The grass, the weeds, the trunks of the trees disappear.
Drifting wreckage floats by: a beam, a hat, a French colour.…
As my lord hurries, the water on the causeway is over his feet.
“My God!” he cries. “They have opened the sluices and let in the sea!—They have cut the dykes, and let in the sea!”
CHAPTER XI
THE FALLEN STATESMAN
The courage and resolution of one man had saved the country from the conquest that would have terminated her existence.
The sea swept back the invaders. Heroism, springing from extremity, had by a great outburst of patriotism preserved the liberty of the United Provinces and raised the Protestant Faith to a security it would never lose again.
It had taken five days to cut the dykes; Amsterdam had set the example. The wealthiest merchants were the first to dismantle their pleasure gardens, their picture galleries, their splendid country villas; farms were razed to the ground and turned into fortifications, the mills alone being spared.