He dug a canal from Sas de Gand--which was one of his principal depots--
all the way to Sluys, because the water-communication between those two
points was entirely in the hands of the Hollanders and Zeelanders. The
rebel cruisers swarmed in the Scheldt, from, Flushing almost to Antwerp,
so that it was quite impossible for Parma's forces to venture forth at
all; and it also seemed hopeless to hazard putting to sea from Sluys.
At the same, time he had appointed his, commissioners to treat with the
English envoys already named by the Queen. There had been much delay in
the arrival of those deputies, on account of the noise raised by
Barneveld and his followers; but Burghley was now sanguine that the
exposure of what he called the Advocate's seditious, false, and perverse
proceedings, would enable Leicester to procure the consent of the States
to a universal peace.

And thus, with these parallel schemes of invasion and negotiation,
spring; summer, and autumn, had worn away. Santa Cruz was still with his
fleet in Lisbon, Cadiz, and the Azores; and Parma was in Brussels, when
Philip fondly imagined him established in Greenwich Palace. When made
aware of his master's preposterous expectations, Alexander would have
been perhaps amused, had he not been half beside himself with
indignation. Such folly seemed incredible. There was not the slightest
appearance of a possibility of making a passage without the protection of
the Spanish fleet, he observed. His vessels were mere transport-boats,
without the least power of resisting an enemy. The Hollanders and
Zeelanders, with one hundred and forty cruisers, had shut him up in all
directions. He could neither get out from Antwerp nor from Sluys. There
were large English ships, too, cruising in the channel, and they were
getting ready in the Netherlands and in England "most furiously." The
delays had been so great, that their secret had been poorly kept, and the
enemy was on his guard. If Santa Cruz had come, Alexander declared that