And it is an awful night; one of those nights that impresses itself upon the memory of suffering mankind by the widows it makes and the orphans it leaves; a night in which the sea drowns the land; a night in which the dykes go down before the dash of the ocean, which, tearing huge sluices in them, rushes through to make the unprotected meadows and growing orchards the beds of roaring torrents and deep salt seas that drown awakened farmers and affrighted peasants with their flying wives and children, in Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland, Friesland, and the islands and polders of both the Hollands; a night that brought up another wail from the Netherlanders, rich and poor, noble and bourgeoisie, who had been undergoing the tortures and burnings and flayings of Philip II. and Alva, his viceroy, for five long years; a night when the long-continued northwest gale blowing in from the German Ocean upon the unprotected dykes of Holland, supported by a tide of wondrous strength and height, sweeps in upon the defenseless Netherlands to remind them of that great flood shuddered at for centuries—that of the first of November, All Saints’ night, of 1570—though this one is [[9]]nearly two years afterwards, in the early spring of 1572. Evidences of the misery of the land soon come out of the darkness of the night. Lights move about hurriedly on the South Beveland shore, and the cries of a hundred drowning peasants come shrieking on the gale.
“By Saint George, there’s a dyke gone!” cries Chester to his lieutenant, then he mutters: “God help the poor wretches, we can’t!” as the ship speeds by, the gale now a little upon her starboard quarter.
A minute later he commands hurriedly: “Call two quartermasters and heave the log.”
This being done, he suddenly mutters: “Ten knots—and the tide four more! Two hours! We must be abeam of the Krom Vliet; the Drowned Lands are on our lee bow,” then cries hurriedly to his lieutenant: “Go forward and see both the anchors are ready. We must bring up under the lee of South Beveland, in the slack water where the tide coming up the East Schelde meets the current of the main channel. If we get into the main river with this wind and tide our anchors will hardly hold us this side the Fort of Lillo, and that means capture and death to every man, Alva’s death—you know what that is!”
To this the lieutenant shortly mutters, “I know!” and goes hurriedly forward, where he can be seen directing the men who have been summoned by the boatswain’s call. Chester, standing beside the tiller, cons the vessel himself, giving his orders to the two helmsmen.
Half a minute later Martin Corker, the boatswain, comes staggering aft over the ship’s slippery deck and hoarsely whispers: “Boats ahead!”
“How do you know? you couldn’t see them to-night.”
“Lights!”
“Ah! the lights of Sandvliet.”
“No, boats! pistols firing—arquebuses! I saw the flashes of their guns three points on the lee bow, in the slack water under the shore of Beveland!”