Ulenspiegel and Lamme had come to Heyst-on-the-Dunes, and behold a fleet of fishing-boats that were come hither from Ostend and from Blankenberghe and Knokke. Filled they were with men-at-arms, the followers of the Beggarmen of Zeeland, who carried on their hats a silver crescent with this inscription: “Serve rather the Turk than the Pope.”
Ulenspiegel is glad; he whistles like the lark and from every side there comes to answer him the warlike cockcrow. And Lamme and Ulenspiegel go aboard one of the ships and are carried to Emden and thence to Wieringen, where their ship is hemmed in by the ice. For by now it is the month of February.
Now all around the ship there was to be seen the most joyous sight imaginable: men all clad in velvet, sledging and skating on the ice; and women skating too, with skirts and jackets broidered with pearl and gold, blue and scarlet. And the boys and girls came and went hither and thither, laughing and following one another in line, or two by two in couples, singing the song of love upon the ice, and running to eat and drink at the stalls decorated with flags, where one could buy all kinds of brandy-wine and oranges and figs and eggs and hot vegetables with heete-koeken—pancakes, that is, with vegetables flavoured with vinegar. And all around them the sailing sledges made the ice to resound under the press of their sharp runners.
Lamme, who was still searching everywhere for his wife, wandered about on his skates like the rest of that happy crowd, but he kept falling down time and again.
Ulenspiegel, meanwhile, to satisfy his hunger and thirst, was wont to resort to a little tavern on the quay where the prices were not high, and where he used to have many a talk with the old lady who kept it.
One Sunday about nine o’clock he went to the inn and asked them to give him some dinner. A charming-looking young woman came forward to serve him.
“Dear me,” he cried, “you rejuvenated hostess! Where-ever are those old wrinkles of yours gone to? And your mouth has found all its teeth again, and they are white with the whiteness of youth itself! And your lips are red like cherries! Is it for me this smile of yours so sweet and roguish?”
“Nay, nay,” she said. “But what can I get you?”
“Yourself,” he said.
The woman answered: