Going across this great fortification, they come out at the little sally-port in the moat where Guy had landed the night before. Here they have no difficulty of exit. The same galley that the Englishman brought up is waiting for them; the rowers in place with a new crew, to whom De Busaco introduces him as the officer who will take charge of the boat to Sandvliet; then goes on his way with a hasty “Adios, Señor!” for the little ensign is behind in his appointment with some young lady of the city. Just as the boat is casting off, for Guy does not waste much time about this matter, a waiting maid, one of the Moorish handmaidens of the night before, comes running over the little drawbridge crying: “Stay!—one moment—stay!” Then, as Guy stands up in the barge, she whispers to him, holding out a belt of heavy leather: “Buckle this round your waist, Señor Capitan, my mistress charges me to tell you to be careful of it. It is the one you left in the boat so carelessly last night.” “Oh—ah, yes,” says the Englishman, to whom lies this day have become easy. “I was looking for it. I didn’t know where I’d left it,” and buckling it about him, wonders what the deuce is in it. “Egad, it’s not a life preserver,” he thinks. “It would send me to the bottom like a shot.” Anyway, whatever it is, he is enraptured to get it from the hands of Hermoine de Alva. But he has not much time to think of this; he has called to the rowers and the boat is now under way and gliding through the moat that surrounds the great bastions of the Spaniard. Five minutes after they are in the open river, and, though the tide is against them, they are en route toward Sandvliet and safety. Keeping well across by the further bank of the river they pass unchallenged, though Guy can see the lights of several guard and patrol boats moving among the shipping on the city’s edge. “Give way, my lads,” cries the Englishman enthusiastically, “and I’ll stand a cask of wine when we reach Sandvliet.” Thus adjured the men bend to their oars, while the cockswain of the barge gets into quite friendly chat with Chester, telling him that this place they are going to is a beautiful summer chateau used sometimes by Alva himself, but mostly by his daughter, to enjoy the fresh sea breezes blowing up the Schelde estuary during the hot months of summer. “We came down very early this year,” he says, “the weather was so pleasant. Fortunately I was in Antwerp last night, otherwise I would have been done to death with poor Antonio and the rest by those murdering Beggars of the Sea.” The conversation of this man whiles away the time, and in three hours, the wind aiding them a little, they are off the Fort of Lillo.