CHAPTER XVI. Situation of Sluys--Its Dutch and English Garrison--Williams writes from Sluys to the Queen--Jealousy between the Earl and States-- Schemes to relieve Sluys--Which are feeble and unsuccessful--The Town Capitulates--Parma enters--Leicester enraged--The Queen angry with the Anti-Leicestrians--Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst punished-- Drake sails for Spain--His Exploits at Cadiz and Lisbon--He is rebuked by Elizabeth.When Dante had passed through the third circle of the Inferno--a desertof red-hot sand, in which lay a multitude of victims of divine wrath,additionally tortured by an ever-descending storm of fiery flakes--he wasled by Virgil out of this burning wilderness along a narrow causeway.This path was protected, he said, against the showers of flame, by thelines of vapour which rose eternally from a boiling brook. Even by suchshadowy bulwarks, added the poet, do the Flemings between Kadzand andBruges protect their land against the ever-threatening sea.It was precisely among these slender dykes between Kadzand and Brugesthat Alexander Farnese had now planted all the troops that he couldmuster in the field. It was his determination to conquer the city ofSluys; for the possession of that important sea-port was necessary forhim as a basis for the invasion of England, which now occupied all thethoughts of his sovereign and himself.Exactly opposite the city was the island of Kadzand, once a fair andfertile territory, with a city and many flourishing villages upon itssurface, but at that epoch diminished to a small dreary sand-bank by theencroachments of the ocean.A stream of inland water, rising a few leagues to the south of Sluys,divided itself into many branches just before reaching the city,converted the surrounding territory into a miniature archipelago--theislands of which were shifting treacherous sand-banks at low water, andsubmerged ones at flood--and then widening and deepening into aconsiderable estuary, opened for the city a capacious harbour, and anexcellent although intricate passage to the sea. The city, which waswell built and thriving, was so hidden in its labyrinth of canals and