d been going on at the
Porcupine, and were now rushing through the forts grinning defiance,
yelling and chattering with fierce triumph, and beating down all
opposition. It was splendidly done. The discomfited Dorp met small bodies
of his men, panic-struck, reeling out from their stronghold, wounded,
bleeding, shrieking for help and for orders. It seemed as if the
Spaniards had dropped from the clouds. The Dutch commandant did his best
to rally the fugitives, and to encourage those who had remained. All
night long the furious battle raged, every inch of ground being
contested; for both Catholics and Hollanders knew full well that this
triumph was worth more than all that had been gained for the archduke in
eighteen months of siege. Pike to pike, breast to breast, they fought
through the dark April night; the last sobs of the hurricane dying
unheard, the red lanterns flitting to and fro, the fireworks hissing in
every direction of earth and air, the great wicker piles, heaped up with
pitch and rosin, flaming over a scene more like a dance of goblins than a
commonplace Christian massacre. At least fifteen hundred were
killed--besiegers and besieged--during the storming of the forts and the
determined but unsuccessful attempt of the Hollanders to retake them. And
when at last the day had dawned, and the Spaniards could see the full
extent of their victory, they set themselves with--unusual alacrity to
killing such of the wounded and prisoners as were in their hands, while,
at the same time, they turned the guns of their newly acquired works upon
the main counterscarp of the town.

Yet the besieged--discomfited but undismayed lost not a moment in
strengthening their inner works, and in doing their best, day after day,
by sortie, cannonade, and every possible device, to prevent the foe from
obtaining full advantage of his success. The triumph was merely a local
one, and the patient Hollanders soon proved to the enemy that the town
was not gained by carrying the three squares, but that every inch of the
place was to be contested as hotly as those little redoubts had been.
Ostend, after standing nearly two years of siege, was not to be carried
by storm. A goodly slice of it had been pared off that April night, and
was now in possession of the archduke, but this was all. Meantime the
underground work was resumed on both sides.

Frederic Spinola, notwithstanding the stunning defeat sustained by him in
the preceding October, had