negotiations, and were about, by dishonourable stratagem, to assault the
town.

Astounded, indignant, but utterly embarrassed, the grave Spaniards knew
not how to reply. They were still more amazed when the general, rising
to a still higher degree of exasperation, absolutely declined to exchange
another word with them, but ordered Captains Carpentier and St. Hilaire,
by whom they had been escorted to his quarters, to conduct them out of
the town again by the same road which had brought them there. There was
nothing for it but to comply, and to smother their resentment at such
extraordinary treatment as best they could. When they got to the old
harbour on the western side the tide had risen so high that it was
impossible to cross.

Nobody knew better than Vere, when he gave the order, that this would be
the case; so that when the escorting officers returned to state the fact,
he simply ordered them to take the Spaniards back by the Gullet or
eastern side. The strangers were not very young men, and being much
fatigued with wandering to and fro in the darkness over the muddy roads,
they begged permission to remain all night in Ostend, if it were only
in a guardhouse. But Vere was inexorable, after the duplicity which
he affected to have discovered on the part of the enemy. So the
quartermaster-general and the governor of Sluys, much to the detriment
of their dignity, were forced once more to tramp through the muddy
streets. And obeying their secret instructions, the escort led them
round and round through the most miry and forlorn parts of the town, so
that, sinking knee-deep at every step into sloughs and quicksands, and
plunging about through the mist and sleet of a dreary December's night,
they at last reached the precincts of the Spanish half-moon on the
Gullet, be-draggled from head to foot and in a most dismal and exhausted