It was two o’clock, half an hour before the chill dawn of a May morning, Sunday, the 26th of the month.  The pale sight of a waning moon was faintly perceptible in the sky.  Suddenly the sentinels upon the Kowenstyn—­this time not asleep—­descried, as they looked towards Lillo, four fiery apparitions gliding towards them across the waves.  The alarm was given, and soon afterwards the Spaniards began to muster, somewhat reluctantly, upon the dyke, filled as they always were with the mysterious dread which those demon-vessels never failed to inspire.

The fire-ships floated slowly nearer, and at last struck heavily against the stockade-work.  There, covered with tar, pitch, rosin, and gunpowder, they flamed, flared, and exploded, during a brief period, with much vigour, and then burned harmlessly out.  One of the objects for which they had been sent—­to set fire to the palisade—­was not accomplished.  The other was gained; for the enemy, expecting another volcanic shower of tombstones and plough-coulters, and remembering the recent fate of their comrades on the bridge, had retired shuddering into the forts.  Meantime, in the glare of these vast torches, a great swarm of gunboats and other vessels, skimming across the leaden-coloured waters, was seen gradually approaching the dyke.  It was the fleet of Hohenlo and Justinus de Nassau, who had been sailing and rowing since ten o’clock of the preceding night.  The burning ships lighted them on their way, while it had scared the Spaniards from their posts.

The boats ran ashore in the mile-long space between forts St. George and the Palisade, and a party of Zeelanders, Admiral Haultain, governor of Walcheren, at their head, sprang upon the dyke.  Meantime, however, the royalists, finding that the fire-ships had come to so innocent an end, had rallied and emerged from their forts.  Haultain and his Zeelanders, by the time they had fairly mounted the dyke, found themselves in the iron embrace of several hundred Spaniards.  After a brief fierce struggle, face to face, and at push of pike, the patriots reeled backward down the bank, and took refuge in their boats.  Admiral Haultain slipped as he left the shore, missed a rope’s end which was thrown to him, fell into the water, and, borne down by the weight of his armour, was drowned.  The enemy, pursuing them, sprang to the waist in the ooze on the edge of the dyke, and continued the contest.  The boats opened a hot fire, and there was a severe skirmish for many minutes, with no certain result.  It was, however, beginning to go hard with the Zeelanders, when, just at the critical moment, a cheer from the other side of the dyke was heard, and the Antwerp fleet was seen coming swiftly to the rescue.  The Spaniards, taken between the two bands of assailants, were at a disadvantage, and it was impossible to prevent the landing of these fresh antagonists.  The Antwerpers sprang ashore.  Among the foremost was Sainte Aldegonde, poet, orator, hymn-book maker, burgomaster, lawyer, polemical divine—­now armed to the teeth and cheering on his men, in the very thickest of the fight.  The diversion was successful, and Sainte Aldegonde gallantly drove the Spaniards quite off the field.  The whole combined force from Antwerp and Zeeland now effected their landing.  Three thousand men occupied all the space between Fort George and the Palisade.