t
steadily for a couple of minutes.

"Yes," said he, "that's it: but why have we come all this round, the
road lay yonder."

"Ja!" said I, "so it did."

"_Ventre bleu!_" roared he, while he stamped his foot upon the ground,
"_ce gaillard se moque de nous_."

"Ja!" said I again, without well knowing why.

"The citadel is there! It is yonder!" cried he, pointing with his
finger.

"Ja!" said I once more.

"_En avant!_ then," shouted he, as he motioned me to descend the flight
of steps which led down to the Scheldt; "if this be the road you take,
_par Saint Denis _! you shall go first."

Now the frost, as I have said, had only set in a few days before,
and the ice on the Scheldt would scarcely have borne the weight of a
drummer-boy; so I remonstrated at once, at first in Dutch, and then
in French, as well as I was able, but nobody would mind me. I then
endeavoured' to show the danger his Majesty himself would incur; but
they only laughed at this, and cried--

"_En avant, en avant toujours_," and before I had time for another word,
there was a corporal's guard behind me, with fixed bayonets; the word
"march" was given, and out I stepped.

I tried to say a prayer, but I could think of nothing but curses upon
the fiends, whose shouts of laughter behind put all my piety to flight.
When I came to the bottom step I turned round, and, putting my hand
to my sides, endeavoured by signs to move their pity; but they only
screamed the louder at this, and at a signal from an officer, a fellow
touched me with a bayonet.

"That was an awful moment," said old Hoogendorp, stopping short in
his narrative, and seizing the can, which for half an hour he had not
tasted. "I think I see the river before me still, with its flakes of
ice, some thick and some thin, riding on each other; some whirling along
in the rapid current of the stream; some lying like islands where the
water was sluggish. I turned round, and I clenched my fist, and I shook
it in the Emperor's face, and I swore by the bones of the Stadtholder,
that if I had but one grasp of his hand, I'd not perform that dance
without a partner. Here I stood," quoth he, "and the Scheldt might be,
as it were, there. I lifted my foot thus, and came down upon a large
piece of floating ice, which, the moment I touched it, slipped away, and
shot out into the stream."

[Illustration: 047]

At this moment Mynheer, who had been dramatizing this portion of his
adventure, came down upo