Foy made a sign, and Martin going to the cart, pulled off the sail-cloth, revealing the five mud-stained barrels painted, each of them, with the mark B. There, too, ready for the purpose, were a hammer, mallet, and chisel. Resting the shafts of the cart upon a table, Martin climbed into it, and with a few great blows of the mallet, drove in the head of a cask selected at hazard. Beneath appeared wool, which he removed, not without fear lest there might be some mistake; then, as he could wait no longer, he tilted the barrel up and shot its contents out upon the floor.
As it chanced this was the keg that contained the jewels into which, foreseeing troublous days, from time to time Brant had converted the most of his vast wealth. Now in one glittering stream of red and white and blue and green, breaking from their cases and wrappings that the damp had rotted, save for those pearls, the most valuable of them all, which were in the watertight copper box—they fell jingling to the open floor, where they rolled hither and thither like beans shot from a sack in the steading.
“I think there is only this one tub of jewels,” said Foy quietly; “the rest, which are much heavier, are full of gold coin. Here, sir, is the inventory so that you may check the list and see that we have kept back nothing.”
But William of Orange heeded him not, only he looked at the priceless gems and muttered, “Fleets of ships, armies of men, convoys of food, means to bribe the great and buy goodwill—aye, and the Netherlands themselves wrung from the grip of Spain, the Netherlands free and rich and happy! O God! I thank Thee Who thus hast moved the hearts of men to the salvation of this Thy people from sore danger.”
Then in the sudden ecstasy of relief and joy, the great Prince hid his face in his hands and wept.
Thus it came about that the riches of Hendrik Brant, when Leyden lay at her last gasp, paid the soldiers and built the fleets which, in due time, driven by a great wind sent suddenly from heaven across the flooded meadows, raised the dreadful siege and signed the doom of Spanish rule in Holland. Therefore it would seem that not in vain was Hendrik Brant stubborn and foresighted, that his blood and the blood of Dirk van Goorl were not shed in vain; that not in vain also did Elsa suffer the worst torments of a woman’s fear in the Red Mill on the marshes; and Foy and Martin play their parts like men in the shot-tower, the Gevangenhuis and the siege, and Mother Martha the Sword find a grave and rest in the waters of the Haarlem Meer.
There are other morals to this story also, applicable, perhaps, to our life to-day, but the reader is left to guess them.
Scene the Second
Leyden is safe at last, and through the broken dykes Foy and Martin, with the rescuing ships, have sailed, shouting and red-handed, into her famine-stricken streets. For the Spaniards, those that are left of them, are broken and have fled away from their forts and flooded trenches.
So the scene changes from warring, blood-stained, triumphant Holland to the quiet city of Norwich and a quaint gabled house in Tombland almost beneath the shadow of the tall spire of the cathedral, which now for about a year had been the home of Lysbeth van Goorl and Elsa Brant. Here to Norwich they had come in safety in the autumn of 1573 just before the first siege of Leyden was begun, and here they had dwelt for twelve long, doubtful, anxious months. News, or rather rumours, of what was passing in the Netherlands reached them from time to time; twice even there came letters from Foy himself, but the last of these had been received many weeks ago just as the iron grip of the second leaguer was closing round the city. Then Foy and Martin, so they learned from the letter, were not in the town but with the Prince of Orange in Delft, working hard at the fleet which was being built and armed for its relief.