an affair of most brave obstinacy on both sides,” said Parma, who rarely used strong language.  “Soldiers, citizens, and all—­they were like mad bulldogs.”  Hollanders, Italians, Scotchmen, Spaniards, Englishmen, fell thick and fast.  The contest was about the entrenchments before they were completed, and especially around the sappers and miners, in whose picks and shovels lay the whole fate of Antwerp.  Many of the dyke-breakers were digging their own graves, and rolled, one after another, into the breach which they were so obstinately creating.  Upon that slender thread of land the hopes of many thousands were hanging.  To tear it asunder, to roll the ocean-waves up to Antwerp, and thus to snatch the great city triumphantly from the grasp of Philip—­to accomplish this, the three thousand had come forth that May morning.  To prevent it, to hold firmly that great treasure entrusted to them, was the determination of the Spaniards.  And so, closely pent and packed, discharging their carbines into each other’s faces, rolling, coiled together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters, struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry, Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all the confusion and uproar, the miners dug and delved.

At last the patriots were victorious.  They made good their entrenchments, drove the Spaniards, after much slaughter, back to the fort of Saint George on the one side, and of the Palisade on the other, and cleared the whole space between the two points.  The centre of the dyke was theirs; the great Kowenstyn, the only key by which the gates of Antwerp could be unlocked, was in the deliverers’ hands.  They pursued their victory, and attacked the Palisade Fort.  Gamboa, its commandant, was severely wounded; many other officers dead or dying; the outworks were in the hands of the Hollanders; the slender piles on which the fortress rested in the water were rudely shaken; the victory was almost complete.

And now there was a tremendous cheer of triumph.  The beavers had done their work, the barrier was bitten through and through, the salt water rushed like a river through the ruptured dyke.  A few moments later, and a Zeeland barge, freighted with provisions, floated triumphantly into the waters beyond, now no longer an inland sea.  The deed was done—­the victory achieved.  Nothing more was necessary than to secure it, to tear the fatal barrier to fragments, to bury it, for its whole length, beneath the waves.  Then, after the isthmus had been utterly submerged, when the Scheldt was rolled back into its ancient bed, when Parma’s famous bridge had become useless, when the maritime communication between Antwerp and Holland had been thoroughly established, the Spaniards would have nothing left for it but to drown like rats in their entrenchments or to abandon the siege in despair.  All this was in the hands of the patriots.  The Kowenstyn was theirs.  The Spaniards were driven from the field, the batteries of their forts silenced.  For a long period the rebels were unmolested, and felt themselves secure.