CHAPTER II

TERRIBLE NEWS


A few days after Brill had been so boldly captured, Count Bossu
advanced from Utrecht against it. The sea beggars, confident as
they were as to their power of meeting the Spaniards on the seas,
knew that on dry land they were no match for the well trained
pikemen; they therefore kept within the walls. A carpenter, however,
belonging to the town, who had long been a secret partisan of the
Prince of Orange, seized an axe, dashed into the water, and swam
to the sluice and burst open the gates with a few sturdy blows.
The sea poured in and speedily covered the land on the north side
of the city.

The Spaniards advanced along the dyke to the southern gate, but
the sea beggars had hastily moved most of the cannon on the wall
to that point, and received the Spaniards with so hot a fire that
they hesitated. In the meantime the Lord of Treslong and another
officer had filled two boats with men and rowed out to the ships
that had brought the enemy, cut some adrift, and set others on fire.
The Spaniards at the southern gate lost heart; they were exposed
to a hot fire, which they were unable to return. On one side they
saw the water rapidly rising above the level of the dyke on which
they stood, on the other they perceived their only means of retreat
threatened. They turned, and in desperate haste retreated along
the causeway now under water. In their haste many slipped off the