Erstwhile slugger for Connie Mack

Usage examples of dykes.

They had left the shore road and were now in a country of sheep-walks, fields of grass bounded by drystone dykes, and now and then a common bright with furze and the young sprouts of heather.

If the Low Countries, which number as many souls as we, cannot make a stand against them with all their advantages of rivers, and swamps, and dykes, and fortified towns, what chance should we have who have none of these things?

What I say, comrades, is this: we have got to fight Spain -- you know the grudge Philip bears us -- and it is far better that we should go over and fight the Spaniards in the Low Countries, side by side with the people there, and with all the advantages that their rivers and dykes give, and with the comfort that our wives and children are safe here at home, than wait till Spain has crushed down the Netherlands and exterminated the people, and is then able, with France as her ally, to turn her whole strength against us.

If they should succeed in cutting off communication along the dykes we should have to raise the siege of Haarlem, to surrender, hands crossed, or to starve.

Your mission is to encourage the inhabitants to resist to the last, to rouse them to enthusiasm if you can, to give them my solemn promise that they shall not be deserted, and to assure them that if I cannot raise a force sufficient to relieve them I will myself come round and superintend the operation of cutting the dykes and laying the whole country under water.

Governor Sonoy had opened many of the dykes, and the ground in the neighbourhood of the camp was already feeling soft and boggy.

It needed but that two great dykes should be pierced to spread inundation over the whole country.

He was the bearer of the copy of a letter sent from the prince to Sonoy, ordering him to protect the dykes and sluices with strong guards, lest the peasants, in order to save their crops, should repair the breaches.

It showed the people that resistance did not necessarily lead to calamity, that the risk was greater in surrender than in defiance, and, above all, that in their dykes they possessed means of defence that, if properly used, would fight for them even more effectually than they could do for themselves.

On the 3rd of August all was ready, and the prince himself superintended the breaking down of the dykes in sixteen places, while at the same time the sluices at Schiedam and Rotterdam were opened and the water began to pour over the land.

Between this town and Leyden were several other dykes, all of which would have to be taken.

The water was piled up high upon the southern coast of Holland, and sweeping furiously inland poured through the ruined dykes, and in twenty-four hours the fleet was afloat again.

Holland had gone from bad to worse, the utmost efforts of the population were needed to repair the broken dykes and again recover the submerged lands.

A certain Cornelius Rijpma, president of the Sea Polder board in Leeuwarden, in Friesland, is on record as saying some months ago that the dykes in his area consist of nothing more than layers of sand and that if a big storm comes they are certain to break.

By the best estimates, no repairs will be carried out to the threatened dykes for another twelve years, that is to say, 1995.