were the delight of the camp and of all Europe. The works thus
established on the dry side crept slowly on towards the walls, and some
demi-cannon were soon placed upon, them, but the besieged, not liking
these encroachments, took the resolution to cut the pea-dyke along the
coast which had originally protected the old harbour. Thus the sea, when
the tides were high and winds boisterous, was free to break in upon the
archduke's works, and would often swallow sausages, men, and cannon far
more rapidly than it was possible to place them there.

Yet still those human ants toiled on, patiently restoring what the
elements so easily destroyed; and still, despite the sea; the cannonade,
and the occasional sorties of the garrison, the danger came nearer and
nearer. Bucquoy on the other side was pursuing the same system, but his
task was immeasurably more difficult. The Gullet, or new eastern
entrance, was a whirlpool at high tide, deep, broad, and swift as a
millrace. Yet along its outer verge he too laid his sausages, protecting
his men at their work as well as he could with gabions, and essayed to
build a dyke of wicker-work upon which he might place a platform for
artillery to prevent the ingress of the republican ships.

And his soldiers were kept steadily at work, exposed all the time to the
guns of the Spanish half-moon from which the besieged never ceased to
cannonade those industrious pioneers. It was a bloody business. Night
and day the men were knee-deep in the trenches delving in mud and sand,
falling every instant into the graves which they were thus digging for
themselves, while ever and anon the sea would rise in its wrath and sweep
them with their works away. Yet the victims were soon replaced by
others, for had not the cardinal-archduke sworn to extract the thorn from
the Belgic lion's paw even if he should be eighteen years about it, and
would military honour permit him to break his vow? It was a piteous