“Tell me of my wife in Delft, Margaret Enkhuysen—you left there, didn’t you?” asks another.
But explaining their business and delivering over their three sacks of flour they are shortly afterward taken into the town by the Schalkwyker gate. Here Guy needs no word of mouth to tell him that he is in a town stricken by wounds and death, by siege and famine. The streets are dark, no lights burn save in the great church, now used as a hospital, and in the town-hall, where Ripperda, the Commandant, is busy with his officers.
The place is unnaturally silent. There are no barking dogs, nor even yelling cats; these have been eaten. The only sounds in the streets are the tramp of patrols relieving each other, or companies of men marching to duty on the walls. The voices of the sentries are hollow and weak with hunger.
Guy, leaving Haring at the Swan Inn, before which sit no happy burghers, and within which all is dark, makes his way to the great ravelin between the St. Jan’s gate and the Kruys gate, where he is informed that Pieter Kies is on guard, and gets interview with him.
“Why didn’t you send the daughter of Niklaas Bodé Volcker out of the town when it was besieged?” Guy asks indignantly.
“Because we had use for her.”
“Use for her? How? She is a woman, a non-combatant.”
“Women are not non-combatants here. Were it not for women we men would hardly hold this town.”
“You don’t mean to say that Mina fights?”
“No, she fills sand bags and sews them up, but there are plenty of women who do fight. Fight as well as men. Women are men here! no, they are more than that, they are angels of mercy—angels of death; nursing the wounded one day and killing the Spaniards the next, with their own hands. There’s the widow Kenau [[196]]Hasselaer, the Spaniards fly from her faster than they would from any man in the garrison.”