earth. The fatigue and anxiety are incredible. Not a man can sleep at
night; not an officer nor soldier but is perpetually mounting guard. But
they are animated to their hard work by seeing that I share in it, like
one of themselves. We have now got the dyke into good order, so far as
to be able to give them a warm reception, whenever they choose to come."

Quite at the farther or land end of the Kowenstyn, was another fort,
called the Stabroek, which commanded and raked the whole dyke, and was in
the neighbourhood of Mansfeld's head-quarters.

Placed as were these little citadels upon a slender, and--at brief
distance--invisible thread of land, with the dark waters rolling around
them far and near, they presented an insubstantial dream-like aspect,
seeming rather like castles floating between air and ocean than actual
fortifications--a deceptive mirage rather than reality. There was
nothing imaginary, however, in the work which they were to perform.

A series of attacks, some serious, others fictitious, had been made, from
time to time, upon both bridge and dyke; but Alexander was unable to
inspire his soldiers with his own watchfulness. Upon the 7th of May a
more determined attempt was made upon the Kowenstyn, by the fleet from
Lillo. Hohenlo and Colonel Ysselstein conducted the enterprise. The
sentinels at the point selected--having recently been so often threatened
by an enemy, who most frequently made a rapid retreat, as to have grown
weary and indifferent-were surprised, at dawn of day, and put to the
sword. "If the truth must be told," said Parma, "the sentries were sound
asleep." Five hundred Zeelanders, with a strong party of sappers and
miners, fairly established themselves upon the dyke, between St.
George's and Fort Palisade. The attack, although spirited at its
commencement, was doomed to be unsuccessful. A co-operation, agreed upon