Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/623

Rh pieces of Van de Velde and Backhuizen we were happily soon to have opportunities of admiring. Their build had scarcely changed by a line in the course of centuries, any more than the serviceable costumes of their shaggy-trousered crews. Our bartering done, we made a fresh departure, groping our way half-speed for the mouth of the Maas. It may have been as well for us that we took it easily and kept the lead going, when we fancied that we ought to be nearing our destination; for our compass had got all abroad, in sympathy with a shifting cargo of pig-iron, and our skipper had to confess that he had lost his way, and could tell as little as his compass about our bearings. There we lay, if not all that day, at least a good part of the morning, shifting about with the metal and groundswell, till a sudden breeze swept aside the fog, and the sun burst out in all his brilliance. Since then we have seen him rise repeatedly in various latitudes just as we had sighted unfamiliar shores, but he has never showed us anything that impressed us more. Yet as we steamed back, retracing the way we had overrun, there was little visible to landward but the low lines of the sand-dunes, heaped the one behind the other. The coast of Holland, for all we could see of it, might have been nothing but a shifting sandbank, the favourite fishing-ground of the sea-birds that were swooping and clamouring over it, had it not been for a white point or two that occasionally appeared to vanish again over the sky-line. These told of the presence of life and indefatigable industry; for the revolving points were the tips of the windmill-sails, — the motive power of the pumps that are perpetually going, and keeping the soaking country from being swamped. As you see how low the land lies when you open the broad estuary of the river, you begin to be conscious of a certain uneasiness lest you should chance to go down yourself in the course of your flying visit. The shoaling channel seems as likely to let the sea run in as to let the river run off. The Dutch have evidently been doing their best to speed the parting guest, who might easily make himself boisterously unpleasant on occasion, although quiet enough now. His bed is narrowed and deepened by formidable embankments, but he is become sluggish and dull, and is loath to leave it. The Maas has changed his nature with his name, and you would never recognize him for the impetuous Meuse you have since seen hurrying along at the foot of the rocky fortifications of Dinant. The soil and landslips he brings down in solution have plenty of time to settle here, and the buoys bobbing about on the shallows on all sides of you look like the heads of a flock of monster seals. The manufacture of those indispensable water-marks is become a staple industry in some of the stagnating seaports that are gradually being left high and dry, as land and sea are changing their levels; and, of course, the trade of the pilot is equally flourishing. Were it not that these worthy gentlemen were as safe and sure as they seem to be slow, more ships would discharge their valuable cargoes in the labyrinth of banks and shoals that embarrass the commerce of the Netherlands. The first Dutchman you meet off his native shores boards you in a wreath of smoke of his own raising. His great porcelain pipe "goes of itself," and he scarcely troubles himself to take his hands from his voluminous pockets to scramble up the side, or exchange salutations with the captain. He gives his leisurely orders chiefly by pantomime, with his eyes fixed contemplatively on the Maas as if he were seeking inspiration for a sonnet in the sluggish eddies of its muddy tide. But the type of man is highly characteristic not only of his particular calling, but of his country-people in general. The blank inexpression of his face conceals a deal of shrewd intelligence as well as professional knowledge; and the square-built form wrapped up in the Flushing pea-jacket is capable of as much exertion as endurance. He is quite the sort of man you could imagine putting out to sea in any weather, fortified by Calvinistic acquiescence in the purposes of Providence, as well as by constitutional indifference to danger, and a comfortable expectation of handsome salvage-money; or working like a beaver behind the dams, when the wind from the west was blowing up a hurricane, and the surf was beating breaches from the side of the angry ocean; or opening the sluices if the worst came to the worst, and submerging his enemies with his personal property. It was just such a rough, patriotic sea-dog, no doubt, who came off to the flotilla of the " beggars of the sea," when Lumey de la Mark and the Seigneur of Trelong seized on the Spanish fortress of Brille and "robbed the Duke of Alva of his spectacles." It was that stamp of sturdy fellow who used to sweep the narrow seas under Van Reuter, or sail in cock-boats into Arctic darkness and ice-fields under such adventurous navigators as Heemskirk.