“Now you take your lives in your hands,” continues the captain. “You’d better go in at night. You’re safer at the south end. But as you get near Haarlem, look out! The Spaniards have two or three galleys always off the Fuik.”
Taking the advice of their friends, and getting from them a bottle of spirits that cheers the two greatly, Haring and Guy set sail and speed across the Haarlem Lake to two small islands on the western side some four miles south of Haarlem.
There they lie until the night sets in once more, and then in the darkness, though they have a narrow squeak of it from a patrol galley, get in to the Fuik and land at one of the small forts built there to keep open communication between the lake and the leaguered city.
Here they are welcomed by a crowd of gaunt, hungry but determined-eyed citizens, who, under the stress of siege, have become more enduring than veterans. For all history shows that when the citizen rises to defend home and wives and children, no soldier is so enduring of hunger, of thirst, of wounds, of torture, as he who battles within sight of his roof-tree and returns each night from the horrors of war to caress his wife and little ones, the sight of whom makes him go forth again more desperate, more enduring, and more heroic for their kisses and their tears.
CHAPTER XVII.
ADVANCED WOMANHOOD IN 1573.
Such a welcome is given Guy and Haring as only the besieged, despairing and cut-off give to friends from the outer world. [[195]]
“You bring news of succor?” cries one Dutch burgher on guard.
“The Prince’s fleet is almost ready,” whispers another with anxious lips. “We have word by a carrier pigeon that he is fitting out an expedition by land.”