The Silver Skates Read online

  One of the old prisons of Amsterdam, called the Rasp-house* because the thieves and vagrants who were confined there were employed in rasping logwood, had a cell for the punishment of lazy prisoners. In one corner of this cell was a pump, and in another an opening through which a steady stream of water was admitted. The prisoner could take his choice – either to stand still and be drowned, or to work for dear life at the pump and keep the flood down until his jailer chose to relieve him. Now it seems to me that, throughout Holland, Nature has introduced this little diversion on a grand scale. The Dutch have always been forced to pump for their existence, and probably must continue to do so to the end of time.

  Every year millions of dollars are spent in repairing dykes and regulating water levels. If these important duties were neglected, the country would be uninhabitable. Already dreadful consequences, as I have said, have followed the bursting of these dykes. Hundreds of villages and towns have from time to time been buried beneath the rush of waters, and nearly a million of persons have been destroyed. One of the most fearful inundations ever known occurred in the autumn of the year 1570. Twenty-eight terrible floods had before that time overwhelmed portions of Holland, but this was the most terrible of all. The unhappy country had long been suffering under Spanish tyranny* – now, it seemed, the crowning point was given to its troubles. When we read Motley’s History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic,* we learn to revere the brave people who have endured, suffered and dared so much.

  Mr Motley, in his thrilling account of the great inundation, tells us how a long-continued and violent gale had been sweeping the Atlantic waters into the North Sea, piling them against the coasts of the Dutch provinces, how the dykes, tasked beyond their strength, burst in all directions, how even the Hand-bos, a bulwark formed of oaken piles, braced with iron, moored with heavy anchors and secured by gravel and granite, was snapped to pieces like packthread, how fishing boats and bulky vessels, floating up into the country, became entangled among the trees, or beat in the roofs and walls of dwellings, and how at last all Friesland was converted into an angry sea.

  Multitudes of men, women, children, or horses, oxen, sheep and every domestic animal, were struggling in the waves in every direction. Every boat and every article which could serve as a boat were eagerly seized upon. Every house was inundated – even the graveyards gave up their dead. The living infant in his cradle and the long-buried corpse in his coffin floated side by side. The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed. Everywhere, upon the tops of trees, upon the steeples of churches, human beings were clustered, praying to God for mercy, and to their fellow men for assistance. As the storm at last was subsiding, boats began to ply in every direction, saving those who were struggling in the water, picking fugitives from roofs and treetops and collecting the bodies of those already drowned.

  No less than one hundred thousand human beings had perished in a few hours. Thousands upon thousands of dumb creatures lay dead upon the waters, and the damage done to property of every description was beyond calculation.

  Robles, the Spanish governor, was foremost in noble efforts to save life and lessen the horrors of the catastrophe. He had formerly been hated by the Dutch because of his Spanish or Portuguese blood, but by his goodness and activity in their hour of disaster he won all hearts to gratitude. He soon introduced an improved method of constructing the dykes, and passed a law that they should in future be kept up by the owners of the soil. There were fewer heavy floods from this time, though within less than three hundred years six fearful inundations swept over the land.

  In the spring there is always great danger of inland freshets, especially in times of thaw, because the rivers, choked with blocks of ice, overflow before they can discharge their rapidly rising waters into the ocean. Added to this, the sea chafing and pressing against the dykes, it is no wonder that Holland is often in a state of alarm. The greatest care is taken to prevent accidents. Engineers and workmen are stationed all along in threatened places, and a close watch is kept up night and day. When a general signal of danger is given, the inhabitants all rush to the rescue, eager to combine against their common foe. As everywhere else straw is supposed to be of all things the most helpless in the water – of course, in Holland, it must be rendered the mainstay against a rushing tide. Huge straw mats are pressed against the embankments, fortified with clay and heavy stone, and once adjusted, the ocean dashes against them in vain.

  Raff Brinker, the father of Gretel and Hans, had for years been employed upon the dykes. It was at the time of a threatened inundation – when in the midst of a terrible storm, in darkness and sleet, the men were labouring at a weak spot near the Veermyk sluice – that he fell from the scaffolding, and was taken home insensible. From that hour he never worked again. Though he lived on, mind and memory were gone.

  Gretel could not remember him otherwise than as the strange, silent man whose eyes followed her vacantly whichever way she turned, but Hans had recollections of a hearty, cheerful-voiced father who was never tired of bearing him upon his shoulder, and whose careless song still seemed echoing near when he lay awake at night and listened.

  Chapter 3

  The Silver Skates

  Dame Brinker earned a scanty support for her family by raising vegetables, spinning and knitting. Once she had worked on board the barges plying up and down the canal, and had occasionally been harnessed with other women to the towing rope of a pakschuyt plying between Broek and Amsterdam. But when Hans had grown strong and large, he had insisted upon doing all such drudgery in her place. Besides, her husband had become so very helpless of late that he required her constant care. Although not having as much intelligence as a little child, he was yet strong of arm and very hearty, and Dame Brinker had sometimes great trouble in controlling him.

  “Ah! children, he was so good and steady,” she would sometimes say, “and as wise as a lawyer. Even the burgomaster would stop to ask him a question, and now, alack! he don’t know his wife and little ones. You remember Father, Hans, when he was himself – a great brave man – don’t you?”

  “Yes, indeed, Mother – he knew everything, and could do anything under the sun. And how he would sing! Why, you used to laugh, and say it was enough to set the windmills dancing.”

  “So I did. Bless me, how the boy remembers! Gretel, child, take that knitting needle from your father, quick – he’ll get it in his eyes maybe – and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but I can’t keep ’em covered whatever I do.” And then, half wailing, half humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the whirr of her spinning wheel.

  Nearly all the outdoor work, as well as the household labour, was performed by Hans and Gretel. At certain seasons of the year the children went out day after day to gather peat, which they would stow away in square, brick-like pieces for fuel. At other times, when homework permitted, Hans rode the towing horses on the canals, earning a few stivers a day, and Gretel tended geese for the neighbouring farmers.

  Hans was clever at carving in wood, and both he and Gretel were good gardeners. Gretel could sing and sew, and run on great, high, home-made stilts better than any girl for miles around. She could learn a ballad in five minutes, and find, in its season, any weed or flower you could name. But she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the figuring board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans, on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the task, whether in study or daily labour, the better he liked it. Boys who sneered at him out of school, on account of his patched clothes and scant leather breeches, were forced to yield him the post of honour in nearly every class. It was not long before he was the only youngster in the school who had not stood at least once in the corner of horrors, where hung a dreaded whip, and over it this motto:

  leer! leer! jou luigaart,

  of dit endje touw zal je leeren!*

  It was only in winter that Gretel and Hans could be spa
red to attend school, and for the past month they had been kept at home because their mother needed their services. Raff Brinker required constant attention, and there was black bread to be made, and the house to be kept clean, and stockings and other things to be knitted and sold in the marketplace.

  While they were busily assisting their mother on this cold December morning, a merry troop of girls and boys came skimming down the canal. There were fine skaters among them, and as the bright medley of costumes flitted by, it looked from a distance as though the ice had suddenly thawed and some gay tulip bed were floating along on the current.

  There was the rich burgomaster’s daughter, Hilda van Gleck, with her costly furs and loose-fitting velvet sack, and, nearby, a pretty peasant girl, Annie Bouman, jauntily attired in a coarse scarlet jacket and a blue skirt just short enough to display the grey homespun hose to advantage. Then there was the proud Rychie Korbes, whose father, Mynheer van Korbes, was one of the leading men of Amsterdam – and, flocking closely around her, Carl Schummel, Peter and Ludwig van Holp, Jacob Poot and a very small boy rejoicing in the tremendous name of Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck. There were nearly twenty other boys and girls in the party, and one and all seemed full of excitement and frolic.

  Up and down the canal, within the space of a half-mile, they skated, exerting their racing powers to the utmost. Often the swiftest among them was seen to dodge from under the very nose of some pompous lawgiver or doctor, who with folded arms was skating leisurely towards the town, or a chain of girls would suddenly break at the approach of a fat old burgomaster, who, with gold-headed cane poised in air, was puffing his way to Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold – from their superb strappings and dazzling runners curving over the instep, and topped with gilt balls – he would open his fat eyes a little if one of the maidens chanced to drop him a curtsy, but would not dare to bow in return for fear of losing his balance.

  Not only pleasure-seekers and stately men of note were upon the canal. There were workpeople, with weary eyes, hastening to their shops and factories, market women with loads upon their heads, pedlars bending with their packs, bargemen with shaggy hair and bleared faces, jostling roughly on their way, kind-eyed clergymen, speeding perhaps to the bedsides of the dying, and, after a while, groups of children with satchels slung over their shoulders, whizzing past towards the distant school. One and all wore skates, excepting, indeed, a muffled-up farmer whose queer car bumped along on the margin of the canal.

  Before long our merry boys and girls were almost lost in the confusion of bright colours, the ceaseless motion and the gleaming of skates flashing back the sunlight. We might have known no more of them had not the whole party suddenly come to a standstill, and, grouping themselves out of the way of the passers-by, all talked at once to a pretty little maiden whom they had drawn from the tide of people flowing towards the town.

  “Oh, Katrinka!” they cried, in a breath, “have you heard of it? The race – we want you to join!”

  “What race?” asked Katrinka, laughing. “Don’t all talk at once, please – I can’t understand.”

  Everyone panted and looked at Rychie Korbes, who was their acknowledged spokeswoman.

  “Why,” said Rychie, “we are to have a grand skating match on the twentieth, on Mevrouw van Gleck’s birthday. It’s all Hilda’s work. They are going to give a splendid prize to the best skater.”

  “Yes,” chimed in half a dozen voices, “a beautiful pair of silver skates – perfectly magnificent! – with, oh! such straps and silver bells and buckles!”

  “Who said they had bells?” put in the small voice of the boy with the big name.

  “I say so, Master Voost,” replied Rychie.

  “So they have!”, “No, I’m sure they haven’t!”, “Oh, how can you say so?”, “It’s an arrow!”, “And Mynheer van Korbes told my mother they had bells!”, came from sundry of the excited group, but Mynheer Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck essayed to settle the matter with a decisive:

  “Well, you don’t any of you know a single thing about it – they haven’t a sign of a bell on them, they—”

  “Oh, oh!” and the chorus of conflicting opinion broke forth again.

  “The girls’ pair are to have bells,” interposed Hilda quietly, “but there is to be another pair for the boys with an arrow engraved upon their sides.”

  “There! I told you so!” cried nearly all the youngsters in a breath.

  Katrinka looked at them with bewildered eyes.

  “Who is to try?” she asked.

  “All of us,” answered Rychie. “It will be such fun! And you must, too, Katrinka. But it’s school time now, we will talk it all over at noon. Oh! you will join, of course.”

  Katrinka, without replying, made a graceful pirouette, and laughing out a coquettish “Don’t you hear the last bell? Catch me!” darted off towards the schoolhouse, standing half a mile away on the canal.

  All started, pell-mell, at this challenge, but they tried in vain to catch the bright-eyed, laughing creature, who, with golden hair streaming in the sunlight, cast back many a sparkling glance of triumph as she floated onwards.

  Beautiful Katrinka! Flushed with youth and health, all life and mirth and motion, what wonder thine image, ever floating in advance, sped through one boy’s dreams that night! What wonder that it seemed his darkest hour when, years afterwards, thy presence floated away from him for ever.

  Chapter 4

  Hans and Gretel Find a Friend

  At noon our young friends poured forth from the schoolhouse, intent upon having an hour’s practising upon the canal.

  They had skated but a few moments when Carl Schummel said mockingly to Hilda:

  “There’s a pretty pair just coming upon the ice! The little rag-pickers! Their skates must have been a present from the king direct.”

  “They are patient creatures,” said Hilda gently. “It must have been hard to learn to skate upon such queer affairs. They are very poor peasants, you see. The boy has probably made the skates himself.”

  Carl was somewhat abashed.

  “Patient they may be, but as for skating, they start off pretty well only to finish with a jerk. They could move well to your new staccato piece, I think.”

  Hilda laughed pleasantly and left him. After joining a small detachment of the racers, and sailing past every one of them, she halted beside Gretel, who, with eager eyes, had been watching the sport.

  “What is your name, little girl?”

  “Gretel, my lady,” answered the child, somewhat awed by Hilda’s rank, though they were nearly of the same age, “and my brother is called Hans.”

  “Hans is a stout fellow,” said Hilda cheerily, “and seems to have a warm stove somewhere within him, but you look cold. You should wear more clothing, little one.”

  Gretel, who had nothing else to wear, tried to laugh as she answered:

  “I am not so very little. I am past twelve years old.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. You see, I am nearly fourteen, and so large for my age that other girls seem small to me, but that is nothing. Perhaps you will shoot up far above me yet – not unless you dress more warmly, though: shivering girls never grow.”

  Hans flushed as he saw tears rising in Gretel’s eyes.

  “My sister has not complained of the cold, but this is bitter weather, they say,” and he looked sadly upon Gretel.

  “It is nothing,” said Gretel. “I am often warm – too warm – when I am skating. You are good, Juffrouw, to think of it.”

  “No, no,” answered Hilda, quite angry at herself. “I am careless, cruel, but I meant no harm. I wanted to ask you – I mean – if…” and here Hilda, coming to the point of her errand, faltered before the poorly clad but noble-looking children she wished to serve.

  “What is it, young lady?” exclaimed Hans eagerly. “If there is any service I can do, any
—”

  “Oh no, no!” laughed Hilda, shaking off her embarrassment. “I only wished to speak to you about the grand race. Why do you not join it? You both can skate well, and the ranks are free. Anyone may enter for the prize.”

  Gretel looked wistfully at Hans, who, tugging at his cap, answered respectfully:

  “Ah, Juffrouw, even if we could enter, we could skate only a few strokes with the rest. Our skates are hardwood, you see” – holding up the sole of his foot – “but they soon become damp, and then they stick and trip us.”

  Gretel’s eyes twinkled with fun as she thought of Hans’s mishap in the morning, but she blushed as she faltered out timidly:

  “Oh no, we can’t join, but may we be there, my lady, on the great day to look on?”

  “Certainly,” answered Hilda, looking kindly into the two earnest faces, and wishing from her heart that she had not spent so much of her monthly allowance for lace and finery. She had but eight kwartjes left, and they would buy but one pair of skates at the furthest.

  Looking down with a sigh at the two pairs of feet so very different in size, she asked:

  “Which of you is the better skater?”

  “Gretel,” replied Hans promptly.

  “Hans,” answered Gretel, in the same breath.

  Hilda smiled.

  “I cannot buy you each a pair of skates, or even one good pair, but here are eight kwartjes. Decide between you which stands the best chance of winning the race, and buy the skates accordingly. I wish I had enough to buy better ones. Goodbye!” And, with a nod and a smile, Hilda, after handing the money to the electrified Hans, glided swiftly away to rejoin her companions.

  “Juffrouw! Juffrouw van Gleck!” called Hans in a loud tone, stumbling after her as well as he could, for one of his skate strings was untied.