VII
Upon the hulls of Zealand, on boyers, on croustèves, away goes Thyl Claes Ulenspiegel.
The free sea wafts the valiant flyboats on which are eight, ten or twenty guns all of iron: they belch forth death and massacre on the traitor Spaniards.
He is an expert gunner, Thyl Ulenspiegel, son of Claes, lo how he aims straight and true, and pierces like a wall of butter the carcases of the butchers.
In his hat he wears the silver crescent, with this legend: “Liever den Turc als den Paus”: “Rather to serve the Turk than the Pope.”
The sailors that see him climb up upon their ships, agile as a cat, supple as a squirrel, singing some song or other, with some gay jest in his mouth, would ask him curiously:
“Whence is it, little man, that thou hast so young a mien, for they say thou wert born long ago at Damme?”
“I am no body, but a spirit,” said he, “and Nele, my sweetheart, is like me. Spirit of Flanders, love of Flanders, we shall never die.”
“And yet,” said they, “when thou art cut, thou dost bleed.”
“Ye see but the appearance of it,” answered Ulenspiegel, “it is wine and not blood.”
“We will broach thy belly, then!”
“I would be the only one to drain it,” replied Ulenspiegel.
“Thou art mocking us.”
“He that beats the case will hear the drum,” answered Ulenspiegel.
And the embroidered banners of the Roman Catholic processions floated from the masts of the ships. And clad in velvet, in brocade, in silk, in cloth of gold and of silver, such as abbots wear at solemn masses, bearing mitre and crozier, drinking the monks’ wine, the Beggars kept guard on their ships.
And it was a strange sight to behold appearing from out of these rich vestments those coarse hands that held arquebus or arbalest, halberd or pike, and all men of hard physiognomy, girt about with pistols and cutlasses gleaming in the sun, and drinking from golden chalices the abbots’ wine that had become the wine of liberty.
And they sang and they shouted: “Long live the Beggar!” and thus they scoured the ocean and the Scheldt.