and that the war
was dying of extreme old age, when the Quixotic pranks of a Du Terrail
occupied so large a part of European attention.

The winter had passed, another spring had come and gone, and Maurice had
in vain attempted to obtain sufficient means from the States to take the
field in force. Henry, looking on from the outside, was becoming more and
more e