The Silver Skates Read online

  When the city came in sight, it was high time to waken the sleeper. The feat accomplished, Peter’s prophecy came to pass. Master Jacob was quite restored and in excellent spirits.

  The skipper made a feeble remonstrance when Peter, with hearty thanks, endeavoured to slip some silver pieces into his tough, brown palm.

  “Ye see, young master,” said he, drawing away his hand, “the regular line o’ trade’s one thing, and a favour’s another.”

  “I know it,” said Peter, “but those boys and girls of yours will want sweets when you get home. Buy them some in the name of St Nicholas.”

  The man grinned. “Ay, true enough, I’ve young ’uns in plenty, a clean boatload of them. You are a sharp young master at guessing.”

  This time the knotty hand hitched forwards again, quite carelessly, it seemed, but its palm was upwards. Peter hastily dropped in the money and moved away.

  The sail soon came tumbling down. Scrape, scrape went the brake, scattering an ice shower round the boat.

  “Goodbye, skipper!” shouted the boys, seizing their skates and leaping from the deck one by one. “Many thanks to you!”

  “Goodbye! Goodb— Hold! Here! Stop! I want my coat.”

  Ben was carefully assisting his cousin over the side of the boat.

  “What is the man shouting about? Oh, I know: you have his wrapper round your shoulders!”

  “Dat ish true,” answered Jacob, half jumping, half tumbling down upon the framework. “Dat ish vot make him sho heavy.”

  “Made you so heavy, you mean, Poot?”

  “Ya, made you so heavy – dat ish true,” said Jacob innocently, as he worked himself free from the big wrapper. “Dere, now you hands it mit him straits way, and tells him I voz much tanks for dat.”

  “Ho! For an inn!” cried Peter, as they stepped into the city. “Be brisk, my fine fellows!”

  Chapter 21

  Mynheer Kleef and His

  Bill Of Fare

  The boys soon found an unpretending establishment near the Breedstraat (Broad Street), with a funnily painted lion over the door. This was the Roode Leeuw, or Red Lion, kept by one Huygens Kleef, a stout Dutchman with short legs and a very long pipe.

  By this time they were in a ravenous condition. The tiffin taken at Haarlem had served only to give them an appetite, and this had been heightened by their exercise and swift sail upon the canal.

  “Come, mine host, give us what you can!” cried Peter rather pompously.

  “I can give you anything – everything,” answered Mynheer Kleef, performing a difficult bow.

  “Well, give us sausage and pudding.”

  “Ah, Mynheer, the sausage is all gone. There is no pudding.”

  “Salmagundi, then, and plenty of it.”

  “That is out also, young master.”

  “Eggs, and be quick.”

  “Winter eggs are very poor eating,” answered the innkeeper, puckering his lips, and lifting his eyebrows.

  “No eggs? Well, caviar.”

  The Dutchman raised his fat hands:

  “Caviar! That is made of gold! Who has caviar to sell?”

  Peter had sometimes eaten it at home. He knew that it was made of the roe of the sturgeon and certain other large fish, but he had no idea of its cost.

  “Well, mine host, what have you?”

  “What have I? Everything. I have rye bread, sauerkraut, potato salad and the fattest herring in Leiden.”

  “What do you say, boys?” asked the captain. “Will that do?”

  “Yes,” cried the famished youths, “if he’ll only be quick.”

  Mynheer moved off like one walking in his sleep, but soon opened his eyes wide at the miraculous manner in which his herring were made to disappear. Next came, or rather went, potato salad, rye bread and coffee; then Utrecht water* flavoured with orange, and finally slices of dry gingerbread. This last delicacy was not on the regular bill of fare, but Mynheer Kleef, driven to extremes, solemnly produced it from his own private stores, and gave only a placid blink when his voracious young travellers started up, declaring they had eaten enough.

  “I should think so!” he exclaimed internally, but his smooth face gave no sign.

  Softly rubbing his hands, he asked:

  “Will your worships have beds?”

  “Will your worships have beds?” mocked Carl. “What do you mean? Do we look sleepy?”

  “Not at all, master, but I would cause them to be warmed and aired. None sleep under damp sheets at the Red Lion.”

  “Ah, I understand. Shall we come back here to sleep, Captain?”

  Peter was accustomed to finer lodgings, but this was a frolic.

  “Why not?” he replied. “We can fare excellently here.”

  “Your worship speaks only the truth,” said Mynheer, with great deference.

  “How fine to be called ‘your worship’,” laughed Ludwig aside to Lambert, while Peter replied:

  “Well, mine host, you may get the rooms ready by nine.”

  “I have one beautiful chamber, with three beds, that will hold all of your worships,” said Mynheer Kleef coaxingly.

  “That will do.”

  “Whew!” whistled Carl when they reached the street.

  Ludwig started. “What now?”

  “Nothing – only Mynheer Kleef of the Red Lion little thinks how we shall make things spin in that same room tonight. We’ll set the bolsters flying!”

  “Order!” cried the captain. “Now, boys, I must seek this great Dr Boekman before I sleep. If he is in Leiden it will be no great task to find him, for he always puts up at the Golden Eagle when he comes here. I wonder that you did not all go to bed at once. Still, as you are awake, what say you to walking with Ben up by the museum or the stadhuis?”

  “Agreed,” said Ludwig and Lambert, but Jacob preferred to go with Peter. In vain Ben tried to persuade him to remain at the inn and rest. He declared that he never felt “petter”, and wished of all things to take a look at the city, for it was his first “stop mit Leiden”.

  “Oh, it will not harm him,” said Lambert. “How long the day has been – and what glorious sport we have had. It hardly seems possible that we left Broek only this morning.”

  Jacob yawned.

  “I have enjoyed it well,” he said, ‘but it seems to me at least a week since we started.”

  Carl laughed, and muttered something about “twenty naps”.

  “Here we are at the corner. Remember, we all meet at the Red Lion at eight,” said the captain, as he and Jacob walked away.

  Chapter 22

  The Red Lion Becomes Dangerous

  The boys were glad to find a blazing fire awaiting them upon their return to the Red Lion. Carl and his party were there first. Soon afterwards Peter and Jacob came in. They had enquired in vain concerning Dr Boekman. All they could ascertain was that he had been seen in Haarlem that morning.

  “As for his being in Leiden,” the landlord of the Golden Eagle had said to Peter, “the thing is impossible. He always lodges here when in town. By this time there would be a crowd at my door waiting to consult him. Bah! People make such fools of themselves!”

  “He is called a great surgeon,” said Peter.

  “Yes, the greatest in Holland. But what of that? What of being the greatest pill-choker and knife-slasher in the world? The man is a bear. Only last month on this very spot he called me a pig – before three customers!”

  “No!” exclaimed Peter, trying to look surprised and indignant.

  “Yes, master, a pig,” repeated the landlord, puffing at his pipe with an injured air. “Bah! If he did not pay fine prices and bring customers to my house I would sooner see him in the Vliet canal than give him lodgement.”

  Perhaps mine host felt that he was speaking too openly to a stranger, or it may be he
saw a smile lurking in Peter’s face, for he added sharply:

  “Come, now, what more do you wish? Supper? Beds?”

  “No, Mynheer, I am but searching for Dr Boekman.”

  “Go find him. He is not in Leiden.”

  Peter was not to be put off so easily. After receiving a few more rough words, he succeeded in obtaining permission to leave a note for the famous surgeon, or rather, he bought from his amiable landlord the privilege of writing it there, and a promise that it should be promptly delivered when Dr Boekman arrived. This accomplished, Peter and Jacob returned to the Red Lion.

  This inn had once been a fine house – the home of a rich burgher – but having grown old and shabby, it had passed through many hands, until finally it had fallen into the possession of Mynheer Kleef. He was fond of saying, as he looked up at its dingy, broken walls: “Mend it and paint it, and there’s not a prettier house in Leiden.” It stood six storeys high from the street. The first three were of equal breadth but of various heights, the last three were in the great, high roof, and grew smaller and smaller like a set of double steps until the top one was lost in a point. The roof was built of short, shining tiles, and the windows, with their little panes, seemed to be scattered irregularly over the face of the building without the slightest attention to outward effect. But the public room on the ground floor was the landlord’s joy and pride. He never said “Mend it and paint it” there, for everything was in the highest condition of Dutch neatness and order. If you will but open your mind’s eye, you may look into the apartment.

  Imagine a large, bare room with a floor that seemed to be made of squares cut out of glazed earthen pie dishes – first a yellow piece, then a red, until the whole looked like a vast chequerboard. Fancy a dozen high-backed wooden chairs standing around; then a great hollow chimney place all aglow with its blazing fire, reflected a hundred times in the polished steel firedogs; a tiled hearth, tiled sides, tiled top, with a Dutch sentence upon it; and over all, high above one’s head, a narrow mantelshelf, filled with shining brass candlesticks, pipe lighters and tinderboxes. Then see in one end of the room three pine tables; in the other a closet and a deal dresser. The latter is filled with mugs, dishes, pipes, tankards, earthen and glass bottles, and is guarded at one end by a brass-hooped keg standing upon long legs. Everything dim with tobacco smoke, but otherwise clean as soap and sand can make it. Next picture two sleepy, shabby-looking men, in wooden shoes, seated near the glowing fireplace, hugging their knees and smoking short, stumpy pipes; Mynheer Kleef walking softly and heavily about, clad in leather knee-breeches, felt shoes and a green jacket wider than it is long; then throw a heap of skates in the corner and put six tired, well-dressed boys, in various attitudes, upon the wooden chairs, and you will see the coffee room of the Red Lion just as it appeared at nine o’clock on the evening of 6th December 184–. For supper, gingerbread again, slices of Dutch sausage, rye bread sprinkled with aniseed, pickles, a bottle of Utrecht water and a pot of very mysterious coffee. The boys were ravenous enough to take all they could get, and pronounce it excellent. Ben made wry faces, but Jacob declared he had never eaten a better meal. After they had laughed and talked awhile, and counted their money by way of settling a discussion that arose concerning their expenses, the captain marched his company off to bed, led on by a greasy pioneer boy who carried skates and a candlestick instead of an axe.

  One of the ill-favoured men by the fire had shuffled towards the dresser and was ordering a mug of beer, just as Ludwig, who brought up the rear, was stepping from the apartment.

  “I don’t like that fellow’s eye,” he whispered to Carl. “He looks like a pirate, or something of that kind.”

  “Looks like a granny!” answered Carl, in sleepy disdain.

  Ludwig laughed uneasily.

  “Granny or no granny,” he whispered. “I tell you he looks just like one of those men in the Voetspoelen.”

  “Pooh!” sneered Carl, “I knew it. That picture was too much for you. Look sharp now, and see if yon fellow with the candle doesn’t look like the other villain.”

  “No, indeed, his face is as honest as a Gouda cheese. But I say, Carl, that really was a horrid picture.”

  “Humph! What did you stare at it so long for?”

  “I couldn’t help it.”

  By this time the boys had reached the “beautiful room with three beds in it”. A dumpy little maiden with long earrings met them at the doorway, dropped them a curtsy and passed out. She carried a long-handled thing that resembled a frying pan with a cover.

  “I am glad to see that,” said van Mounen to Ben.

  “What?”

  “Why, the warming pan! It’s full of hot ashes – she’s been heating our beds.”

  “Oh! A warming pan, eh! Much obliged to her, I’m sure,” said Ben, too sleepy to make any further comment.

  Meantime, Ludwig still talked of the picture that had made such a strong impression upon him. He had seen it in a shop window during their walk. It was a poorly painted thing, representing two men tied back to back, standing on shipboard, surrounded by a group of seamen who were preparing to cast them together into the sea. This mode of putting prisoners to death was called voetspoelen, or feet washing, and was practised by the Dutch upon the pirates of Dunkirk in 1605, and again by the Spaniards upon the Dutch, in the horrible massacre that followed the Siege of Haarlem.* Bad as the painting was, the expression upon the pirates’ faces was well given. Sullen and despairing as they seemed, they wore such a cruel, malignant aspect that Ludwig had felt a secret satisfaction in contemplating their helpless condition. He might have forgotten the scene by this time but for that ill-looking man by the fire. Now, while he capered about, boy-like, and threw himself with an antic into his bed, he inwardly hoped that the Voetspoelen would not haunt his dreams.

  It was a cold, cheerless room. A fire had been newly kindled in the burnished stove, and seemed to shiver even while it was trying to burn. The windows, with their funny little panes, were bare and shiny, and the cold, waxed floor looked like a sheet of yellow ice. Three rush-bottomed chairs stood stiffly against the wall, alternating with three narrow wooden bedsteads that made the room look like the deserted ward of a hospital. At any other time the boys would have found it quite impossible to sleep in pairs, especially in such narrow quarters, but tonight they lost all fear of being crowded, and longed only to lay their weary bodies upon the feather beds that lay lightly upon each cot. Had the boys been in Germany instead of Holland, they might have been covered, also, by a bed of down or feathers. This peculiar form of luxury was at that time adopted only by wealthy or eccentric Hollanders.

  Ludwig, as we have seen, had not quite lost his friskiness, but the other boys, after one or two feeble attempts at pillow-firing, composed themselves for the night with the greatest dignity. Nothing like fatigue for making boys behave themselves.

  “Goodnight, boys!” said Peter’s voice from under the covers.

  “Goodnight,” called back everybody but Jacob, who already lay snoring beside the captain.

  “I say,” shouted Carl, after a moment, “don’t sneeze, anybody. Ludwig’s in a fright!”

  “No such thing,” retorted Ludwig in a smothered voice. Then there was a little whispered dispute, which was ended by Carl saying:

  “For my part, I don’t know what fear is. But you really are a timid fellow, Ludwig.”

  Ludwig grunted sleepily, but made no further reply.

  It was the middle of the night. The fire had shivered itself to death, and, in place of its gleams, little squares of moonlight lay upon the floor, slowly, slowly shifting their way across the room. Something else was moving also, but they did not see it. Sleeping boys keep but a poor lookout. During the early hours of the night, Jacob Poot had been gradually but surely winding himself with all the bed covers. He now lay like a monster chrysalis beside the half-frozen Peter, who, accordingly, was skatin
g with all his might over the coldest, bleakest of dreamland icebergs.

  Something else, I say, besides the moonlight, was moving across the bare, polished floor – moving not quite so slowly, but quite stealthily.

  Wake up, Ludwig! The voetspoelen pirate is growing real!

  No. Ludwig does not waken, but he moans in his sleep.

  Does not Carl hear it – Carl the brave, the fearless?

  No. Carl is dreaming of the race.

  And Jacob? Van Mounen? Ben?

  No. They too are dreaming of the race, and Katrinka is singing through their dreams – laughing, flitting past them; now and then a wave from the great organ surges through their midst.

  Still the thing moves, slowly, slowly.

  Peter! Captain Peter, there is danger!

  Peter heard no call, but, in his dream, he slid a few thousand feet from one iceberg to another, and the shock awoke him.

  Whew! How cold he was! He gave a hopeless, desperate tug at the chrysalis in vain: sheet, blanket and spread were firmly wound about Jacob’s inanimate form. Peter looked drowsily towards the window.

  “Clear moonlight,” he thought. “We shall have pleasant weather tomorrow. Hallo! What’s that?”

  He saw the moving thing, or rather something black crouching upon the floor, for it had halted as Peter stirred.

  He watched in silence.

  Soon it moved again, nearer and nearer. It was a man crawling upon hands and feet!

  The captain’s first impulse was to call out, but he took an instant to consider matters.

  The creeper had a shining knife in one hand. This was ugly, but Peter was naturally self-possessed. When the head turned, Peter’s eyes were closed as if in sleep, but at other times nothing could be keener, sharper than the captain’s gaze.