Twice he and Guy have crossed swords, but have been swept away from each other by the surging tide of battle—which is again turning to numbers, and the Spaniards. The cannon of the boarded ship are now of little use, and the guns of the other vessels will not bear upon this side of the fight—the day is looking badly for the Beggars of the Sea. But as Guy fights he thinks, and suddenly returning to his own ship, cries out: “Load up two demi-culverins with solid shot and get them on our forecastle.” This being done by Corker and some men, Chester directs these cannon not at the Spaniards, but at the ice upon which the Spanish boarding ladders rest. The first discharge puts fifty men and their ladders in the water. “We’ll drown them quicker than we’ll kill them!” yell the English sailors—and a few more rounds settle the affair—the ice is destroyed under the very feet of the Spaniards, and floundering in the water’s chilling grasp, a hundred veterans sink. The others give back. This icy citadel is too hard a nut for them to crack. Looking on the matter as a bad job that he can only make worse by continuing, the Spanish commander, apparently unwounded, gives the order to retire, and his veterans drawing off slowly and taking their slightly wounded with them, turn their faces toward Amsterdam. Noting in their slippery path many of his enemies fall even as they trudge along the ice, ’t Hoen, who is laughing at them, suddenly shouts: “We mustn’t let a man of them escape. After them, on skates! After them on skates!” he cries to the Dutch captains of the other vessels. This idea seeming to strike the Hollanders to a man, the English who are capable of executing manœuvers on the ice join with them, and in less than five minutes Guy puts on the glassy field by his boats a party of seventy-five from the Dover Lass, each man armed with arquebus and sword or pike and battle axe, and each with Friesland skates upon his feet. Even Oliver, who can hardly keep his head off the ice, accompanies them. The Dutch captains bring yet larger parties, all their men being proficient in this national pastime of Holland. The Spaniards, totally unexpecting pursuit, are making their way slowly to the city, not even looking back, for the sight behind them of dead men drowned or butchered, and wounded comrades who are crawling, slipping and freezing on the ice, is not pleasant. “These maimed cannot escape us,” cries Maarten Merens, one of the Dutch captains, “we’ll finish the wounded at our leisure. On for those who are not hurt,” and the Gueux speed on like swallows in their flight. So it comes to pass that the Spanish commander hears behind him suddenly a whirring sound as the irons cut the ice, and looking backward, skimming like birds, come four hundred Dutch and English, not half the number he is bringing back.