By Pike and Dyke: a Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic by G. A. Henty (easy novels to read TXT) 📗

towards the town, under General Batenburgh. This officer had replaced De la Marck, whose brutal and ferocious conduct had long disgraced the Dutch cause, and whom the prince, finding that he was deaf alike to his orders and to the dictates of humanity, had now deprived of his commission. Batenburgh's expedition was no more fortunate than that of De la Marck had been.

On his approach to the city by night a thick mist set in, and the column completely lost its way. The citizens had received news of its coming, and the church bells were rung and cannon fired to guide it as to its direction; but the column was so helplessly lost, that it at last wandered in among the Spaniards, who fell upon them, slew many and scattered the rest--a very few only succeeding in entering the town. Batenburgh brought off, under cover of the mist, a remnant of his troops, but all the provisions and ammunition were lost.

The second in command, De Koning, was among those captured. The Spaniards cut off his head and threw it over the wall into the city, with a paper fastened on it bearing the words: "This is the head of Captain De Koning, who is on his way with reinforcements for the good city of Haarlem." But the people of Haarlem were now strung up, both by their own peril and the knowledge of the atrocities committed by the Spaniards in other cities, to a point of hatred and fury equal to that of the foes, and they retorted by chopping off the heads of eleven prisoners and throwing them into the Spanish camp. There was a label on the barrel with these words, "Deliver these heads to Duke Alva in payment of his ten penny tax, with one additional head for interest."

The besieged were not content to remain shut up in the walls, but frequently sallied out and engaged in skirmishes with the enemy. Prisoners were therefore often captured by one side or the other, and the gibbets on the walls and in the camp were constantly occupied.

Ned as a volunteer was not attached to any special body of troops, Ripperda telling him to act for himself and join in whatever was going on as he chose. Consequently he took part in many of the skirmishes outside the walls, and was surprised to find how fearlessly the burghers met the tried soldiers of Spain, and especially at the valour with which the corps of women battled with the enemy.

In strength and stature most of the women were fully a match for the Walloon troops, and indeed for the majority of the Spaniards; and they never feared to engage any body of troops of equal numerical strength.

"Look here, aunt," Ned said to Frau Plomaert upon the day after the failure of Batenburg's force to relieve the town, "you must see for yourself now that the chances are that sooner or later the town will be captured. We may beat off all the assaults of the Spaniards, but we shall ere long have to fight with an even more formidable foe within the town. You know that our stock of provisions is small, and that in the end unless help comes we must yield to famine. The prince may possibly throw five thousand armed men into the town, but it is absolutely impossible that he can throw in any great store of provision, unless he entirely defeats the Spaniards; and nowhere in Holland can he raise an army sufficient for that.

"I think, aunt, that while there is time we ought to set to work to construct a hiding place, where you and the girls can remain while the sack and atrocities that will assuredly follow the surrender of the town are taking place."

"I shall certainly not hide myself from the Spaniards," Frau Plomaert said stoutly.

"Very well, aunt, if you choose to be killed on your own hearthstone of course I cannot prevent it; but I do say that you ought to save the girls from these horrors if you can."

"That I am ready to do," she said. "But how is it to be managed?"

"Well, aunt, there is your wood cellar below. We can surely construct some place of concealment there. Of course I will do the work, though the girls might help by bringing up baskets of earth and scattering them in the streets." Having received a tacit permission from his aunt, Ned went down into the wood cellar, which was some five feet wide by eight feet long. Like every place about a Dutch house it was whitewashed, and was half full of wood. Ned climbed over the wood to the further end.

"This is where it must be," he said to the girls, who had followed him. "Now, the first thing to do is to pile the wood so as to leave a passage by which we can pass along. I will get a pick and get out the bricks at this corner."

"We need only make a hole a foot wide, and it need not be more than a foot high," Lucette, the elder, said. "That will be sufficient for us to squeeze through."

"It would, Lucette; but we shall want more space for working, so to begin with we will take away the bricks up to the top. We can close it up as much as we like afterwards. There is plenty of time, for it will be weeks before the city is starved out. If we work for an hour a day we can get it done in a week."

Accordingly the work began, the bricks were removed, and with a pick and shovel Ned dug into the ground beyond, while the girls carried away the earth and scattered it in the road. In a fortnight a chamber five feet high, three feet wide, and six feet long had been excavated. Slats of wood, supported by props along the sides, held up the roof. A quantity of straw was thrown in for the girls to lie on. Frau Plomaert came down from time to time to inspect the progress of the work, and expressed herself well pleased with it.

"How are you going to close the entrance, Ned?" she asked.

"I propose to brick it up again three feet high, aunt. Then when the girls and you have gone in--for I hope that you will change your mind at the last--I will brick up the rest of it, but using mud instead of mortar, so that the bricks can be easily removed when the time comes, or one or two can be taken out to pass in food, and then replaced as before. After you are in I will whitewash the whole cellar, and no one would then guess the wall had ever been disturbed. I shall leave two bricks out in the bottom row of all to give air. They will be covered over by the wood. However hard up we get for fuel we can leave enough to cover the floor at that end a few inches deep. If I can I will pierce a hole up under the board in the room above this, so as to give a free passage of air."

"If the Spaniards take away the wood, as they may well do, they will notice that the two bricks are gone," Mrs. Plomaert objected.

"We can provide for that, aunt, by leaving two bricks inside, whitewashed like the rest, to push into the holes if you hear anyone removing the wood. There is only the light that comes in at the door, and it would never be noticed that the two bricks were loose."

"That will do very well," Mrs. Plomaert said. "I thought at first that your idea was foolish, but I see that it will save the girls if the place is taken. I suppose there will be plenty of time to brick them up after they have taken refuge in it."

"Plenty of time, aunt. We shall know days before if the city surrenders to hunger. I shall certainly fight much more comfortably now that I know that whatever comes Lucette and Annie are safe from the horrors of the sack."

CHAPTER XIV

THE FALL OF HAARLEM

After the terrible repulse inflicted upon the storming party, Don Frederick perceived that the task before him was not to be accomplished with the ease and rapidity he had anticipated, and that these hitherto despised Dutch heretics had at last been driven by despair to fight with desperate determination that was altogether new to the Spaniards. He therefore abandoned the idea of carrying the place by assault, and determined to take it by the slower and surer process of a regular siege. In a week his pioneers would be able to drive mines beneath the walls; an explosion would then open a way for his troops. Accordingly the work began, but the besieged no sooner perceived what was being done than the thousand men who had devoted themselves to this work at once began to drive counter mines.

Both parties worked with energy, and it was not long before the galleries met, and a desperate struggle commenced under ground. Here the drill and discipline of the Spaniards availed them but little. It was a conflict of man to man in narrow passages, with such light only as a few torches could give. Here the strength and fearlessness of death of the sturdy Dutch burghers and fishermen more than compensated for any superiority of the Spaniards in the management of their weapons. The air was so heavy and thick with powder that the torches gave but a feeble light, and the combatants were well nigh stifled by the fumes of sulphur, yet in the galleries which met men fought night and day without intermission. The places of those who retired exhausted, or fell dead, were filled by others impatiently waiting their turn to take part in the struggle. While the fighting continued the work went on also. Fresh galleries were continually being driven on both sides, and occasionally tremendous explosions took place as one party or the other sprung their mines; the shock sometimes bringing down the earth in passages far removed from the explosions, and burying the combatants beneath them; while yawning pits were formed where the explosions took place, and fragments of bodies cast high in the air. Many of the galleries were so narrow and low that no arms save daggers could be used, and men fought like wild beasts, grappling and rolling on the ground, while comrades with lanterns or torches stood behind waiting to spring upon each other as soon as the struggle terminated one way or the other.

For a fortnight this underground struggle continued, and then Don Frederick--finding that no ground was gained, and that the loss was so great that even his bravest soldiers were beginning to dread their turn to enter upon a conflict in which their military training went for nothing, and where so many hundreds of their comrades had perished--abandoned all hopes of springing a mine under the walls, and drew off his troops. A month had already elapsed since the repulse of the attack on the breach; and while the fight had been going on underground a steady fire had been kept up against a work called a ravelin, protecting the gate of the Cross. During this time letters had from time to time been brought into the town by carrier pigeons, the prince urging the citizens to persevere, and holding out hope of relief.

These promises were to some extent fulfilled on the 28th of January, when 400 veteran soldiers, bringing with them 170 sledges laden with powder and bread, crossed the frozen lake and succeeded in making their way into the city. The time was now at hand when the besieged foresaw that the ravelin of the Cross