The First of the English: A Novel
Dropping the oars the two await the approaching Spanish patrol, who
come on, thinking they will have an easy victory, as there are five men
in the boat, two only rowing now, the other three blowing their slow
matches and getting their guns ready.
But this does not suit the Englishman and Fleming.
Were one of them wounded the other would surely perish. They take to
their oars again, and hastily round a little wooded point upon which
the willows are just beginning to expand their leaves, forming a slight
shelter.
Suddenly grounding the skiff behind the screen of the thicket, they
spring on shore, each carrying two guns, and crawl across the point in
turn to catch the Spanish boat just as she rounds it. From this
ambuscade their four arquebuses discharged within twenty feet of their
pursuers, puts one dead over his rowlocks and two others desperately
wounded.
Saluted in this ferocious manner the Spaniards, with a cry of surprise
and terror, turn their boat about down the river.
“Not one of ’em must go back to send cavalry after us!” whispers
Haring.
“Then come on, and we’ll nail the other two,” answers Guy. Reloading
their guns they fly to their shallop again, and after a desperate pull,
overtake the Spaniards, who row for their lives, but are no match on
the water for Gueux sailors.
Two or three shots and one of Alva’s veterans cleft to the chin with
battle axe, and the Spanish patrol boat floats down the river manned
only by corpses.
“That was fortunate,” says the Hollander. “There’s now no one to give
the alarm. Until we pass the guard-house at Ouderkerk we’ll probably
meet no Spanish troops. But they sometimes have a whole company there.
We must get past it after darkness.”
With this they turn about and keep on up the pretty little river, which
flows with a quiet, sluggish current, and at five o’clock in the
evening conceal themselves in a patch of willows, taking very good care
that no one shall notice them. What peasants they have seen have fled
from them. Here, not daring to kindle a fire, the two eat salt herring
and oily bread convivially, and wait for approaching darkness.
This comes deep and heavy over land and water; there is no moon this
night. Haring and Guy, muffling their oars, row cautiously up the
stream, and in half an hour see the lights of Ouderkerk. Then groping
along upon the opposite shore, the Dutchman acting as pilot, and
apparently knowing every sandbank in the stream, they would get past
this place, which is only a small village, undiscovered, were it not
for the barking of a few curs, which produces a challenge from the
Spanish sentry on the river bank.
Not answering this, the two bend to their oars as silently, but as
strongly, as possible, and after a little the dogs cease barking, and
the sentry resumes his beat, apparently thinking, as he has seen
nothing or heard nothing, that nothing has passed him. In fact, after
they are beyond the place, they discover by the yellings of the curs
that the Spaniard is apparently kicking them for having aroused him.
Nearly all that night they pass up the river, and by daybreak are happy
to find themselves, having made their way there by a small connecting
stream, in the Leg Meer, a long, narrow patch of water that nearly
reaches the Haarlem Lake. Passing along this in the early morning they
are pursued and overtaken, and that would probably be the end of them,
were it not friends instead of enemies who come upon them.
It is a small bateau patrolling this debatable water in behalf of the
Prince of Orange.
From its captain they get the information that De Bossu has just put
more galleys on the Haarlem Lake, and that they will have a hard time
to get through the Spanish, as the Dutch fleet is refitting at the Kaag
at the south end of the lake. “You had better not go,” suggests the
Holland commander.
But Guy, confident that every day will bring more vessels of Alva’s
upon the Haarlem Meer, making his course more difficult, insists upon
going, and Haring is not the man to stay behind.
“Well, if you’ve made up your mind to it,” replies the Dutch captain,
“We’ll help you on your way.”
His sailors assist Guy and Haring in getting their boat from Leg Meer
across the polders by a water ditch that runs beside a dyke and launch
it upon the Haarlem Lake.
“Now,” says Chester, “what provisions can you spare. It were an outrage
against humanity if we went into that starving town and took not one
sack of meal to their hungry mouths.”
“You’re right,” answers the bateau commander. “We’ll give you three
hundred pounds of flour, which is all your boat can safely carry.”
“Now you take your lives in your hands,” continues the captain. “You’d
better go in at night. You’re safer at the south end. But as you get
near Haarlem, look out! The Spaniards have two or three galleys always
off the Fuik.”
Taking the advice of their friends, and getting from them a bottle of
spirits that cheers the two greatly, Haring and Guy set sail and speed
across the Haarlem Lake to two small islands on the western side some
four miles south of Haarlem.
There they lie until the night sets in once more, and then in the
darkness, though they have a narrow squeak of it from a patrol galley,
get in to the Fuik and land at one of the small forts built there to
keep open communication between the lake and the leaguered city.
Here they are welcomed by a crowd of gaunt, hungry but determined-eyed
citizens, who, under the stress of siege, have become more enduring
than veterans. For all history shows that when the citizen rises to
defend home and wives and children, no soldier is so enduring of
hunger, of thirst, of wounds, of torture, as he who battles within
sight of his roof-tree and returns each night from the horrors of war
to caress his wife and little ones, the sight of whom makes him go
forth again more desperate, more enduring, and more heroic for their
kisses and their tears.
CHAPTER XVII.
ADVANCED WOMANHOOD IN 1573.
Such a welcome is given Guy and Haring as only the besieged, despairing
and cut-off give to friends from the outer world.
“You bring news of succor?” cries one Dutch burgher on guard.
“The Prince’s fleet is almost ready,” whispers another with anxious
lips. “We have word by a carrier pigeon that he is fitting out an
expedition by land.”
“Tell me of my wife in Delft, Margaret Enkhuysen—you left there, didn’t
you?” asks another.
But explaining their business and delivering over their three sacks of
flour they are shortly afterward taken into the town by the Schalkwyker
gate. Here Guy needs no word of mouth to tell him that he is in a town
stricken by wounds and death, by siege and famine. The streets are
dark, no lights burn save in the great church, now used as a hospital,
and in the town-hall, where Ripperda, the Commandant, is busy with his
officers.
The place is unnaturally silent. There are no barking dogs, nor even
yelling cats; these have been eaten. The only sounds in the streets are
the tramp of patrols relieving each other, or companies of men marching
to duty on the walls. The voices of the sentries are hollow and weak
with hunger.
Guy, leaving Haring at the Swan Inn, before which sit no happy
burghers, and within which all is dark, makes his way to the great
ravelin between the St. Jan’s gate and the Kruys gate, where he is
informed that Pieter Kies is on guard, and gets interview with him.
“Why didn’t you send the daughter of Niklaas Bodé Volcker out of the
town when it was besieged?” Guy asks indignantly.
“Because we had use for her.”
“Use for her? How? She is a woman, a non-combatant.”
“Women are not non-combatants here. Were it not for women we men would
hardly hold this town.”
“You don’t mean to say that Mina fights?”
“No, she fills sand bags and sews them up, but there are plenty of
women who do fight. Fight as well as men. Women are men here! no, they
are more than that, they are angels of mercy—angels of death; nursing
the wounded one day and killing the Spaniards the next, with their own
hands. There’s the widow Kenau Hasselaer, the Spaniards fly from her
faster than they would from any man in the garrison.”
“Nevertheless,” says Guy, unheeding this tribute to the advanced
womanhood of the sixteenth century, “I have promised my friend, this
girl’s lover, to take her safely out of Haarlem.”
“How can you get her out?” queries the burgher grimly.
“That will be my business if she will take the chance.”
“You’ll have to see Commandant Ripperda. If he says so, well and good.
If not, I’ll not let you take the responsibility of trying to get Mina
out of this town. She’s safer here. Do you believe we’re going to
surrender? Not while we have anything to eat.”
With this Guy goes away. But Ripperda, the commandant, is busy and
cannot be seen; so Chester, going to the Swan, there meets Haring, and
finds the inn as clean as it was before; in fact, too clean, for there
is nothing to dirty it with—nothing to eat save a porridge made of
grass taken from the streets. Therefore the two, having taken the
precaution of bringing their provisions with them in a bag, fall to
upon their own.
But the smell of strong salt red herrings is so great that the children
congregate about the door, and the widow Hasselaer, who has just come
in from active duty, and is putting aside her breast-plate and head
piece, cries out savagely: “Dolts! what are you doing? Luxuries are for
the wounded!” With this she sweeps the Spanish wine, spirits, bread,
herrings, and every morsel they have, away from them to carry out to
the Kerk hospital, though her lips water at the sight of such unknown
delicacies, and the children follow her, sobbing for “a little
herring—just a taste, just a smell!”
But Kenau Hasselaer is made of sterner stuff and the wounded get even
the herring smell.
Guy and Haring look glumly at each other. “To-morrow morning,” says the
Englishman, “we’ll report ourselves and get rationed. It’s half a pound
of mouldy bread, I believe, made of rye husks and ground oats.”
“Voor den duivel!” growls the Dutchman. “We must get out of here while
we have strength. If that infernal woman had only left us the spirits!”
Then the two go gloomily to bed and fall into the deep sleep of
tremendous fatigue, having toiled with their boat all the night before.
From this they are awakened by the awful din of arms, the clang of all
the bells in the Groote Kerk and the lesser churches mingling with the
clash and boom of bombard and culverin and saker.
Besides this Vrouw Hasselaer’s sturdy hand is upon them, shaking them
out of their slumbers.
“Wake up, sluggards!” she cries, “and fight for your lives! Up! I’ll
show you the way.”
Knowing that if the Spaniards take the town they will certainly butcher
them, Guy and his companion hastily seize their arms and run with the
widow through dark streets that are now full of men turning out to
fight for their desolate homes.
Arriving at the wall just east of the Kruys gate, which has been made
into a block house, the two, used as they are to scenes of battle, find
themselves in such a fight as they have never seen before.
For they are in the woman’s department.
“Hel en duivel! There’s not a man here. We two can’t hold this long
work,” cries Haring.
“You can’t?” exclaims Kenau Hasselaer, “but we’ll do it for you. Women
of Haarlem, show these Springalds how to fight!”
This they do with all the might, potency and viciousness of the
advanced womanhood of the Sixteenth Century, almost shaming Haring, who
is a hero, and Chester, who is as sturdy a Captain as ever England sent
forth, by deeds of prowess done by Kenau Hasselaer and her sister
Amazons that night.