Each of them spat out the same message with a tone between anger and uncanny dread: "The black galley!" Towards one o'clock in the morning the wind died down and the cannons too fell silent. Twenty minutes later there was a sudden burst of flame in the far, far distance that left the dark water looking blood-red from an equally bloody flash of lightning. The garish illumination flickered over hundreds of bearded and wild faces on the walls of Forts Liefkenhoek and Lillo and, half a second later, the dull thud of a huge explosion succeeded to the lightshow, with which the skirmish appeared to be at an end, in the same way that a tragedy ends with a catastrophe. No more signs of life could be seen or heard to hint at the continuation of the struggle. Although the garrisons of the Spanish fortresses waited patiently, listening out for a long time, they heard no more signs of gunfire. "Well, and what do you think about all this, Senyor Jeronimo?" the commandant of Fort Liefkenhoek asked one of his captains, a gaunt elderly man with grey hair and a grey beard, covered with scars from head to toe. The soldier thus addressed, who until then had been leaning on the parapet a little away from his comrades in arms, shrugged his shoulders. "Don't ask me about it, sir. By God and the Virgin Mary, I gave up racking my brains a long time ago over what this war has in store for us. My armour has become attached to my skin and I'll hold my ground till Judgement Day, but that's as much as I will do." "You are very brusque, Senyor," said the commander, who was a much younger man than the old warhorse and had only recently arrived in the Netherlands from Castile to take up the post of governor in this fort on the Scheldt. "Coronel," said Captain Jeronimo, "for many a long year now I have clung to my position on this lump of earth and watched the waves wash over it. You are young, coronel, but your predecessor was also young and a nobleman. He too stood here next to me, in the same place that you yourself are standing now, full of youthful dreams and hopes of victory. Now he lies down there below the waves and the one who was here before him was killed by a bullet near Turnhout--he too dreamed of returning crowned by victory to his castle on the Jarama, back to his young wife--bah! And now I can cast my mind back to the end of the year 1585 when I got back from Madrid--then I too believed in victory and honour in this war. I have ceased to believe in those things and you will as well, mi coronel, if God lets you live." "You have a morbid imagination, captain! But tell me, you were in Madrid in that ever memorable year?" "Aye, that I was." "In that glorious year that the great prince won back Antwerp for us?" "Yes." "So you entered the town with Alexander Farnese as a victor? Oh happy man!"