On the 22nd of May a day of solemn prayer and fasting was, by command of Maurice, celebrated throughout the besieging camp.  In order that the day should be strictly kept in penance, mortification, and thanksgiving, it was ordered, on severe penalties, that neither the commissaries nor sutlers should dispense any food whatever, throughout the twenty-four hours.  Thus the commander-in-chief of the republic prepared his troops for the work before them.

In the very last days of May the experiment was once more vigorously tried to send in supplies.  A thousand galley-slaves, the remnant of Frederic Spinola’s unlucky naval forces, whose services were not likely very soon to be required at sea, were sent out into the drowned land, accompanied by five hundred infantry.  Simultaneously Count Berlaymont, at the head of four thousand men, conveying a large supply of provisions and munitions, started from Dam.  Maurice, apprised of the adventure, sallied forth with two thousand troops to meet them.  Near Stamper’s Hook he came upon a detachment of Berlaymont’s force, routed them, and took a couple of hundred prisoners.  Learning from them that Berlaymont himself, with the principal part of his force, had passed farther on, he started off in pursuit; but, unfortunately taking a different path through the watery wilderness from the one selected by the flying foe, he was not able to prevent his retreat by a circuitous route to Dam.  From the prisoners, especially from the galley-slaves, who had no reason for disguising the condition of the place, he now learned that there were plenty of troops in Sluys, but that there was already a great lack of provisions.  They had lost rather than gained by their success in introducing reinforcements without supplies.  Upon this information Maurice now resolved to sit quietly down and starve out the garrison.  If Spinola, in consequence, should raise the siege of Ostend, in order to relieve a better town, he was prepared to give him battle.  If the marquis held fast to his special work, Sluys was sure to surrender.  This being the position of affairs, the deputies of the States-General took their leave of the stadholder, and returned to the Hague.

Two months passed.  It was midsummer, and the famine in the beleaguered town had become horrible.  The same hideous spectacle was exhibited as on all occasions where thousands of human beings are penned together without food.  They ate dogs, cats, and rats, the weeds from the churchyards, old saddles, and old shoes, and, when all was gone, they began to eat each other.  The small children diminished rapidly in numbers, while beacons and signals of distress were fired day and night, that the obdurate Spinola, only a few miles off, might at last move to their relief.