Alva’s veterans come confidently on. They have conquered one rampart, why not the other?
Up the slope they surge with cries of “Philip!” and “Don Frederico!” to find a cordial welcome from Sorosis at the summit.
Behind the rampart is a great fire and a mighty cauldron full of boiling brine. First comes a volley to make the enemy give back for one fatal minute, each woman firing her musket in the faces of the coming foe, who hesitate under the carnage.
“Wash out these Spaniards!—pass the water up!” cries the widow, and seizing the first bucket-full of boiling stuff, she swashes it in the face of an Italian captain, whose tried armor is not proof against this cruel scalding. As he screams in agony she cuts him down.
Then with the deft hands of the washtub her women deluge with boiling brine the Spaniards, who shriek and scream and writhe in agony.
But others from behind press on; at these the women go with broadswords. Caring naught for death, they carry no shields, but swing the big weapons with both arms. Against the weight of such a blow no skill of fence from single arm is potent.
“Pikemen to the front!” screams De Billy, but a moment after he is wounded and carried from the fray and the pikemen do not come soon enough, for Kenau Hasselaer, heading her women veterans, charges down the demi-lune and sweeps every living Spaniard into the block house by the Kruys gate.
With this she laughs hoarsely: “We’ve got it full. Now, Vrouw Jannaps—thy work!”
And a woman who has been waiting quietly on the top of the demi-lune springs down and coming back a minute later cries, “I’ve fired the mine!”
This is reported almost at the same moment by the mine itself and the great block house of the Kruys gate, [[200]]that has been prepared for its Spanish visitors with some twenty barrels of gunpowder, goes up into the air, and with it some hundred Walloon infantry of De Billy and a detachment of Vargas veterans.