drag
'Waterspin,' if any of the most important dykes or dams happened to
burst?" inquired the Chaperon. "I hope so, for what you've been saying
makes one feel exactly like a female member of the Ark party."

Everybody laughed; but her joke pricked me to shame of my harangue.

"Nothing will 'happen to burst,'" I assured her. "We Dutch don't lose
our sleep over such 'ifs.' Every country has something to dread, hasn't
it? Drought in India, earthquakes in Italy, cyclones and blizzards in
America, and so on. Our menace is water; but then, it's our friend as
well as foe, and we've subdued it to our daily uses, as every canal we
pass can prove. Besides, there's something else we're able to do with
it. The popular belief is that, at Amsterdam, one key is kept in the
central arsenal which can instantly throw open sluices to inundate the
whole country in case we should be in danger of invasion."

"But you'd drown your land and yourselves, as well as the enemy,"
exclaimed Aunt Fay.

"Better drown than lose the liberty we've paid for with so much blood.
The old spirit's in us still, I hope, though we may seem slow-going,
comfort-loving fellows in everyday life. When we make up our minds to do
a thing, we're prepared to suffer for the sake of carrying it through."

Again I met Miss Van Buren's eyes, and I think she realized that I am
typically Dutch.

XI

Rotterdam lay far behind us now. We'd passed the busy, crowded
water-thoroughfares, as thickly lined with barges and lighters as
streets with houses, and were nearing the point where the river,
disguised as the Issel, turns with many curves toward Gouda. We had a
few whiffs from brickfields and other ugly industries that scar the
banks, but the windings of the Issel bore us swiftly to regions of
grassy meadows, and waving reeds, threatening sometimes to lose us in
strange no-thoroughfares of water more like separate lakes and round
ponds, than the flowing reaches of a river.

Here the despised Albatross was worth his weight in gold. In charge of a
skipper not familiar with every foot of the water-road, "Lorelei" and
"Waterspin" would have been aground more than once. Even that
irresponsible head-among-the-stars Mariner guessed at the snares we
avoided, and flung me a word of appreciation.

"You're earning your salt," said he, "and you shall have a little at
Gouda."

But as to Gouda, a struggle was going on between my inclination and my
conscience. It was my dut