It was a day there was a sort of festival in the Hague.

From early in the afternoon there was a crush everywhere. The singels and the main roads through the Wood were filled with holiday-makers. Soldiers were parading here and there. Everyone was in the best of good humour; music in the distance rose and fell on the air; flags fluttered from the windows. Look where you might, there were bright dresses, prancing horses, snorting motors, and pedestrians of all descriptions.

I was one of the pedestrians.

I had been at my grammar in the morning; and after a long spell in the house had stepped over to Enderby’s, and coaxed that lazy fellow out for a stroll. It was perfect weather, and the crowds were wonderfully well-behaved. We enjoyed ourselves finely ‘under the green-wood tree,’ till we were brought to a stand-still in a dense mass of humanity that was packed along the edge of a canal, scarcely moving. A procession or something had impeded the traffic some moments.

There was a knot of butchers’ boys right in front of us. They were roughly shoving their neighbours about, and seeing what mischief they could do. Horse play, in fact. They didn’t seem to fit into Boyton’s categories, either of ‘Natives intelligent’ or ‘polite’.

Presently one brawny scoundrel began to throw stones at the occupants of a carriage that was slowly passing by.

I couldn’t believe my eyes!

There sat an old lady of eighty or ninety, with soft white hair—the very picture of fragility; opposite her was a nurse in dark uniform, in charge of three dainty little children in pink and white—mere babies of three or four—with innocent blue eyes gazing all round them. And, actually, that ruffianly knecht was about to bombard the group with whatever he had in his hand!

Bang went a big mass of something—presumably hard, from the rattle it made—against the side of the carriage.

Happily he was a poor marksman, that rascally slager; for at that short range he ought to have been able to demolish so fragile an old lady at the first shot, or at the very least have put out one eye.

As it was, he only knocked off her bonnet.

Enraged, apparently, at his poor practice at a practically stationary target so close at hand, he picked up another half-brick and wheeled, to take more deliberate aim.

The delicate old lady grew pale, and spasmodically fumbled with her parasol to shield the children.

I thought her eye caught mine; and, seeing there was no escape for her unless I interposed—no one till now seemed to have noticed the occurrence—I shouted, “Stop, slager, stop!” and whisked Boyton’s learned pages right into his face, taking care at the same moment to administer a vigorous push to the long arm of the lever conveniently made by his basket.

This forced him to revolve suddenly on his own axis—beefsteak and all; and, as he spun round, I accelerated his motion with a pat or two from the ‘compendium’. It was all the work of an instant, and executed just in time. The grammatical caress foiled his aim completely, and he flung his missile blindly in the wrong direction.

As I slipped unostentatiously into the crowd out of the immediate neighbourhood of the discomfited marksman, I had the satisfaction of seeing the dear old lady recover colour and smile. The babies crowed with delight, and clapped their hands. They thought it was a game got up for their special benefit!

I raised my hat and retired, a warm glow of self-approval in my breast, and on my lips an involuntary quotation from Boyton: “De spraakkunst is voor iedereen onmisbaar.”

Meantime the brickbat fell harmlessly on the back of a policeman who, with hands tightly clasped behind him, was studying a bed of scarlet geraniums.

He never even turned, but only said “Ja, ja,” over his shoulder!

Two days after this adventure my eye caught the following paragraph among the advertisements in the Nieuwe Courant:

CHAPTER VII.

A GOSSIPY LETTER.

“Don’t talk any more about that grammar-book,” I interposed. “It’s all very well in its way, but it doesn’t account for half Jack’s adventures. Now I can let you into a secret. Please don’t look so apprehensive, O’Neill! As it happens, I had a descriptive letter from Enderby just about the time that Jack was making the most brilliant progress with his Dutch vocabulary. It gave me a vivid picture of what was going on in the Hague when this linguist of ours got really started to work.

Here are two of these long epistles. In the first he tells me all about the MacNamaras—Jack’s cousins, you know—who came across from Kilkenny, for a trip to Holland. They were at the Oude Doelen when he wrote, and our friend Jack was posing as a great Dutch scholar and showing them the sights.

(From Enderby to Cuey-na-Gael)
Doelen Hotel,
The Hague.

My dear Cuey-na-Gael,

You would be amazed to see the confidence with which O’Neill acts as guide to the MacNamaras.

MacNamara père is mostly buried in museums, or is on the hunt for archaeological papers, so Kathleen and Terence are left on Jack’s hands.

He has been everywhere with them, and has evidently impressed them with his astounding Dutch. To them it seems both correct and fluent. They have only had three days of it as yet, and haven’t had time to find him out. Kathleen is as haughty as ever; and I can see she chafes at being obliged to submit to the direction of a mere boy, as she regards Jack.

She was furious the day before yesterday, when in passing through one of the back streets he asked her if she had ever noticed what the Dutch Government printed in front of the surgeries.

She glanced up and, to her horror, read: “Hier mangelt men.” It was only a momentary shock; she guessed soon enough what it meant; but it gave her a turn all the same. Perhaps it wasn’t a very finished kind of joke, but she needn’t have been quite so fierce about it.

“You’re cruel,” she said, “cruel and heartless! Why even your dogmatic and intolerable chum, Mr. van Leeuwen wouldn’t have been so harsh as that.”

Now it was that little speech of hers that suggested something to me. Was there ever anything between her and van Leeuwen? They were at the University about the same time, and it seems van Leeuwen was a great friend of the father, who had him down to his place in the country and showed him his manuscripts. But I believe Kathleen couldn’t stand him. They used always to be arguing about the Suffragettes, and passed for official enemies, in a way,—at least as uncompromising leaders on opposite sides. She was fond of saying that van Leeuwen was a standing proof that mere learning couldn’t enlarge the mind. Once in a private debate she referred to him as a “learned barbarian and a retrograde mediævalist.”

She was called to order for it, of course; but her apology didn’t amount to much. She said she wouldn’t mind dropping the adjectives, but she would stick to the nouns.

I believe van Leeuwen was quite content, however, and congratulated his witty antagonist on the fact that she would mellow with time.

We always thought in those days they were sworn foes, and always would be. But I have a dim idea there is now more friendly interest on both sides. And, by the way, van Leeuwen has been carrying on brisk correspondence with O’Neill, especially since he heard the MacNamaras were expected. He has offered his services, and those of his motor, to all and sundry, especially if they hail from Dublin: so I don’t think he can be keeping up very much of a grudge.

But I was going to tell you about Jack.

Lately I had noticed that his Dutch vocabulary was growing very rich. He seemed to have quite a hunger for nouns, and he used to ask the names of everything. But I have no idea of what he was up to. To day I’ll find out and write you.

Much haste. Yours as ever.
Enderby.

(From Enderby to Cuey-na-Gael)

Dear Cuey,

I’ve just been at the Doelen Hotel—and the Macs are gone! Very sudden I must say. I suppose Kathleen has got tired of Holland; or is she trying to avoid van Leeuwen?

You see MacNamara mère had written me a friendly little note from Kilkenny, telling me that the Doctor—as she always calls her husband—had got a trifle absent-minded since his deafness became troublesome, and would I look him up occasionally during his stay in the Hague, and give him some advice about the Rhine.

Well, when I reached Vieux Doelen, the birds were flown. Gone at six o’clock, I was told—the three of them—to Cologne! Quick work, I thought; so I made a bee-line for O’Neill’s. He surely would know about this sudden departure.

And in any case I wanted to get a glimpse of his new mysterious studies.

Just fancy! The landlady met me at the door with tears in her eyes.

“O Mijnheer, Mijnheer!” she exclaimed half-sobbing. “Ik vrees voor mijnheer O’Neill. Hij studeert te veel, of ik weet het niet—maar het is niet goed met hem. Ik geloof”, and here her voice sank to a horrified whisper, “dat hij een beetje kindsch geworden is; want hij heeft speelgoed gekocht, en hij maak overal zoo een rommel.”

“Ja, juffrouw,” I strove to explain, “Mijnheer studeert natuurlijk.”

But she persisted, “Oh mijnheer! studeeren is het niet. Hij ziet het scherm voor een kachel aan, en verknoeit alles. Ik ben zoo bang, zoo benauwd! Ik durf het huis niet uit, van Maandag af al!”

Rather flustered by all this, I promised to call the doctor if it were necessary; then climbed up the stairs to O’Neill’s door.

All was still. I knocked and entered. What a sight met my eyes! Indeed it was enough to astonish more experienced people than the landlady.

Neatly fastened on one side of the table was a model train, engine and all. Beside it was a toy house, with yard, garden, and stiff wooden trees. Then there was a bit of a doll’s room with a kitchen stove. And verily to every one of these articles there was a label affixed.

There sat the student, pen in hand, with a dictionary and a gum-bottle at his elbow. Snippets of paper littered his writing-desk and the floor around. His unfinished lunch (labelled too) looked down reproachfully from a pile of books built on the table.

Over the gorgeous screen that hid the hearth a conspicuous card was hung, bearing the mystic inscription, “What ought to be here—Kachel.”

No wonder the careful hospita was upset. It would have been hard to say whether the apartment was more like a museum or an auction room.

He glanced up with a sort of blush when I came near; but raised his hand to enjoin silence, as he found the word he was in search of, and wrote it down.

Half expecting to see prices marked, I examined some of the labels.

Nearly every thing had its Dutch name gummed on to it, such as ‘spiegel lijst,’ ‘behangsel,’ ‘schotel of bakje,’ and even on his sleeve ‘mouw van mijn jas.’

“It’s all right!” he burst forth enthusiastically. “Doing Berlitz Dutch, you see! Self-taught, too! Splendid plan. Three hundred words a day. I’ll have two thousand new nouns at my fingers’ ends before the Macs are back from the Drachenfels. Precious few things in the ordinary way of life, I won’t know then! Eh, what?”

Then it dawned upon me he was getting up vocabulary.

“Nouns, of course,” he said. “All nouns. That’s the secret. True basis of any language.

“It’s a discovery of my own. If you know the names of two or three thousand material things, you can never be at a loss. But I stick in a proverb, too, here and there, wherever it comes handy. See?”

He held up the sleeve of his dressing-gown on which the candid announcement was made in bold round-hand: “Ik heb het achter de mouw”, and pointed to his bread-knife, which was tastefully adorned with the words: “Het mes op de keel zetten.”

Yes, I saw.

Well; then he explained, and argued, and tried to proselytize me. He was making hay while the sun shone—which meant that he was preparing, in the absence of Terence and Kathleen, for his famous cycling-tour; getting on his armour, in fact.

In such spirits I had never seen him.

And, I must say, he made out a good case for his method. It seems he had anticipated most of the queries he might be obliged to put during his travels. He had docketed every part of a railway carriage, and even mastered all sorts of regulations, from those of the Luxe-trein to Buurtverkeer, and from the yearly ticket to the humble perronkaartje. It looked very thorough, and I understood that he had treated his cycle the same way. But I have grave doubts! I am the more confirmed in my scepticism from what the landlady told me at the door. After reassuring her on the score of O’Neill’s health, I emphasised the fact that he was going on a trip, and must practise Dutch by way of preparation.

That was worse than all, she thought; as Mijnheer O’Neill would certainly come to harm. “Hij is zoo veranderd! Hè! Het is zoo eng.”

Yesterday he had asked her about the print of a sea-fight that her little boy had put up in the hall. She said it was de Ruyter; and began to expatiate on that hero’s achievements.

But he cut her short with: “Een beroemde man was hij zeker; misschien de grootste water-baas van zijn tijd.”

I explained that he probably meant zee-held; but not remembering the right term in time, had taken one like it.

But the landlady could not be pacified.

“Het doet mij huiveren te denken dat hij op reis gaat!” she said.

I was not without my apprehensions either. For he means to start out next week with two thousand new words.

He’ll probably find that such hastily acquired information is not without its drawbacks.

But more again.
Vale, vale.
As ever yours,
Phil Enderby.

P. S. The Macs are gone to Bonn, where your uncle expects to find wonderful manuscripts. Not much fun for Kathleen though! And Terence will be bored to death. Why doesn’t O’Neill bring him back to Holland and show him Amsterdam and other towns?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SURPRISES OF THE MAAS.

“Well, well!” ejaculated O’Neill irritably. “What an inveterate old gossip Enderby is, to be sure!

“Of course I got Terence back quite soon from Bonn, where he had nothing to do; and I gave him a splendid time sight-seeing in Haarlem and Amsterdam. I’ll tell you about that, another time.

But first about my run to Rotterdam, where I went one day for a little change I needed.

The landlady was a bit peevish and hysterical, and, of course, very bothersome. She never quite took to the Berlitz method, as I had improved it; and she became grandmotherly to me from the moment I made that slip about the zee-held.

The whole thing was getting on her nerves, so I gave her a rest. Took a day off, in fact; and went for a tour round the Rotterdam havens.

I had some idea of recapitulating the old ground—the first thousand words, you know—whilst I should be steaming around the harbour. But as soon as we pushed off from the wharf and went skimming over the sun-lit Maas, the brilliant and animated scene wiped the new vocabulary clean out of my mind for the time-being; and I didn’t feel at all inclined to dig it out of my notes.

The marvellous colouring of everything held me spell-bound. It was like fairyland. Our boat was crowded, and a man on board pointed out the sights. That was the only Dutch study I got that day; for some one began to speak to me in English—an Amsterdammer, as it appeared, who told me that the grachten in Amsterdam surpassed every other spectacle the world had to show; and made me promise to go and see them as soon as I could.

I asked him what he thought of the harbour we were in; but he wasn’t so enthusiastic.

Meantime it had grown darker, and a steady, cold, sea-fog drifted round us. It got dismally wet, as well as gloomy; and the deck dripped with clammy moisture. We were hardly moving, presently; and our captain kept the steam whistle hard at work. The sight-seers were grievously disappointed; and one fellow-victim informed me it would be a good thing if we got near land anywhere, in time to catch the last train.

Horns kept booming around us, every few seconds; perky little tugs and immense black hulls swept by us at arm’s length, piping or bellowing, according to their temperament and ability.

The Amsterdammer and I had gone to the prow, to try and peer a little further into the dense curling vapour, when a siren—I think that’s what you call the thing—gave such a sudden blood-curdling yell at our very elbow, it seemed as if we had trodden on the tail of the true and original Sea-serpent, and that the reptile was shrieking in agony.

From that time on, we had sea-serpents every other minute—whole swarms of them—infuriated, inquisitive or resigned—soprano, alto, tenor;—all whining, hooting and snorting; every one trying to howl all the others down.

Excuse my referring to it, but it was the best illustration I had yet got of Boyton’s verbs.

“Ik graauw, ik kef en ik kweel!” said one set of voices. “Ik krijsch, ik fluit en ik gil!” answered their rivals.

But the deep boom of new-comers swept the earlier songsters out of the field: “Ik rammel, ik ratel en ik scheur”. It was a regular chorus.

“Ik gier en ik piep”, squeaked the little tugs, “ik fop en ik jok”.

But the first musicians—the sentimental ones—wouldn’t be outdone. They were evidently turning over their grammars very rapidly, to get a really melancholy selection, for in another moment their lugubrious snuffle pierced the fog like a knife: “Ik wee-ee-een; ik krijt; en ik hui-ui-ui-l-l!”

There was one long-drawn-out sob, that rose and fell and rose again with such appalling and expressive anguish that I could have imagined half the Netherlands had turned into a gigantic sea-serpent, and had bitten off its own tongue. So human, too, was its tortured wail, that I instinctively thought of Polyphemus having his eye gouged out by Ulysses. The hero, you remember, did it with a burning pine. One has a horrible sympathy for Polyphemus, even though he is a monster and mythical.

Happily our Polyphemus only gave two or three of his prize yells. Then he seemed to settle into sleep, away down the river somewhere.

The Amsterdam-man explained to me that in his city the fog-horns were much more musical.

This thesis was warmly contested by a Rotterdammer who had overheard it, and who spoke of the Capital with a distinct want of reverence.

The argument soon deviated into Dutch, and I lost hold of it; but through a cloud of statistics and history I observed that local patriotism on both sides stood at fever heat.

By and by, the fog thinned a little; and we crept along to a landing-stage, where the Amsterdammer and I climbed on shore with alacrity. We lost our way at first, and wandered about within earshot of the siren-brood, whooping and calling and taunting one another on the river; but my new-made friend stumbled at last on some spot he was acquainted with; and hastily giving me some directions, went off to his train.

After the long Polyphemus-concert on the murky river I wasn’t in much humour for Dutch, but I had to speak it at every corner to ask my way.

In an open thoroughfare—there were some people about, but not many—near an archway, I came upon Clotho.

Perhaps the Greek Mythology was running in my head: but there she sat. Old beyond words, but hale; wrapped up marvellously with head and jaws swathed in dim flannel, she gazed, without moving, on a table in front of her, spread with dried eels and other occult delicacies. As I approached, to enquire for the ‘kortste weg naar de electrische tram’, she didn’t move a muscle. Something about her made me pause upon my step, and refrain from speech.

No movement.

But wait! One thickly muffled hand went out to some obscure eatable, slowly grasped it, dipped it in a sort of cup, then, still more slowly, brought it to her lips.

Yes. She was alive; for she munched, calmly and dispassionately.

The sight impressed me. It was like Fate; or an ancient priestess performing mysterious rites. Clotho would look like this, if Clotho would munch instead of spin.

Meantime the inevitable butcher’s boy had joined me. Two of them, indeed, stood at my side, curious to know what interested the vreemdeling.

The old lady never winced under the scrutiny, but put forth her hand again for another shell.

There was a book-stall near, but nobody at it, as far as I could see. The whole street sounded hollow; and everything dripped. It made me shiver to look at the stone-pillars, oozy and moist, with condensed sea-fog trickling down. The glaring street-lamps hardly lit up the scene; but they showed the damp. Polyphemus gave a distant whoop, as if it were his last: and the Spectre munched. She hadn’t once looked up.

It all felt like a dream—except for the butchers’ boys.

“Wat doet ze—die oude mejuffrouw?” I enquired.

“Ze zit te eten,” was the prompt reply.

“Waarom zit ze te eten daar?” I asked.

“Om dat ze trek heeft!”

A snigger went round the company. Evidently that reply was of the nature of wit; and they expected something sparkling from me in return.

But I couldn’t sparkle.

“Trek” was unknown to me. Strange, how you can be bowled over by a simple word, if you’ve never heard it. Trekken—trok—getrokken, was familiar. That meant ‘to pull,’ ‘draw,’ or ‘wander’. “Trekschuit”—“trekpot”—“trekvogel”; I had them all labelled on my desk in the Hague. But “trek” itself, what was that exactly? Provided of course, the youth were grammatical,—which I very much doubted.

“Zij heeft getrokken,” however, when I tried it, only raised new difficulties. What then did she pull, and why?

‘Trekvogel’ was an alluring idea to follow up, in a town where Jan Olieslagers’ fame was universal: but common sense forbade my pursuing that line far.

The defects of my home-made Berlitz became painfully evident. It’s humiliating, when you have your 2000 new nouns at your fingers’ ends, and hundreds of old ones; and yet can’t understand the first thing a knecht says.

But the bystanders were growing impatient; so—to withdraw gracefully—I enquired, “wat is trek?”

It was probably the best retort I could have made. “Ja, wat is het?” he soliloquised, evidently puzzled, “Ik weet het niet. Maar ik heb altijd trek.”

“Ik ook”, said a smaller boy; “in een boterham.”

Tongues were loosened on all sides. “Nee; in een lekker stuk worst,” I heard one say.

“Nee; niet waar”; interrupted a brawny fellow with a brick-red face; “Zuurkool en spek.”

I nipped the unprofitable discussion in the bud by demanding, as I moved away: “Maar wat is trek?”

“Dat weet je wel,” said the first fellow, the wit. “Als je te veel eet.”

“Nee, heelemaal niet,” jeered a late-comer. “Kan je begrijpen! Maar als je niets eet, dan heb je trek!”

The crowd cheered at this. He had evidently the majority with him. High words followed; and the controversy became general, as the protagonists in this psychological debate found backers, and swarmed away towards the centre of town.

I was left alone, and Clotho looked up.

She dipped a periwinkle in one of the weird cups, and held it towards me.

“Heeft Mijnheer trek?” Would I join in the repast!

“Ik? Duizendmaal verschooning!” I said, as I quickened my pace in rapid retreat.

My confusion increased as I reflected that I had probably been urging my late interlocutors to “define appetite”—a thing even Aristotle could hardly do. Naturally the populace broke into parties—Aristotelians and Platonists (let us say), or into Hoekschen en Kabeljauwschen.

In any case my confidence was shaken in my improved, home-made Berlitz. It might be splendid for travelling; but in ordinary life it didn’t seem to cover the ground.

On arriving at my lodgings I was met at the door by the landlady’s son. He was beaming. Lately he had been working up his English, and truly had made giant strides.

“Koot eeffening, Sir,” he said; “Koot eeffening! Ai hef an little chat.” “I wish to have a chat”, he seemed to mean.

It was an odd request for a trifling practice in English; but I like to encourage merit, so I assured him of my willingness to have a friendly talk.

“Oh, yes. All right,” I said. “But won’t you come up stairs? We have a few minutes before supper.”

“But—Ai hef here an naiz little chat!”

“Ah, just so. Did you perhaps have a talk with some one in English when I was away?”

“No, sir; but ai hef een chat.”

This was bewildering; and as he seemed puzzled, too, and always stuck to the same noun I investigated more fully.

“You talk of a chat!—dat is een praatje, weet je wel?”

“Nee, mijnheer, heus: het is waar. Geen praatje.”

We were half-way up the stairs now. “Come on”, I said.

“Vayt”, he replied, diving into some recess. “Ai vil let see you.”

In an instant he was back with something under his coat. This he produced with the delighted exclamation: “ze little chat!”

It was a bedraggled kitten that he had discovered wandering about in the fog and mewing piteously. “Vil you hef him? Anders, zegt moe, hij kan niet blijven.”

“I’ll talk to your mother about the kitten,” I answered. “Kitten,—that’s what we call it—not chat. Maar hoor eens, jongen, heeft het poesje trek?”

“O mijnheer, verbazend!” was the ecstatic reply; and in another three minutes he had a saucer of milk under the foundling’s nose, and was watching kitty’s lapping operations with a joy as keen as that of kitty herself.

I had got what I wanted without any philosophic argument. There was the proof.

Trek is appetite.

CHAPTER IX.

THE THUNDERSTORM.

I must tell you about that great walk we took from Leyden to Haarlem. That was just after Terence came back from Germany, wearied with waiting till his learned Dad would cease pottering about the museums in Bonn.

He wrote to van Leeuwen in Arnhem; and urged that youth use his influence with the University Librarian to let Dr. MacNamara see the Irish manuscripts he was so keen upon. Then, if you please, my brave Terence thought his duties were over, as far as helping his father was concerned. Taking the next train for the Hague he turned up unexpectedly at my lodgings.

That was at six in the morning, and he banged at my bedroom door till I was awake.

“I’m back,” he said: “And I’m going to carry you off on that famous bicycle tour of yours. Hurry up with all those papers and preparations and things,—and I’ll be round with my bike in no time!”

“Well!” I shouted through the closed door, “you may come as soon as ever you like; but there’ll be no bicycle tour to-day. I’m not nearly ready yet. I’ve all the nouns from T to Z to learn yet; and it’ll take me another week. Catch me leaving this neighbourhood without those nouns! No, my boy. But I’ll take a tramp with you to the seaside, if you like.”

He didn’t wait for my explanations but pranced off grumbling, and I didn’t see him till noon. He was then quite willing to fall in with my project of a long walk—first by the strand to Noordwijk, then inland through the dunes, and so on to Haarlem.

We only got as far as Noordwijk that evening. After a heavy miserable trudge by the shore, and mostly through loose sand, we were glad enough to put up at Huis-ter-Duin for the night. The sunset, magnificent though it was, could hardly banish the deep sleepiness that seized us. Terence, who was in better training than I, sat up smoking a while, but I heard him go off to his room before I fell over. All the music, laughter, and talk about the place, never in the slightest degree disturbed our slumber.

I slept like a log, and awoke early, with the sound of the sea in my ears. It was a softly modulated, gentle murmur that seemed to call me; and when I looked out, the view was superb. Deep blue, almost indigo in hue, and calm as oil, the waves stood high on the sands. Every now and then a long, knife-like billow would slowly rise up for half-a-mile or so, poise itself for an instant, and then fall with a mighty flap, like a wall of slate. Away out towards the horizon the ocean gleamed a fairy-like blue and opal; but close at hand it had a deep, menacing tint that took your breath away. And all the time those slatey ledges of water kept languidly lifting themselves and suddenly dropping, as if they were alive.

When I opened the window, a cool wind softly stole in—like some subtle elixir. I looked at my watch. It was half past four. Fired with the idea of having a tramp by that mysterious light, I went off and roused Terence—happily without terrifying the other inmates of the hotel. He was willing to make an early start if I could secure him enough breakfast.

This required some diplomacy. Suddenly encountering a knecht prowling about and collecting boots, I tried to communicate our plans to him, and gain his sympathy. No idiom, however, that I was acquainted with was equal to this strain: so I had recourse to the language of gesture and the display of coin. This at last induced him to bring us part of his own modest breakfast—a chunk of black bread and a hard-boiled egg—and to let us out by the front door.

He kept our bags, however, and a bankbiljet, to settle the rekening provisionally, and as an evidence of good faith. It was a fussy business getting him to agree even to this, and in consequence I quite forgot about my dictionary and “walking-tour notes”—which were strapped up in the bag.

Indeed, I didn’t notice the neglect till we were far away from the hotel. But there was no Dutch needed for a long time.

It was an exhilarating experience to go careering along by that weird, threatening sea in the fresh morning air. The scent of herbs and wild-flowers on the dunes greeted us when we took a turn inland: and the colours of everything around us kept changing with incredible swiftness.

At first we couldn’t keep our eyes off the mirror-like expanse of water. Its slate became steel-blue—the steel-blue deepened into purple shading off into amethyst, while the sky and the air all about us grew rosy, then saffron, then silver.

Over and across the rolling hills we trudged, our spirits rising every instant. Why shouldn’t we keep on till we got opposite Haarlem, then strike off east, do that city, and return by rail? Why not indeed? Huis-ter-Duin and its slippered knecht could settle the matter of the rekening and the change, by post; and we should make a day of it!

So we climbed up and down along the edge of the grassy slopes, till the tide retired from the sands a little. There we had a delightful hour, along the firm damp shore. It grew sultry after a while; yet it was only a quarter to eight. There would be more heat yet! Alternately we tried the dunes and the beach—the beach and the dunes—but there was no shelter from the sun; and the pleasant wind had died down. After an other couple of hours’ toil through the hot, loose sand we decided we had enough of the coast for the day, and followed a kind of winding path inland. This was a regular cart-track at first, and promised to lead us to some thriving village where we could have a rest. But it didn’t. It twined round a score of scattered potatoe plots, and then came to an abrupt and ignominious end against a wire fence, on the top of a hill. No doubt we ought to have gone back and kept along the shore. But we were too hungry to think of returning to the desolation we had left. What we wanted was to see houses as soon as possible—houses containing eatables and cool rooms and chairs. Besides, we were as yet pretty confident of our geographical whereabouts; accordingly we pushed on for Haarlem—as we thought.

Well, it was a great mistake! The map makes the dunes only a few miles broad at most, yet we climbed up and down for hours, and couldn’t get clear of them.

Once we saw a fisherman at a distance and we yelled to him. He answered “terug” very faintly, and waved both arms. We hurried to meet him, but not a trace of him was to be found. Though the heat was intense, after a while shimmery haze began to spread over the sky, and there came a sudden change. It got dark and cold; and the storm that had been threatening all day burst on us with fury. In two or three minutes we were drenched. There was a marvellous display of sheet lightning so curious and varied that for a while it diverted our attention from our miserable plight, as we stumbled on over soaked hillocks and sand. We had a good hour of this.

In a dismal grove of non-descript-shrubs, we at last stumbled upon a trifling shelter, just as the rain was ceasing; and there we shivered like aspens, till the truth dawned upon us that there was a faint sound of human voices over the slope. “Hurrah!” we shouted. “Relief at last—and a chance of something to eat!”

Stiff and dripping though we were, we positively bounded over the sand hill.

Two or three small one-storied cottages came soon into view. Rushing into the first—it looked like a shop, and had the words garen en band over the window—we demanded pointedly if we could get food. The youngish woman who ambled slowly to and fro behind the counter, said she had no coffee or bread for us, but we could get these things in Haarlem. There was a good restaurant there.

“Geen ei?” I asked.

No; not even an egg for sale.