sight, even for the besieged, to see human life so profusely squandered.
It is a terrible reflection, too, that those Spaniards, Walloons,
Italians, confronted death so eagerly, not from motives of honour,
religion, discipline, not inspired by any kind of faith or fanaticism,
but because the men who were employed in this horrible sausage-making and
dyke-building were promised five stivers a day instead of two.

And there was always an ample supply of volunteers for the service so
long as the five stivers were paid.

But despite all Bucquoy's exertions the east harbour remained as free as
ever. The cool, wary Dutch skippers brought in their cargoes as
regularly as if there had been no siege at all. Ostend was rapidly
acquiring greater commercial importance, and was more full of bustle and
business than had ever been dreamed of in that quiet nook since the days
of Robert the Frisian, who had built the old church of Ostend, as one of
the thirty which he erected in honour of St. Peter, five hundred years
before.

For the States did not neglect their favourite little city. Fleets of
transports arrived day after day, week after week, laden with every
necessary and even luxury for the use of the garrison. It was perhaps
the cheapest place in all the Netherlands, so great was the abundance.
Capons, bares, partridges, and butcher's meat were plentiful as
blackberries, and good French claret was but two stivers the quart.
Certainly the prospect was not promising of starving the town into a
surrender.

But besides all this digging and draining there was an almost daily
cannonade. Her Royal Highness the Infanta was perpetually in camp by the