the sea-breeze whistled, the rain poured, and the water fell plashing on
the pavements. The Spanish besieging army encompassed the city like an
iron wall. Each individual felt that he was a fellow-prisoner of his
neighbor, and drew closer to companions of his own rank and opinions.
Business was stagnant, idleness and anxiety weighed like lead on the
minds of all, and whoever wished to make time pass rapidly and relieve
his oppressed soul, went to the tavern to give utterance to his own hopes
and fears, and hear what others were thinking and feeling in the common
distress.

All the tables in the Angulus were occupied, and whoever wanted to be
understood by a distant neighbor was forced to raise his voice very loud,
for special conversations were being carried on at every table. Here,
there, and everywhere, people were shouting to the busy bar-maid, glasses
clinked together, and pewter lids fell on the tops of hard stone-ware
jugs.

The talk at a round table in the end of the long room was louder than
anywhere else. Six officers had seated themselves at it, among them
Georg von Dornburg. Captain Van der Laen, his superior officer, whose
past career had been a truly heroic one, was loudly relating in his deep
voice, strange and amusing tales of his travels by sea and land, Colonel
Mulder often interrupted him, and at every somewhat incredible story,
smilingly told a similar, but perfectly impossible adventure of his own.
Captain Van Duivenvoorde soothingly interposed, when Van der Laen, who
was conscious of never deviating far from the truth, angrily repelled the
old man's jesting insinuations. Captain Cromwell, a grave man with a
round head and smooth long hair, who had come to Holland to fight for the
faith, rarely mingled in the conversation, and then only with a few words
of scarcely intelligible Dutch. Georg, leaning far back in his chair,