they found themselves in a vast arched cellar filled with barrels. From
this they proceeded into another, and again into a third.

"What are these great magazines?" Francis Vere asked in surprise.

"They are wine-cellars, and there are scores similar to those you see.
Sluys is the centre of the wine trade of Flanders and Holland, and
cellars like these extend right under the wall. All the warehouses
along here have similar cellars. This end of the town was the driest,
and the soil most easily excavated. That is why the magazines for wines
are all clustered here. There is not a foot of ground behind and under
the walls at this end that is not similarly occupied, and if the
Spaniards try to drive mines to blow up the walls, they will simply
break their way into these cellars, where we can meet them and drive
them back again."

"Excellent!" Francis Vere said. "This will relieve us of the work of
countermining, which is always tiresome and dangerous, and would be
specially so here, where we should have to dive under that deep moat
outside your walls. Now we shall only have to keep a few men on watch
in these cellars. They would hear the sound of the Spanish approaching,
and we shall be ready to give them a warm reception by the time they
break in. Are there communications between these cellars?"

"Yes, for the most part," the wine merchant said. "The cellars are not
entirely the property of us dealers in wine. They are constructed by
men who let them, just as they would let houses. A merchant in a small
way would need but one cellar, while some of us occupy twenty or more;
therefore, there are for the most part communications, with doors,
between the various cellars, so that they can be let off in accordance