“He is keeping them back,” Ruth had said the day before. “Antwerp, our home, is sacred to him!”
The cannon roared, culverins crashed, muskets and arquebuses rattled; the boding notes of the alarm-bells and the fierce shouts of soldiers and citizens hurrying to battle mingled with the deafening thunder of the artillery.
Every hand seized a weapon, every shop was closed; hearts stood still with fear, or throbbed wildly with rage and emotion. Ruth remained calm. She detained the smith in the house, repeating her former words: “The men from Aalst are not coming; he is keeping diem back.” Just at that moment the young apprentice, whose parents lived on the Scheldt, rushed with dishevelled hair into the workshop, gasping:
“The men from Aalst are here. They crossed in peatboats and a galley. They wear green twigs in their helmets, and the Eletto is marching in the van, bearing the standard. I saw them; terrible—horrible—sheathed in iron from top to toe.”
He said no more, for Adam, with a savage imprecation, interrupted him, seized his huge hammer, and rushed out of the house.
Ruth staggered back into the workshop.
Adam hurried straight to the rampart. Here stood six thousand Walloons, to defend the half-finished wall, and behind them large bodies of armed citizens.
“The men from Aalst have come!” echoed from lip to lip.
Curses, wails of grief, yells of savage fury, blended with the thunder of the artillery and the ringing of the alarm bells.
A fugitive now dashed from the counterscarp towards the Walloons, shouting: