The appearance of the advanced party of Langstone's troopers, whom the earl knew belonged to Sir John Lanier's brigade of English horse, had considerably increased the dread of the retreating regiment. There was now every prospect of being enclosed and cut off, for independent of infantry pouring from twenty different roads upon their route, there were 6000 horse following them on the spur from the eastern and western counties. Actuated by loyalty, by dread of capture and consequent disarmment, decimation, captivity, or dispersion, they marched with great rapidity, and to cheer them on, the earl and his officers constantly encouraged them by enthusiastic addresses and encomiums, to which the brave Royals responded by shouts and cheers.
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.