Shrill blew the fifes, and the braced drums rang briskly, as they entered upon a dreary wold to the northward of Crowland, a grassy and heathy waste, or down, over which the fading light of the setting sun shone in all its saffron splendour. On debouching from the road over which the tall poles with the slender stems of the hops twining and clambering, though leafless and faded, formed an archway through the thick and dense hop gardens that bordered each side of the way, the advanced guard uttered a shout of surprise and defiance, and halted till the main body came up. Goring his horse, Dunbarton dashed to the front, and beheld a dense column of darkly-armed cavalry formed in line across the moor, about a gunshot distant. They were motionless as statues, and the setting sun shone full upon their serried files and glittering weapons; they were soldierlike in aspect; their helmets and corslets were of unpolished iron, as black as their long jackboots; their yellow coats, heavily cuffed, and with looped skirts, proclaimed them Dutch, Their horses were large, heavily jointed, and as phlegmatic in aspect as their riders, for the whole brigade stood motionless and still as a line of bronze statues. Even their blue standards, with, the white _fess_, hung pendant and unmoven. A little in advance of the line was an officer on horseback, motionless, inert, and seemingly fast asleep; he was a man of vast rotundity, and cased in a capacious cuirass of polished steel, which gave him the aspect of a mighty tortoise, or some great bulb of which the gilt helmet formed the apex. An enormous basket-hilted sword swung on one side of him, and a brass blunderbuss on the other; while a great tin speaking-trumpet, like that of a Dutch skipper (then common in all armies, and last used by the brave Lord Heathfield), was grasped in his right hand. So utterly lifeless seemed the whole array, that if any other proof was wanting, it alone would have proclaimed them Hollanders. "Dutch, by all the devils!" cried Dunbarton, galloping back to the Royals. "'Tis the Baron De Ginckel and his Swart Ruyters. Pikes against cavalry! Gavin, throw your grenadiers into the centre. Finland, Drumquhazel, brave gentlemen, march me your companies to the front. Musqueteers, blow your matches, open your pans, and prepare to give fire!" "Shoulder to shoulder, my boys!" cried Dr. Joram; "though the number of Gog be countless as the sand on the sea-shore, fear not!"