The war, however, was interrupted by a singular calamity that befel the Derry garrison.  By the death of their commander left ’a headless people,’ they suffered from want of food and clothing.  They also became the prey of a mysterious disease, against which no precautions could guard, which no medicine could cure, and by which strong men were suddenly struck dead.  By the middle of November ’the flux was reigning among them wonderfully;’ many of the best men went away because there was none to stay them.  The secret of the dreadful malady—­something like the cholera—­was discovered in the fact that the soldiers had built their sleeping quarters over the burial-ground of the abbey, ’and the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them.’  The officer who succeeded to the command applied the most effectual remedy.  He led the men at once into the pure air of the enemies’ country, and they returned after a few days driving before them 700 horses and 1,000 cattle.  He assured Sidney, that with 300 additional men, he could so hunt the rebel, that ere May was passed, he should not show his face in Ulster.  But the ‘Black Death’ returned after a brief respite; and, says Mr. Froude, in the reeking vapour of the charnel-house, it was indifferent whether its victims returned in triumph from a stricken field, or were cooped within their walls by hordes of savage enemies.  By the middle of March there were left out of 1,100 but 300 available to fight.  Reinforcements had been raised at Liverpool, but they were countermanded when on the point of sailing.  The English council was discussing the propriety of removing the colony to the Bann, when accident finished the work which the plague had begun, and spared them the trouble of deliberation.  The huts and sheds round the monastery had been huddled together for the convenience of fortification.  At the end of April, probably after a drying east wind, a fire broke out in a blacksmith’s forge, which spread irresistibly through the entire range of buildings.  The flames at last reached the powder magazine:  thirty men were blown to pieces by the explosion, and the rest, paralysed by this last addition to their misfortunes, made no more effort to extinguish the conflagration.  St. Loo, with all that remained of that ill-fated party, watched from their provision boats in the river the utter destruction of the settlement which had begun so happily, and then sailed drearily away to find a refuge in Knockfergus.  Such was the fate of the first efforts for the building of Londonderry; and below its later glories, as so often happens in this world, lay the bones of many a hundred gallant men who lost their lives in laying its foundations.  Elizabeth, who in the immediate pressure of calamity resumed at once her noble nature, ’perceiving the misfortune not to come of treason, but of God’s ordinance,’ bore it well; she was willing to do that should be wanting to repair the loss; and Cecil was able to write cheerfully to Sidney, telling him to make the best of the accident and let it stimulate him to fresh exertions.’[1]