This comes deep and heavy over land and water; there is no moon this night. Haring and Guy, muffling their oars, row cautiously up the stream, and in half an hour see the lights of Ouderkerk. Then groping along upon the opposite shore, the Dutchman acting as pilot, and apparently knowing every sandbank in the stream, they would get past this place, which is only a small village, undiscovered, were it not for the barking of a few curs, which produces a challenge from the Spanish sentry on the river bank.
Not answering this, the two bend to their oars as silently, but as strongly, as possible, and after a little the dogs cease barking, and the sentry resumes his beat, apparently thinking, as he has seen nothing or heard nothing, that nothing has passed him. In fact, after they are beyond the place, they discover by the yellings of the curs that the Spaniard is apparently kicking them for having aroused him.
Nearly all that night they pass up the river, and by daybreak are happy to find themselves, having made their way there by a small connecting stream, in the Leg Meer, a long, narrow patch of water that nearly reaches the Haarlem Lake. Passing along this in the early morning they are pursued and overtaken, and that would probably be the end of them, were it not friends instead of enemies who come upon them.
It is a small bateau patrolling this debatable water in behalf of the Prince of Orange.
From its captain they get the information that De Bossu has just put more galleys on the Haarlem Lake, and that they will have a hard time to get through the Spanish, as the Dutch fleet is refitting at the Kaag at the south end of the lake. “You had better not go,” suggests the Holland commander.
But Guy, confident that every day will bring more vessels of Alva’s upon the Haarlem Meer, making his course more difficult, insists upon going, and Haring is not the man to stay behind.
“Well, if you’ve made up your mind to it,” replies the Dutch captain, “We’ll help you on your way.”
His sailors assist Guy and Haring in getting their boat from Leg Meer across the polders by a water ditch [[194]]that runs beside a dyke and launch it upon the Haarlem Lake.
“Now,” says Chester, “what provisions can you spare. It were an outrage against humanity if we went into that starving town and took not one sack of meal to their hungry mouths.”
“You’re right,” answers the bateau commander. “We’ll give you three hundred pounds of flour, which is all your boat can safely carry.”