With prodigious energy and at great expense he had constructed or
improved internal water-communications from Ghent to Sluy's, Newport, and
Dunkerk. He had, thus transported all his hoys, barges, and munitions
for the invasion, from all points of the obedient Netherlands to the sea-
coast, without coming within reach of the Hollanders and Zeelanders, who
were keeping close watch on the outside. But those Hollanders and
Zeelanders, guarding every outlet to the ocean, occupying every hole and
cranny of the coast, laughed the invaders of England to scorn, braving
them, jeering them, daring them to come forth, while the Walloons and
Spaniards shrank before such amphibious assailants, to whom a combat on
the water was as natural as upon dry land. Alexander, upon one occasion,
transported with rage, selected a band of one thousand musketeers, partly
Spanish, partly Irish, and ordered an assault upon those insolent
boatmen. With his own hand--so it was related--he struck dead more than
one of his own officers who remonstrated against these commands; and then
the attack was made by his thousand musketeers upon the Hollanders, and
every man of the thousand was slain.

He had been reproached for not being ready, for not having embarked his
men; but he had been ready for a month, and his men could be embarked in
a single day. "But it was impossible," he said, "to keep them long
packed up on board vessels, so small that there was no room to turn about
in the people would sicken, would rot, would die." So soon as he had
received information of the arrival of the fleet before Calais--which was
on the 8th August--he had proceeded the same night to Newport and
embarked 16,000 men, and before dawn he was at Dunkerk, where the troops
stationed in that port were as rapidly placed on board the transports.
Sir William Stanley, with his 700 Irish kernes, were among the first
shipped for the enterprise. Two-days long these regiments lay heaped.