With a gentleman of the Rhyngraves, I went in a cart, or tumbrel (for it was no better; no other accommodation could be procured), of two wheels and one horse, to Bergen-op-Zoom, meeting by the way divers parties of his Highness's army now retiring toward their winter quarters; the convoy skiffs riding by thousands along the harbor. The fort was heretofore built by the English.
The next morning I embarked for Lillo, having refused a convoy of horse which was offered me. The tide being against us, we landed short of the fort on the beach, where we marched half leg deep in mud, ere we could gain the dyke, which, being five or six miles from Lillo, we were forced to walk on foot very wet and discomposed; and then entering a boat we passed the ferry, and came to the castle. Being taken before the Governor, he demanded my pass, to which he set his hand, and asked two rix-dollars for a fee, which methought appeared very exorbitant in a soldier of his quality. I told him that I had[Pg 30] already purchased my pass of the commissaries at Rotterdam; at which, in a great fury, snatching the paper out of my hand, he flung it scornfully under the table, and bade me try whether I could get to Antwerp without his permission: but I had no sooner given him the dollars, then he returned the passport surlily enough, and made me pay fourteen Dutch shillings to the cantone, or searcher, for my contempt, which I was glad to do for fear of further trouble, should he have discovered my Spanish pass, in which the States were therein treated by the name of rebels. Besides all these exactions, I gave the commissary six shillings, to the soldiers something, and, ere perfectly clear of this frontier, thirty-one stivers to the man-of-war, who lay blocking up the river between Lillo and the opposite sconce called Lifkinshoeck.