At Hans's last words I sprang from the table and threw open the window. I felt as if I must suffocate, or as if the low ceiling with its bent beams would fall in upon me.
"Is it still raining?" Hans asked.
"Not at this moment," I said. But one of those thick fogs of which several had passed over in the course of the day, was drifting in from the sea.
"Real smugglers' weather," said Hans. "The old man ought to be ashamed of himself to drag his friends out on such a day. But that cannot be helped. Shall we not drink another bottle? It will be cursedly cold to-night."
I said I thought we had already drunk more than enough, and that it was high time to start.
"Then I will get ready," said Hans, and went into his chamber, where I for a long time heard him rummaging among his water-boots.
I had always considered myself pretty cool in moments of danger; but in Hans I had met my master. While he was overhauling the things in his room, I heard him through the half-open door whistling to himself as cheerily as if we were going out to shoot hares, instead of an adventure of life and death. To be sure, I said to myself, his is a case of hopeless love, and Herr von Zehren is merely a friend, neighbor, and equal, whom he feels it his duty to assist against the hated police. That Hans, in combating for a cause that did not really concern him, was doing much more, or at least acting far more disinterestedly than I, did not occur to me.
And now he came out of his room, if not the wildest of all wild warriors, yet in appearance one who would be very appropriately selected for an adventure that demanded a strong and bold man. His long legs were incased in immense boots; over a close-fitting jacket of silk he had put on a loose woollen overcoat, which he probably wore when hunting in winter, and which could be drawn close with a belt or allowed to hang loose, as at present, he having buckled the belt under it around the jacket, and thrust his pistols into the belt. With a jolly laugh he displayed his equipment and asked me if I would not have an overcoat also, as he had another; an offer which I gladly accepted.
"We look like two brothers," said Hans; and in fact we might easily have been mistaken for brothers, as we both had the same stature and breadth of shoulders, and were dressed almost precisely alike.
"If there are not too many of them," said Hans, "we can easily manage them."