THE BATTLE ON SKATES.
Oliver comes down excitedly from the masthead and whispers: “I can see
the spire of the great church at Haarlem. We’re only twenty miles away
from—the woman I love—hurry.”
“If the ice holds,” mutters Guy, “we’ll get to the next world before
Haarlem. We can only stay here and die on our vessels. The Spaniards
will come over the ice to attack us. We shall be overwhelmed by
numbers.”
“We must have counsel with our brother Gueux,” says ’t Hoen. “Come with
me. You can skate, First of the English?”
“Very well,” answers Guy. “Will the ice hold?”
“Yes, infantry now, by night accursed Spanish cannon.”
So buckling on sharp iron Friesland skates, the two fly over the smooth
frozen Zuyder Zee, and in a few seconds are at the vessels of the
Gueux. Here holding quick consultation, the captains decide to fight it
out to the death together, no matter what force is brought against
them; surrender would be suicide.
A few minutes more and they make up their minds just how to do this
fighting, and electing Guy commander-in-chief, he takes action very
quickly. In five minutes not only the crew of the Dover Lass are on the
ice, but the crews of the other Gueux vessels, amounting in all to
about five hundred men, and are working for their lives with ice picks,
crowbars, ice saws and any and every implement they can use, cutting a
passage around the three Gueux vessels and a water lane from the Dover
Lass to bring her up to them.
By almost superhuman exertions, in something like three hours they have
not only got the Dover Lass in company with the other Gueux vessels,
but have cut out the ice immediately surrounding them, making the
vessels float as in a little inland lake, though surrounded by an
impenetrable floe.
Next getting the four vessels in the form of a parallelogram, they lash
them stem and stern all round—making the broadside of each ship one
side of a floating citadel. Then putting out grappling irons and small
anchors set in the ice, to which are attached cables they moor their
ships strongly to prevent drifting against the ice and giving chance
for boarding.
“Pardieu!” exclaims Oliver. “This is a new idea. They can’t get at us.”
“Not a man of them can board our ships if our cables hold so as to
prevent drift and we can keep the ice broken,” answers Guy.
At this work they all set themselves, toiling watch and watch and
finding it tremendous labor, for the cold still continues, and the ice
grows thicker and more resisting.
So they are all happy when the lookout from his chilly post at the
masthead cries: “They’re coming!” and gazing over the frozen field they
see some fifteen hundred picked Spanish and Walloon infantry tramping
their slippery path to give them death.
This seems an easy task to the attacking party—vessels imprisoned in
the ice—they look for a cool, comfortable butchery of their crews. And
they come on in that confident manner with which Spanish infantry
always met the Dutch, until after ten years of hard fighting the
Hollanders had made themselves as good troops on land as any infantry
in Europe.
But on the sea the Dutch are at home; so with their
guns—demi-culverins, falcons and falconettes—loaded to their nozzles
with arquebus bullets and nails and scraps of iron; with pikes and
battle axes ready to hand, they look quite confidently and eagerly from
their wooden citadel floating upon this ice-bound lake.
This moat of ice cold water will give Alva’s veterans more difficulty
in escalade than the deepest fosse of any walled town they have stormed
within the Netherlands. But not guessing what is before them, and the
weather being bracing, the Spanish arquebusiers come on with a cheer,
their commander apparently giving order for quick time.
“Thank God, these fellows are not going to keep us waiting long,”
laughs Guy, beating his mailed hands together, “a steel bodice and
metal hose are not over comfortable this December weather.”
This is Sir Guy Chester’s first fight since he has been dubbed Knight,
and he is in full panoply, helmet, plumes and visor, breast-plate and
back piece, even to golden spurs, the badge of his order. This ice
slippery deck is not as convenient for displaying his Italian armor as
the back of dashing war-horse on a tented field, but the age of
chivalry has not quite passed away—knighthood still means military
nobility—the gilded spurs still indicate blue blood and ‘daring
do’—what youth could resist wearing its insignia—not Guy Chester. His
crew cheer his gallant appearance, knowing well that underneath his
Milan mail is a leader they can trust and follow.
“Oho!” screams Oliver, with sudden mercurial laugh. “See! The Spanish
dogs are tumbling over each other. This will be a slippery affair.”
“Yes, and a bloody one—for them,” mutters Dawson savagely, sword in
hand.
And it is!
The little fleet, not firing a gun, let their opponents come close to
them. But as the Spanish infantry charge their front rank suddenly
discovers that it is fighting in water instead of on the ice. Every man
of them has to drop his arms to swim for his life, which is rather
freezing work this December day.
“We’ll warm them up,” cries Guy, as the guns of the Dover Lass’s
starboard battery open on the mass of struggling, drowning men. So also
the Dutch ships.
But Alva’s Spanish infantry on land or sea are not to be defeated in a
moment. The officer in command deploys a number of his men as
skirmishers, and they, with their arquebuses, open on the ships. Soon
balls are whistling over the bulwarks and through the rigging of the
Dover Lass in stinging volleys, as well as scattering shots.
Others of the Spaniards crawling upon the ice try to get at the cables
holding the vessels to cut them from their moorings, so they will drift
to one side or the other of the lake and become accessible to escalade
and boarding. Then Guy, going forward to the forecastle to direct his
men to use their arquebuses defending their cables from attack, finds
it is well that he is in knightly armor. Were it not for his steel
breastplate some Spanish sharpshooters had done for him. Two bullets
flatten against his armor and one sweeps the plume from his helmet.
But the cables are kept taut, and those who venture against them in
this desperate service are all shot down and the broadside of the Dover
Lass still thunders, scourging the ice with bullets.
All does not go so well upon the other side of the floating fortress;
by great exertions and much loss of men the Spaniards at last succeed
in cutting one Gueux cable; unable to withstand the additional strain
another anchor pulls out of the ice, and the wooden citadel drifts
against the solid floe.
Now is the Spaniards chance; in a moment they have their boarding
ladders planted against the ship whose deck the Dover Lass’s bow
overlooks, for she is a smaller craft.
As the Spaniards swarm up the ladders to fight their way upon the
Dutchman’s deck—Guy calls his boarders and they spring to the
assistance of their assaulted comrades—the other Gueux vessels sending
detachments also to the deck of this vessel, which now becomes the
focus of the fight.
Once by very force of numbers the Spaniards gain the quarter-deck of
the Dutch ship, and shouting with triumph, think the day is theirs; but
the murdering-pieces on the vessel’s own forecastle and two from the
bow of the Dover Lass drown this cry with their reports as they cut
lanes in the cheering mass. Then with a rush from the other vessels—the
deck is regained, but only partially—as Alva’s veterans fight as if
they were never to be beaten—their leader bearing a charmed life.
Twice he and Guy have crossed swords, but have been swept away from
each other by the surging tide of battle—which is again turning to
numbers, and the Spaniards. The cannon of the boarded ship are now of
little use, and the guns of the other vessels will not bear upon this
side of the fight—the day is looking badly for the Beggars of the Sea.
But as Guy fights he thinks, and suddenly returning to his own ship,
cries out: “Load up two demi-culverins with solid shot and get them on
our forecastle.”
This being done by Corker and some men, Chester directs these cannon
not at the Spaniards, but at the ice upon which the Spanish boarding
ladders rest.
The first discharge puts fifty men and their ladders in the water.
“We’ll drown them quicker than we’ll kill them!” yell the English
sailors—and a few more rounds settle the affair—the ice is destroyed
under the very feet of the Spaniards, and floundering in the water’s
chilling grasp, a hundred veterans sink.
The others give back. This icy citadel is too hard a nut for them to
crack.
Looking on the matter as a bad job that he can only make worse by
continuing, the Spanish commander, apparently unwounded, gives the
order to retire, and his veterans drawing off slowly and taking their
slightly wounded with them, turn their faces toward Amsterdam.
Noting in their slippery path many of his enemies fall even as they
trudge along the ice, ’t Hoen, who is laughing at them, suddenly
shouts: “We mustn’t let a man of them escape. After them, on skates!
After them on skates!” he cries to the Dutch captains of the other
vessels.
This idea seeming to strike the Hollanders to a man, the English who
are capable of executing manœuvers on the ice join with them, and in
less than five minutes Guy puts on the glassy field by his boats a
party of seventy-five from the Dover Lass, each man armed with arquebus
and sword or pike and battle axe, and each with Friesland skates upon
his feet.
Even Oliver, who can hardly keep his head off the ice, accompanies
them. The Dutch captains bring yet larger parties, all their men being
proficient in this national pastime of Holland.
The Spaniards, totally unexpecting pursuit, are making their way slowly
to the city, not even looking back, for the sight behind them of dead
men drowned or butchered, and wounded comrades who are crawling,
slipping and freezing on the ice, is not pleasant.
“These maimed cannot escape us,” cries Maarten Merens, one of the Dutch
captains, “we’ll finish the wounded at our leisure. On for those who
are not hurt,” and the Gueux speed on like swallows in their flight.
So it comes to pass that the Spanish commander hears behind him
suddenly a whirring sound as the irons cut the ice, and looking
backward, skimming like birds, come four hundred Dutch and English, not
half the number he is bringing back.
Turning his men he would form them to receive attack, but they are not
quick enough. The rapid skates bear the Dutch and English upon them
like charge of cavalry, the slippery ice impedes them, and in a minute
the Spanish formation is dashed to pieces, the ice becoming the scene
of hundreds of individual combats, the Hollanders and the English
having the best of it, attacking whom they like, retreating when they
please.
It is a funny affair, though blood flows like water, and men die
shaking with merriment—the guffaws mingling with death shrieks. Guy
himself, as he cuts down a man, laughs at the fellow’s headless corpse
turning a somersault upon the slippery ice. One Spaniard running,
pursued by a Dutch skater, throws himself desperately upon the ice, and
the Dutchman goes headlong over him, but being quick with his feet,
gives his antagonist a lucky jab in the eye with his sharp Friesland
skate, and the Spaniard is dead before the Dutchman recovers his feet.
After the first rush, Guy’s eye is on the leader of the Spanish troops,
and the leader of the Spanish troops has his eye on him.
Till now the Castilian has fought very silently and very deadly; though
not accustomed to the ice, his skill at fence is so great that two or
three Dutchmen have gone down before him wounded, and one English
sailor will never see his mother again, by force of his Toledo blade.
The Spaniard now cries: “Come on, I know you. You are the First of the
English. Come on, and though you have wings, I’ll clip them!”
This kind of a challenge is not to be ignored by English knight. It is
a kind that prevailed in the days of chivalry, not quite faded out of
England, and Chester accepts it.
Then the two come together, the Englishman’s heavy sword giving play
against the more subtle and delicate point of the Toledo, and were not
Guy armored in steel this day would be the last of him.
The Spaniard has a wrist of steel and his sword’s play is of the finest
Italian school; but Guy makes his heels save his head. This angers the
Spaniard, and he grinds his teeth—while Chester deftly “grinds the
bar,” a skater’s trick that enables him to circle round the Castilian,
giving him two cuts that even his skill of fence can hardly parry.
The next shoot round his enemy Guy gets his blade on his man, wounding
him slightly. But carried forward in making a cut, one of Sir Guy
Chester’s knightly spurs catches in his skates and he were lost did he
not by quick action drop sitting down on both skates and glide from his
antagonist.
He is half a hundred yards away before he turns to find himself face to
face with poor little Ensign de Busaco, who is having a hard time of
it, being slightly wounded; his heavy Jack boots impeding his progress
on the ice.
Chester is just in time to recognize the little Spanish ensign and save
his life, as two or three Beggars of the Sea are almost upon him, and
in another minute De Busaco would sleep with his fathers.
The instinct of comradeship born in Antwerp is in Guy’s heart, and his
right arm knocks up two pikes that lunge at the little ensign, he
crying to him: “Surrender to me; surrender to me, fool!” For the little
Spaniard, with drawn sword, is striving to do his best for himself.
But just at this moment, taking lounge en tierce, the poor little
fellow’s legs fly under him and his head goes down with a tremendous
crack upon the ice that would stun him were it not for his steel
head-piece.
“He’s mine!” says Guy, beating back the swords; “He is my prisoner.
Surrender, you idiot Busaco!”
“I yield,” says De Busaco, sullenly. Then he suddenly smiles and cries:
“Mon Dieu! Captain Guido Amati! Yes, I surrender to you. What ransom
shall I pay to save my life? You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
“No, Busaco, you are safe. Twice you saved my life, and didn’t know it.
Now I save yours.”
“Yes,” says the other; “that was curious, wasn’t it? Captain Guido
Amati! From the flag flying at your masthead you are now called the
First of the English?”
It is a foolish speech and nearly costs him dear, for the Englishman
knows that this recognition, if reported at Spanish headquarters, means
no more chance of Guido Amati’s interviews with Alva’s daughter. He
says: “Yes, the First of the English, but no ransom from you.”
“No ransom,” mutters De Busaco, “I suppose you are going to kill me
because I know your secret?”
“No! Swear to me by everything upon this earth you will never recognize
me as the First of the English, were I to stand in Alva’s own hall
before you. There’s five thousand crowns upon my head; but swear you’ll
never know me as First of the English, only as Guido Amati.”
“I swear it by this cross my mother gave me,” says the little Ensign,
putting crucifix to his lips. Then he laughs and adds: “The oath wasn’t
necessary. I had known this before.”
“When—how long!”
“Ever since three weeks ago I met the real Colonel Guido Amati. You’ve
been promoted, you know.”
“And you never mentioned this, even to Amati himself?”
“No—to no living soul!”
“Why not?”
“Santos! it involved the secret of a lady.”
“God bless you,” says Guy, hugging his prisoner to his heart. “It did,
perchance, involve the good name, but not the honor, of a lady.”
“Oh, every one knows that Doña de Alva is a saint. Funny, she should
love you. Curious—”
But they have no time to discuss it further. Chester seizes the young
man by the hand, drags him over the ice, and to ensure his safety goes
with him almost to Amsterdam. In this, Guy almost endangers his own
life, for Spanish troops come out to meet them; so he leaves his charge
with a squeeze of the hand and a “God bless you. Remember!”
“Don’t doubt me. I’ve seen her look at you. I know she loves you, and
no one would injure her heart—but look out, my men are coming!” cries
De Busaco.
Turning back on his skates Chester makes for his ship, near which he
finds Antony and two or three others bending over the body of the
Spanish officer Guy had left so suddenly.
“They killed him after you went on,” remarks Oliver. “I have kept them
away from his body because of you. He was a very gallant gentleman.”
“Because of me?” cries Guy. “Do you think I will gloat over a fallen
hero. Still if accident had not come to me I should have finished him
myself, I think, though he had a rare sword’s play in his arm.”
“That would have been horrible,” says the painter.
“Why?”
“You would have committed suicide.”
“Suicide! What do you mean?”
“I mean that there will be weeping soon from eyes you love, when your
death is reported to her.”
“Buffoon! What do you mean?”
“I mean that this is Colonel Guido Amati, the man Hermoine de Alva
thinks you are!”
“Good heavens!” says Chester, bending over the dead man.
“I’ve searched his person and taken his valuables; not for myself, but
for transmission to his family,” adds the painter; “but this letter
concerns you.”
Hastily looking at the document by the light of the Northern sun that
is sinking in the west, Chester gives a sudden start. It is in the
handwriting he knows and loves, and has seen so little of, but does not
forget, and reads:
“God bless you, gallant one; you have become a Colonel. That
promotion was quick, wasn’t it? That was my doing. A word of advice
to you, my hero. Capture or slay the First of the English, and you
are sure to be a general; that will bring you to the church door,
where Hermoine awaits you.”
“Good God! This is horrible,” mutters Guy. “Sent by the woman I love to
kill me. And now she will weep for him.”
“Yes, and the more she weeps for him the dearer she loves you. You’re
not dead yet. Oh, wonderful transformation scene. Fancy Hermoine’s eyes
when she sees the dead alive. Oh God! if I could look upon the eyes of
my love who is over there,” Oliver points toward Haarlem. “Guy, help me
to save her.”
A moment after Antony suddenly cries: “Mon Dieu! what’s the matter with
you?” for the Englishman is leaning heavily on him, and is muttering:
“A—a bullet must have got through my breast-plate!”
Tearing off the steel the painter finds it has, though the wound is not
a deep one.
Continued loss of blood through all his violent exertions makes him
faint and weak, and Chester is carried upon his ship.
The Dutch captains yet look very solemn; if this cold continues, the
ice will still enclose their vessels and they must be attacked by the
great army at Amsterdam, who will never forgive them now they have
slain four hundred of the best Spanish troops.
“It will take miracles to save us now!” remarks ’t Hoen. “The tide must
rise—the wind must come—the ice must melt all at one time. It has
happened, but no man has ever seen it, so I suppose old Jan Veeder, our
dominé, would call it a miracle—Jan Veeder, who will preach my funeral
sermon next week!”
But that very night the providence of God that sent the cold, gives
them one chance of escape, the last of that winter, for the miracle
does happen. The strong wind and high tide and mild thawing weather
come together and the tide is high enough for them to pass over the
Pampus. The wind blows the sea about smashing the rotten ice and
bellies out their sails as the four ships, setting every rag they can
carry, beat their way to the north, and the next morning are safe in
their harbor of Enkhuyzen.
But Chester knows very little about this. He is raving with the fever
of his wound.