"The hammers have ceased," he shouted.
Klein Piet gabbled the words with lips that puckered and sagged in an ague of excitement. The elder man rose forthwith.
"Now we shall see!" he said.
He went down to crawl under one of the wagons into the open, but remained on his knees under it. Klein Piet, on all fours at his side, shivered and gulped. Their eyes wrestled with the baffling dark, and their pulses checked and raced; for something was moving out yonder. They could see but the loom of a great bulk, a blackness blacker than the night, something vast and tall—and it moved. As their eyes grew familiar with the darkness, they could see plainly that it moved; it seemed to slide slowly. Then, delicate but quite clear, some voice called and others answered. The sliding bulk took on an outline; it made a vague tracery against the faint sky as it neared them; each instant it was plainer to see. Piet, intent, every faculty set like a cocked pistol, noted a long flank, a tall, window-pierced structure that sloped. Old pictures and forgotten names fermented in his memory.
"Allemachtig! It's a ship," he cried.
Superbly she passed them, that lost galleon of the young world, slipped from her age-long anchorage. Her high sides were a-bristle with her guns; her sails were sheeted and her head was to the east. There was a great company of men on board of her; on her high poop, rising like a citadel, a little group of them was black and busy. As she passed down the beach, she dipped and lifted like a burdened ship in a seaway. It was then Klein Piet had his moment of madness. Suddenly he screamed like a girl and began to scramble forward. "Wait for me!" he cried. "I will go with you. I am a sailor too."
He would have run down towards her, but Piet grasped him and held on. He struggled and they rolled together on the grass, fighting with one another. Then Klein Piet ceased as suddenly as he had begun.
"I am better now," he gasped, and Piet let him rise. They stood up together and gazed seaward. A squall was blowing in from the east, thick and black, with a gleam of white water under it. Was it a sail they saw, a ship that heeled to the brisk wind and was screened from sight by the rain? They crawled back under the wagon as the first wetness lit on their faces, and sat there together.
"If you tell me you saw a ship," said Piet suddenly, "I will call you a liar."