The Silver Skates Page 13

  Closer, closer crept the robber. His back was very near Peter now. The knife was laid softly upon the floor. One careful arm reached forth stealthily to drag the clothes from the chair by the captain’s bed – the robbery was commenced.

  Now was Peter’s time! Holding his breath, he sprang up and leapt with all his strength upon the robber’s back, stunning the rascal with the force of the blow. To seize the knife was but a second’s work. The robber began to struggle, but Peter sat like a giant astride the prostrate form.

  “If you stir,” said the brave boy in as terrible a voice as he could command, “stir but one inch, I will plunge this knife into your neck. Boys! Boys! Wake up!” he shouted, still pressing down the black head, and holding the knife at pricking distance. “Give us a hand! I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”

  The chrysalis rolled over, but made no other sign.

  “Up, boys!” cried Peter, never budging. “Ludwig! Lambert! Thunder! Are you all dead?”

  Dead! Not they. Van Mounen and Ben were on their feet in an instant.

  “Hey? What now?” they shouted.

  “I’ve got a robber here,” said Peter coolly. “Lie still, you scoundrel, or I’ll slice your head off! Now, boys, cut out your bed-cord – plenty of time – he’s a dead man if he stirs.”

  Peter felt that he weighed a thousand pounds. So he did, with that knife in his hand. The man growled and swore, but dared not move.

  Ludwig was up by this time. He had a great jackknife, the pride of his heart, in his breeches pocket. It could do good service now. They bared the bedstead in a moment. It was laced backwards and forwards with a rope.

  “I’ll cut it,” cried Ludwig, sawing away at the knot. “Hold him tight, Pete!”

  “Never fear!” answered the captain, giving the robber a warning prick.

  The boys were soon pulling at the rope like good fellows. It was out at last – a long, stout piece.

  “Now, boys,” commanded the captain, “lift up his rascally arms! Cross his hands over his back! That’s right – excuse me for being in the way – tie them tight!”

  “Yes, and his feet too, the villain!” cried the boys in great excitement, tying knot after knot with Herculean jerks.

  The prisoner changed his tone.

  “Oh – oh!” he moaned, “spare a poor sick man – I was but walking in my sleep.”

  “Ugh!” grunted Lambert, still tugging away at the rope. “Asleep, were you? Well, we’ll wake you up.”

  The man muttered fierce oaths between his teeth – then cried in a piteous voice: “Unbind me, good young masters! I have five little children at home. By St Bavo, I swear to give you each a ten-guilder piece if you will but free me!”

  “Ha! Ha!” laughed Peter.

  “Ha! Ha!” laughed the other boys.

  Then came threats – threats that made Ludwig fairly shudder, though he continued to bind and tie with redoubled energy.

  “Hold up, Mynheer housebreaker!” said van Mounen in a warning voice. “That knife is very near your throat. If you make the captain nervous, there is no telling what may happen.”

  The robber took the hint, and fell into a sullen silence.

  Just at this moment the chrysalis upon the bed stirred and sat erect.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, without opening his eyes.

  “Matter!” echoed Ludwig, half trembling, half laughing. “Get up, Jacob. Here’s work for you. Come, sit on this fellow’s back while we get into our clothes – we’re half perished.”

  “What fellow? Donder!”

  “Hurrah for Poot!” cried all the boys, as Jacob, sliding quickly to the floor, bedclothes and all, took in the state of affairs at a glance, and sat heavily beside Peter on the robber’s back.

  Oh, didn’t the fellow groan then!

  “No use in holding him down any longer, boys,” said Peter, rising, but bending as he did so to draw a pistol from his man’s belt. “You see I’ve been keeping guard over this pretty little weapon for the last ten minutes. It’s cocked, and the least wriggle might have set it off. No danger now. I must dress myself. You and I, Lambert, will go for the police. I’d no idea it was so cold.”

  “Where is Carl?” asked one of the boys.

  They looked at one another. Carl certainly was not among them.

  “Oh!” cried Ludwig, frightened at last. “Where is he? Perhaps he’s had a fight with the robber and got killed.”

  “Not a bit of it,” said Peter quietly, as he buttoned his stout jacket. “Look under the beds.”

  They did so. Carl was not there.

  Just then they heard a commotion on the stairway. Ben hastened to open the door. The landlord almost tumbled in. He was armed with a big blunderbuss. Two or three lodgers followed, then the daughter, with an upraised frying pan in one hand and a candle in the other, and behind her, looking pale and frightened, the gallant Carl!

  “There’s your man, mine host,” said Peter, nodding towards the prisoner.

  Mine host raised his blunderbuss, the girl screamed and Jacob, more nimble than usual, rolled quickly from the robber’s back.

  “Don’t fire,” cried Peter. “He is tied, hand and foot. Let’s roll him over and see what he looks like.”

  Carl stepped briskly forwards, with a blustering, “Yes. We’ll turn him over in a way he won’t like. Lucky we’ve caught him!”

  “Ha! Ha!” laughed Ludwig. “Where were you, Master Carl?”

  “Where was I?” retorted Carl angrily. “Why, I went to give the alarm, to be sure!”

  All the boys exchanged glances, but they were too happy and elated to say anything ill-natured. Carl certainly was bold enough now. He took the lead while three others aided him in turning the helpless man.

  While the robber lay, face up, scowling and muttering, Ludwig took the candlestick from the girl’s hand.

  “I must have a good look at the beauty,” he said, drawing closer, but the words were no sooner spoken than he turned pale and started so violently that he almost dropped the candle.

  “The voetspoelen!” he cried. “Why, boys, it’s the man who sat by the fire!”

  “Of course it is,” answered Peter. “We counted our money before him like simpletons. But what have we to do with voetspoelen, brother Ludwig? A month in jail is punishment enough.”

  The landlord’s daughter had left the room. She now ran in, holding up a pair of huge wooden shoes. “See, Father,” she cried, “here are his great ugly boots. It’s the man that we put in the next room after the young masters went to bed. Ah! It was wrong to send the poor young gentlemen up here so far out of sight and sound.”

  “The scoundrel!” hissed the landlord. “He has disgraced my house. I go for the police at once!”

  In less than fifteen minutes two drowsy-looking officers were in the room. After telling Mynheer Kleef that he must appear early in the morning with the boys and make his complaint before a magistrate, they marched off with their prisoner.

  One would think the captain and his band could have slept no more that night, but the mooring has not yet been found that can prevent youth and an easy conscience from drifting down the river of dreams. The boys were too much fatigued to let so slight a thing as capturing a robber bind them to wakefulness. They were soon in bed again, floating away to strange scenes made of familiar things. Ludwig and Carl had spread their bedding upon the floor. One had already forgotten the Voetspoelen, the race – everything, but Carl was wide awake. He heard the carillons ringing out their solemn nightly music, and the watchman’s noisy clapper putting discord at the quarter-hours. He saw the moonshine glide away from the window and the red morning light come pouring in, and all the while he kept thinking: “Pooh! What a goose I have made of myself!” Carl Schummel, alone, with none to look or to listen, was not quite so grand a fellow as Carl Schummel strutting about in his b
oots.

  Chapter 23

  Before the Court

  You may believe the landlord’s daughter bestirred herself to prepare a good meal for the boys next morning. Mynheer had a Chinese gong that could make more noise than a dozen breakfast bells. Its hideous reveille clanging through the house generally startled the drowsiest lodgers into activity, but the maiden would not allow it to be sounded this morning.

  “Let the brave young gentlemen sleep,” she said to the greasy kitchen boy. “They shall be warmly fed when they awaken.”

  It was ten o’clock when Captain Peter and his band came straggling down one by one.

  “A pretty hour,” said mine host gruffly. “It is high time we were before the court. Fine business, this, for a respectable inn. You will testify truly, young masters, that you found most excellent fare and lodgement at the Red Lion?”

  “Of course we will,” answered Carl saucily, “and pleasant company, too – though they visit at rather unseasonable hours.”

  A stare and a “humph!” was all the answer Mynheer made to this, but the daughter was more communicative. Shaking her earrings at Carl, she said sharply:

  “Not so very pleasant either, master traveller, if one could judge by the way you ran away from it!”

  “Impertinent creature!” hissed Carl under his breath, as he began busily to examine his skate straps. Meantime, the kitchen boy, listening outside at the crack of the door, doubled himself with silent laughter.

  After breakfast the boys went to the police court, accompanied by Huygens Kleef and his daughter. Mynheer’s testimony was principally to the effect that such a thing as a robber at the Red Lion had been unheard of until last night. And as for the Red Lion, it was a most respectable inn – as respectable as any house in Leiden. Each boy, in turn, told all he knew of the affair, and identified the prisoner in the box as the same man who entered their room in the dead of night. Ludwig was surprised to find that the robber was a man of ordinary size – especially after he had described him, under oath, to the court as a tremendous fellow, with great square shoulders, and legs of prodigious weight. Jacob swore that he was awakened by the robber kicking and thrashing upon the floor, and, immediately afterwards, Peter and the rest (feeling sorry that they had not explained the matter to their sleepy comrade) testified that the man had not moved a muscle from the moment the point of the dagger touched his throat until, bound from head to foot, he was rolled over for inspection. The landlord’s daughter made one boy blush, and all the court smile, by declaring that, “if it hadn’t been for that handsome young gentleman there” (pointing to Peter), they “might have all been murdered in their beds, for the dreadful man had a great, shining knife most as long as Your Honour’s arm”, and she believed “the handsome young gentleman had struggled hard enough to get it away from him, but he was too modest – bless him! – to say so”.

  Finally, after a little questioning and cross-questioning from the public prosecutor, the witnesses were dismissed, and the robber was handed over to the consideration of the criminal court.

  “The scoundrel!” said Carl savagely, when the boys reached the street. “He ought to be sent to jail at once. If I had been in your place, Peter, I certainly should have killed him outright!”

  “He was fortunate, then, in falling into gentler hands,” was Peter’s quiet reply. “It appears he has been arrested before under a charge of housebreaking. He did not succeed in robbing this time, but he broke the door fastenings, and that, I believe, makes a burglary in the eye of the law. He was armed with a knife too, and that makes it worse for him, poor fellow!”

  “Poor fellow!” mimicked Carl. “One would think he was your brother!”

  “So he is my brother, and yours too, Carl Schummel, for that matter,” answered Peter, looking into Carl’s eye. “We cannot say what we might have become under other circumstances. We have been bolstered up from evil since the hour we were born. A happy home and good parents might have made that man a fine fellow instead of what he is. God grant that the law may cure and not crush him!”

  “Amen to that!” said Lambert heartily, while Ludwig van Holp looked at his brother in such a bright, proud way that Jacob Poot, who was an only son, wished from his heart that the little form buried in the old church at home had lived to grow up beside him.

  “Humph!” said Carl. “It’s very well to be saintly and forgiving, and all that sort of thing, but I’m naturally hard. All these fine ideas seem to rattle off of me like hailstones – and it’s nobody’s business, either, if they do.”

  Peter recognized a touch of good feeling in this clumsy concession. Holding out his hand, he said in a frank, hearty tone:

  “Come, lad, shake hands, and let us be good friends, even if we don’t agree on all questions.”

  “We do agree better than you think,” sulked Carl, as he returned Peter’s grasp.

  “All right,” responded Peter briskly. “Now, van Mounen, we await Benjamin’s wishes. Where would he like to go?”

  “To the Egyptian Museum,” answered Lambert, after holding a brief consultation with Ben.

  “That is on the Breedestraat. To the museum let it be. Come, boys!”

  Chapter 24

  The Beleaguered Cities

  This open square before us,” said Lambert, as he and Ben walked on together, “is pretty in summer, with its shady trees. They call it the Grote Rüine. Years ago it was covered with houses, and the Rapenburg canal, here, ran through the street. Well, one day a barge loaded with forty thousand pounds of gunpowder, bound for Delft, was lying alongside, and the bargemen took a notion to cook their dinner on the deck. And before anyone knew it, sir, the whole thing blew up, killing lots of persons and scattering about three hundred houses to the winds.”

  “What!” exclaimed Ben. “Did the explosion destroy three hundred houses?”

  “Yes, sir – my father was in Leiden at the time. He says it was terrible. The explosion occurred just at noon, and was like a volcano. All this part of the town was on fire in an instant, buildings tumbling down, and men, women and children groaning under the ruins. The king himself came to the city and acted nobly, Father says, staying out in the streets all night, encouraging the survivors in their efforts to arrest the fire and rescue as many as possible from under the heaps of stone and rubbish. Through his means, a collection for the benefit of the sufferers was raised throughout the kingdom, besides a hundred thousand guilders paid out of the treasury. Father was only nineteen years old then. It was in 1807, I believe, but he remembers it perfectly. A friend of his, Professor Luzac,* was among the killed. They have a tablet erected to his memory in St Peter’s Church, farther on – the queerest thing you ever saw – with an image of the professor carved upon it, representing him just as he looked when he was found after the explosion.”

  “What a strange idea! Isn’t Boerhaave’s monument in St Peter’s also?”

  “I cannot remember. Perhaps Peter knows.”

  The captain delighted Ben by saying that the monument was there, and that he thought they might be able to see it during the day.

  “Lambert,” continued Peter, “ask Ben if he saw van der Werff’s* portrait at the town hall last night?”

  “No,” said Lambert, “I can answer for him. It was too late to go in. I say, boys, it is really wonderful how much Ben knows. Why, he has told me a volume of Dutch history already. I’ll wager he has the Siege of Leiden at his tongue’s end.”

  “His tongue must burn then,” interposed Ludwig, “for if Bilderdijk’s* account is true it was a pretty hot affair.”

  Ben was looking at them with an enquiring smile.

  “We are speaking of the Siege of Leiden,” explained Lambert.

  “Oh yes,” said Ben eagerly, “I had forgotten all about it. This was the very place. Let’s give old van der Werff three cheers. Hur—”

  Van Mounen uttered a hasty
“Hush!”, and explained that, patriotic as the Dutch were, the police would soon have something to say if a party of boys cheered in the street at midday.

  “What! Not cheer van der Werff?” cried Ben indignantly. “One of the greatest chaps in history? Only think! Didn’t he hold out against those murderous Spaniards for months and months? There was the town, surrounded on all sides by the enemy – great black forts sending fire and death into the very heart of the city – but no surrender! Every man a hero – women and children too, brave and fierce as lions – provisions giving out, the very grass from between the paving stones gone – till people were glad to eat horses and cats and dogs and rats. Then came the plague – hundreds dying in the streets – but no surrender! Then, when they could bear no more – when the people, brave as they were, crowded about van der Werff in the public square, begging him to give up, what did the noble old burgomaster say? ‘I have sworn to defend this city, and with God’s help I mean to do it! If my body can satisfy your hunger, take it, and divide it among you – but expect no surrender so long as I am alive!’ Hurrah! Hur—”

  Ben was getting uproarious. Lambert playfully clapped his hand over his friend’s mouth. The result was one of those quick India-rubber scuffles fearful to behold, but delightful to human nature in its polliwog state.

  “Vat wash te matter, Pen?” asked Jacob, hurrying forwards.

  “Oh! Nothing at all,” panted Ben, “except that van Mounen was afraid of starting an English riot in this orderly town. He stopped my cheering for old van der—”

  “Ya, ya – it ish no goot to sheer – to make te noise for dat – you vill shee old van der Does’s likeness mit te stadhuis.”

  “See old van der Does? I thought it was van der Werff’s picture they had there.”

  “Ya,” responded Jacob, “van der Werff – well, vot of it! Both ish just ash goot.”

  “Yes, van der Does was a noble old Dutchman, but he was not van der Werff. I know he defended the city like a brick,* and—”