"I knew that it would be so, Ned," his father said. "I never doubted it for a moment. It is well that I have been able to obtain aid so speedily. Better a limb than life, my boy. I did not wince when I was hit, and with God's help I can stand the pain now. Do you go away and tell the burgomaster how it all came about, and leave me with these gentlemen."
As soon as Ned had left the room, sobbing in spite of his efforts to appear manly, the captain said: "Now, gentlemen, since this must be done, I pray you to do it without loss of time. I will bear it as best I can, I promise you; and as three or four and twenty years at sea makes a man pretty hard and accustomed to rough usage, I expect I shall stand it as well as another."
The surgeons agreed that there was no advantage in delay, and indeed that it was far better to amputate it before fever set in. They therefore returned home at once for their instruments, the knives and saws, the irons that were to be heated white hot to stop the bleeding, and the other appliances in use at the time. Had Ned been aware that the operation would have taken place so soon, he would have been unable to satisfy the curiosity of the burgomaster and citizens to know how it had happened that an English trader had come to blows with the Spaniards; but he had no idea that it would take place that night, and thought that probably some days would elapse before the surgeons finally decided that it was necessary to amputate it.
One of the surgeons had, at the captain's request, called the burgomaster aside as he left the house, and begged him to keep the lad engaged in conversation until he heard from him that all was over. This the burgomaster willingly promised to do; and as many of the leading citizens were assembled in the parlour to hear the news, there was no chance of Ned's slipping away.
"Before you begin to tell us your story, young sir, we should be glad to know how it is that you speak our language so well; for indeed we could not tell by your accent that you are not a native of these parts, which is of course impossible, seeing that your father is an Englishman and captain of the ship lying off there."
"My mother comes from near here," Ned said. "She is the daughter of Mynheer Plomaert, who lived at Vordwyk, two miles from Amsterdam. She went over to England when she married my father, but when he was away on his voyages she always spoke her own language to us children, so that we grew to speak it naturally as we did English."
Ned then related the news that met them on their arrival at his grandfather's home, and the exclamation of fury on the part of his father.
"It is a common enough story with us here," the burgomaster said, "for few of us but have lost friends or relatives at the hands of these murderous tyrants of ours. But to you, living in a free land, truly it must have been a dreadful shock; and I wonder not that your father's indignation betrayed him into words which, if overheard, might well cost a man his life in this country."
"They were overheard and reported," Ned said; and then proceeded to relate the warning they had received, the measures they had taken to get off unperceived, the accidental meeting with the guard boat and the way in which it had been sunk, the pursuit by the galleys and the fight with them, and then the encounter with the Spanish ship of war.
"And you say your father never relaxed his hold of the tiller when struck!" the burgomaster said in surprise. "I should have thought he must needs have fallen headlong to the ground."