“Ja!” said I once more.
“En avant! then,” shouted he, as he motioned me to descend the flight of steps which led down to the Scheldt; “if this be the road you take, par Saint Denis ! you shall go first.”
Now the frost, as I have said, had only set in a few days before, and the ice on the Scheldt would scarcely have borne the weight of a drummer-boy; so I remonstrated at once, at first in Dutch, and then in French, as well as I was able, but nobody would mind me. I then endeavoured’ to show the danger his Majesty himself would incur; but they only laughed at this, and cried—
“En avant, en avant toujours,” and before I had time for another word, there was a corporal’s guard behind me, with fixed bayonets; the word “march” was given, and out I stepped.
I tried to say a prayer, but I could think of nothing but curses upon the fiends, whose shouts of laughter behind put all my piety to flight. When I came to the bottom step I turned round, and, putting my hand to my sides, endeavoured by signs to move their pity; but they only screamed the louder at this, and at a signal from an officer, a fellow touched me with a bayonet.
“That was an awful moment,” said old Hoogendorp, stopping short in his narrative, and seizing the can, which for half an hour he had not tasted. “I think I see the river before me still, with its flakes of ice, some thick and some thin, riding on each other; some whirling along in the rapid current of the stream; some lying like islands where the water was sluggish. I turned round, and I clenched my fist, and I shook it in the Emperor’s face, and I swore by the bones of the Stadtholder, that if I had but one grasp of his hand, I’d not perform that dance without a partner. Here I stood,” quoth he, “and the Scheldt might be, as it were, there. I lifted my foot thus, and came down upon a large piece of floating ice, which, the moment I touched it, slipped away, and shot out into the stream.”
At this moment Mynheer, who had been dramatizing this portion of his adventure, came down upon the waxed floor, with a plump, that shook the pagoda to its centre, while I, who had during the narrative been working double tides at the schiedam, was so interested at the catastrophe, that I thought he was really in the Scheldt, in the situation he was describing. The instincts of humanity were, I am proud to say, stronger in me than those of reason. I kicked off my shoes, threw away my coat, and plunged boldly after him. I remember well, catching him by the throat, and I remember too, feeling, what a dreadful thing was the grip of a drowning man; for both his hands were on my neck, and he squeezed me fearfully. Of what happened after, the waiters, or the Humane Society may know something: I only can tell, that I kept my bed, for four days, and when I next descended to the table d’hôte, I saw a large patch of black sticking-plaster across the bridge of old Hoogendorp’s nose—and I never was a guest in “Lust und Rust” afterwards.