AN EXCURSION AMONG THE DIKES.

Terrill and Duncan, with the letters in their hands which they had just received, entered the main cabin.  They were called upon, in the presence of Mr. Lowington and Mr. Hamblin, as well as Captain Kendall, to give their testimony, which went to show that the commander was thoroughly and heartily opposed to any demonstration against the obnoxious instructor.

“What did Mr. Kendall say to you?” asked Mr. Hamblin.

“He asked me to use my influence with the fellows to prevent anything being done, and wished me to let them all know that he would not tolerate anything irregular,” replied Duncan.

“Did he, indeed!” sneered Mr. Hamblin.

“He did, indeed,” answered Duncan, with a twinkle of the eye.

“How happened he to say as much as this to you?” demanded the professor.

“Because, being an old friend and schoolmate of Captain Kendall, I happened to tell him that the fellows were inclined to haze Mr. Hamblin.”

“To haze me!” exclaimed Mr. Hamblin.

“I understand that we are to tell the whole truth here,” added Duncan, who seemed to enjoy the confusion of the learned gentleman.  “I didn’t hear of any particular plans; but the fellows kept hinting at something.”

“Did they, indeed?”

“They did, indeed.”

“But you don’t know what they were?”

“I do not, sir.”

“Can you tell me who wrote the letter I asked you to translate?”

“No sir, I cannot.”

Mr. Lowington asked some questions of the witness; and it was evident to him that the disaffection on board of the Josephine was more general than he had before suspected.  Terrill was called upon to explain still further the position of the captain; and Duncan opened his letters, being, as all the boys were, anxious to hear from home.  He had two letters.  Besides the one from his mother, there was another postmarked at Cologne, which he read after he had finished the first.

As Duncan read this Cologne letter his face became quite red, and he was not a little agitated.  By the time he had finished both of them, the first lieutenant had told all he knew in regard to the captain’s position.  He was very candid in making his statement, and took no pains to conceal the general disgust felt on board of the consort at the conduct of Mr. Hamblin; and he took no pains to conceal the fact that he shared the feelings of his shipmates.

“I should like to add something to my former statement, if you please, Mr. Lowington,” said Duncan, rising, with the Cologne letter in his hand.

“What do you wish to add?” asked the principal.

“I know now who wrote the letter to Mr. Hamblin.”

“Who?”

“Richard H. Linggold.”

“Who is he?”

“He is an old schoolmate of mine, whom I met in Antwerp the afternoon we first went ashore there,” replied Duncan, who now appeared to be considerably embarrassed.

“Was he a schoolmate of Mr. Kendall also?” demanded Mr. Hamblin, who was more anxious to connect the letter with him than to promote the discipline of the students.

“No, sir; I don’t think Captain Kendall ever saw Linggold.”

“We are to conclude, Duncan, that you put him up to this mischief,” added Mr. Lowington.

“Yes, sir; I did,” answered Duncan, candidly.

“Why did you virtually deny all knowledge of the letter when I appealed to the ship’s company before the suspension of Captain Kendall,” continued Mr. Lowington, sternly.

“I will explain.  I met Linggold in Antwerp, and spent an hour with him at the Hotel St. Antoine, where he was staying with his uncle.  He wanted to know about the academy squadron, and I told him all about both vessels.  As the trouble we had had in the Josephine was uppermost in the minds of all of us, I told him all about that.”

“Did you, indeed?’? said Mr. Hamblin.

“I did, indeed.  I am willing to acknowledge that I intended to join with the rest of the fellows in hazing Mr. Hamblin.”

“Are you, indeed?” sneered the professor, so wrathy that it was impossible for him to keep his seat, and he began to stride up and down the cabin.

“I am, indeed.  About a dozen of us were going to write letters to Mr. Hamblin from all the big bugs, including Louis Napoleon, the King of Holland, the King of Belgium, and all the Ministers of State whose names we could find out.”

“Were you, indeed?” gasped the savant, passing before the witness.

“We were, indeed.  I told Linggold what we were going to do, and he promised to help me, being a first-rate French and German scholar; but I told him we didn’t want any help, and that he would get me into a scrape if he meddled with the matter.  I meant to have the letters mailed in some place where none of us ever went.  I told Linggold I wanted him to take the letters and mail them at Cologne, and other places he went to in his travels; and he promised to do so.  I didn’t think of such a thing as his writing any letter after what I said.  I left him then, and haven’t seen or heard from him since till now.  He must have written the letter right off, and mailed it at once, for it came on board the Josephine that night.”

“Do you mean to say that you didn’t know this letter was to be written?” demanded Mr. Hamblin, sharply.

“Yes, sir.”

“When I asked you to give me a translation of it, were you not aware that it was a forgery?”

“I supposed it was.”

“You knew it was!”

“No, sir; I did not.  I had no knowledge whatever in regard to the writer.  It did not occur to me, after what had passed between Linggold and me, that he wrote the letter.  I believed it was done by some fellow on board.  When the captain was arrested, all the fellows tried to find out who had sent the letter, but no one would acknowledge it.”

“Did you write any letters of this description, Duncan?” asked the principal.

“No, sir.  I had two conversations with the captain; and when he asked me to do what I could to prevent any tricks being played upon the professor, I determined not to have anything to do with the letters, or any practical jokes of any kind.  I can bring a dozen fellows to prove that I said all I could to keep them from playing any tricks.”

“What does your friend say in his letter?”

“He says the joke was so good he couldn’t resist the temptation to send the first letter to the professor himself, and wants to know why I didn’t send the letters to him that I promised?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“After what the captain said, I persuaded the fellows not to write the letters, and I did not write any myself.  This letter is on the same kind of paper as that,” added Duncan, pointing to that which Paul had.

“Are you satisfied, Mr. Hamblin?” asked Mr. Lowington.

“No, sir, I am not,” replied the professor, decidedly.  “It appears that there was an organized conspiracy against me in the consort.”

“But it does not appear that Captain Kendall had anything to do with it,” added the principal, mildly.

“These boys are deceitful.”

“Some of them are,” replied Mr. Lowington, taking his pen and writing a few lines.  “Duncan, I am not satisfied with your conduct.”

“I am not satisfied with it myself, sir,” answered Duncan.  “Perhaps I ought to have known where that letter came from when Mr. Hamblin asked me to translate it; but I supposed some of the fellows on board had done it.”

“Didn’t you recognize the writing of your friend?”

“No, sir; it is very much like that of half a dozen fellows on board.”

“It is very much like Mr. Kendall’s,” said Mr. Hamblin.

“Linggold, Captain Kendall, and myself, all learned to write in the same school.”

“Then Mr. Kendall knows this Linggold?”

“No, sir; he didn’t go to the school till Captain Kendall left.”

“I suppose not,” added the incredulous professor.  “I am still of the opinion that Mr. Kendall wrote that letter.”

“I am entirely satisfied that he did not write it.  Duncan, you will remain on board of the ship.  Mr. Terrill, you will return to the Josephine, pipe to muster, and read this order.  Captain Kendall will return with you.”

“What is the order?” demanded Mr. Hamblin.

“’All charges against Captain Kendall being disproved, he is hereby reinstated, and ordered to resume the command of the Josephine,’” replied the principal, reading the order.

“Mr. Lowington, I protest-”

“I have heard you patiently, Mr. Hamblin, and have given my decision,” interposed the principal, directing the students present to retire.

Paul bowed to Mr. Lowington, and left the cabin.  The investigation had ended as he had supposed from the beginning that it would end.

“Mr. Lowington, I protest against this decision,” repeated Mr. Hamblin, angrily.  “I feel obliged to say that there has been a great lack of judgment in managing this unpleasant business.”

“And I feel obliged to remind you, Mr. Hamblin, that I am the principal of this academy squadron.  My decision is final,” replied Mr. Lowington, with dignity, as he rose from his chair and left the cabin.

“Snubbed by the boys, snubbed by the principal!” exclaimed the learned gentleman.  “Dr. Winstock, did you ever witness a more ridiculous farce in your life?”

“Never, sir,” replied the surgeon.  “It seems to me that you insist upon condemning Captain Kendall, guilty or innocent.”

“I have no doubt whatever of his guilt.  Those boys are all in league with each other, Kendall included.  There is a conspiracy to annoy me, and to get rid of me; but they will find they have mistaken their man in me, if they haven’t in anybody else!  Dr. Winstock, I tell you the letter Duncan held in his hand was a fiction!  I have been with students all my life, and I know them.”

“Why a fiction?”

“That Duncan, who is a very plausible young man, and a friend of Kendall, mind, is at the bottom of all this mischief.  He wrote the Cologne letter himself.  It was got up, and sent enclosed to the postmaster at Cologne, who of course forwarded it to Rotterdam.  It is a trick to disprove the charge against Kendall.”

Mr. Hamblin was very much excited, and developed his theory in full to the surgeon, who quietly pointed out its discrepancies.  He insisted that the students of the Josephine had thorned and irritated him for the sole purpose of getting rid of him, and that Paul was at the bottom of the mischief.

“When Mr. Lowington has been among students as long as I have, he will understand them better,” he added, triumphantly, for he was satisfied that he had established his position.  “The Josephine is an utter failure!  The plan is absurd and ridiculous.  The senior professor has no authority; or it is divided with a boy who hates Greek!”

Dr. Winstock had heard quite enough on the subject, and it was a great relief to him when the dinner-bell rang.  At this moment three times three rousing cheers came over the water from the Josephine.  It was not difficult to determine the occasion of this demonstration; but Mr. Hamblin declared it was another evidence that the students in the consort were all in league, and that the captain of her, instead of being cheered, ought to be in the brig.

Before the dinner was finished, a Dutch steamer, which Mr. Fluxion had engaged, came alongside the ship, and all hands were piped on board.  She then went to the Josephine, and received her company.

“This steamer does not seem to be much different from those we saw in England,” said Paul, as he seated himself with Dr. Winstock where they could see the country on both sides of the river.

“Not very different, but it is very unlike an American boat,” replied the surgeon.

“The steering apparatus is not like anything I ever saw before,” added Paul.  “The helmsman stands on a raised platform, and his wheel revolves horizontally.”

“All the Rhine steamers have that arrangement.”

“I think a wheel-house forward is ever so much better.  I see the cook is a woman.”

“Yes; all the Rhine steamers have female cooks.  This boat, I believe, belongs to the Moerdyk line.  Passengers from Antwerp come by railroad to Moerdyk, and there take the steamer to Rotterdam.  This country is very favorable to railroads in being level, but very unfavorable in the number of rivers and cut-offs to be crossed, which it is impossible to bridge.”

The steamer stood up the Leck, and turned into the Merwe, which is a branch five or six miles in length, connecting the Leck and the Waal.  On each side was a dike, of course; but the view from the steamer showed only an ordinary bank.  The top of it was broad, and occasionally there was a neat cottage or a little inn upon the top of it.  The roof or chimney of a house beyond it was frequently observed, otherwise the uninformed traveller would not have suspected the character of the country.  The embankment was studded with windmills, placed on the highest ground, to give the sails the full benefit of the wind.  Some of them were used for grinding grain, some for sawing lumber, and others for forcing the water up from the low ground into the river.

The steamer passed from the Merwe into the Waal, and stood up the river.  There was but little variation in the scenery.  The wall of dikes on either side was uninterrupted.  Sometimes they were lined with rows of trees, between which was the common road; at others they were bare and naked.  The captain of the steamer told them that a portion of the country in the vicinity was lower than the bottom of the river.  The whole region seemed to be saturated with water, and the wonder is that the people can go to bed at night with any assurance that they will not be drowned out before morning.

“There is the Castle of Loevestein,” said the captain of the boat, who spoke good English, “and the fort below has the same name.”

“Did you ever hear of it before?” asked Mr. Mapps, who was on the lookout for places of historical interest, as he turned to a group of seamen.

“You mentioned it this morning,” replied one of the students.

“In what connection?”

“Some man had a wonderful escape from it,” added another.

“Who was that man?”

“A Dutchman with a Latin name.”

“Grotius, or De Groot,” added Mr. Mapps.  “The Stadtholder, Prince Maurice, the boy general and ruler, wished to make himself hereditary sovereign of the Netherlands, and was opposed by the judge, Barneveldt, and Grotius.  The prince carried the day; Barneveldt was executed, and Grotius imprisoned in this castle, where he was kept nearly two years.  He was very strictly guarded at first; but his wife, finding that the vigilance of the sentinels was relaxed, devised a scheme for effecting his liberation.  The books, papers, and linen of the prisoner were conveyed to him in a large box, which the guards, having so often searched in vain for contraband articles, at last neglected to examine.  The box, and the carelessness of the soldiers, suggested to the wife of Grotius the means of getting her husband out of the castle.

“She prepared the chest by boring some holes in it, for the admission of the air, and took her servant-girl into her confidence.  The box was conveyed to the apartment of Grotius, and the project explained to him.  He did not relish the idea of being shut up in a chest, and rolled about in a boat; but his wife’s entreaties prevailed over his scruples.  It was pretended that the box was filled with books which the learned man had borrowed in Gorcum, the town which you see on the other side of the river.

“The chest, containing the philosopher, was conveyed by the soldiers down to the boat, in charge of the servant-girl.  When one of them complained of its weight, the man said it was the Arminian books which were so heavy; for Grotius was an Arminian in his theology.  The soldier suggested that it was the Arminian himself; but this was intended as a joke, and the box was tumbled into the boat.  The servant made a signal with her handkerchief to her mistress, who was looking out of the window, to indicate that all was right.

“When the boat reached Gorcum, the box was conveyed to the house of a friend of Grotius, of whom it was presumed that he had borrowed the books.  The servant-girl told him that her master was in the box, and begged his assistance; but he was so terrified, in view of the consequences, that he refused to have anything to do with the matter.  His wife, however, had more pluck in the service of a friend, and, having sent all her domestics out of the house on various errands, she opened the box, and released the philosopher from durance vile.

“Grotius, who had suffered no serious inconvenience from his confinement in the box, which was only three and a half feet long, was disguised as a mason, and, with a rule and trowel in his hand, was conducted to a boat, and sent into Belgium, where he was safe from pursuit.

“The philosopher’s wife remained in the room occupied by her husband in the castle, and used every means to conceal his escape.  She lighted the lamp in his room at dark, by which the governor of the prison was deceived.  She was arrested and imprisoned for a short time; but when discharged, she joined her husband in Paris, whither he had gone.”

“There is a frigate in the Dutch navy called the Marie van Reigersberch, named for the wife of Grotius,” added the captain of the steamer, who had been an attentive listener to the story.

The steamer went but a short distance farther up the Waal, and then came about.  She soon reached Dort, or Dordrecht, where she made a landing, and the students wandered for an hour through the streets of this ancient town.

“This is a musty old place,” said Paul, as he walked up one of the streets with a canal in the middle of it, in company with Mr. Fluxion and the surgeon; “I shouldn’t feel safe here unless I lived in a boat.”

“Many of the people live in boats, as you perceive,” added Mr. Fluxion, as he pointed to a gayly-painted craft, on the deck of which was a group of children.

At the little window in the stern sat a woman, sewing, while another was knitting near the cabin door.  There were white muslin curtains at the stern ports, and what could be seen of the interior of the apartment indicated that it was kept extremely neat.

“I think I should prefer to live in something that would float, in case of accident,” laughed the doctor, “especially in this part of Holland.  The operation of the water is wonderful.  The channel in front of Dort was formed by an inundation which separated the town from the main land, leaving it deep enough to float the largest Indiaman.”

“The Leck, on which we sailed for a time after leaving Rotterdam, was a canal dug by the Romans to connect the Rhine and the Waal,” added Mr. Fluxion.  “A freshet cleaned it out, and tore away its banks so as to make the present broad river of it.  In an inundation a few years later, seventy-two villages were swept away, and one hundred thousand people lost their lives.  Thirty-five of these villages were never heard from afterwards, and not even their ruins could be found.”

“I should emigrate if I lived here,” said Paul.

“The people of Holland are very much attached to their country,” replied Dr. Winstock.

“Well, they ought to be, on the principle that we like best what has cost us the most trouble to procure,” added Paul.  “It seems to me a great pity that people should struggle here to keep their heads above water, when we have so much spare land in America.  We could take them all in without feeling it.”

“Dutchmen would not feel at home on high ground.”

“We could plant them down in Louisiana, and even treat them to an occasional inundation.”

“Certainly we should be very happy to accommodate them with a country.  We have a great many Dutchmen already, and they make thrifty, industrious, and useful people,” continued the doctor.  “But I think, if Holland were blotted out of existence, the world would miss it very much.”

“This is a great lumber port,” said Mr. Fluxion.  “Those great rafts which float down the Rhine from Switzerland are mostly brought to this place.  I hope the boys will have a chance to see one of those rafts, for they are stupendous affairs.  One of them sometimes contains a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of lumber, and has a crew of four or five hundred men.”

“I think I heard Mr. Lowington say that we were to go down the Rhine,” replied Paul.

“That is the Kloveniers Doelen,” said Mr. Fluxion, as he led his companions into a back street and pointed out an old Gothic building.  “It was here that the Protestant divines discussed the doctrines of the reformed religion, whose ‘miraculous labors made hell tremble,’ to quote the words of its presiding officer.  The assembly is called in history the Synod of Dort.  The building, as you may see by reading the sign, is now a low public house and dance-hall.”

“Reading the sign!” exclaimed Paul, laughing; “a fellow would knock all the teeth out of his head in attempting to speak some of these words.”

“But many of them are very like English words.  A dike is a dijk.”

“Steamboats are stoombooten,” said Paul; “and a street is a straat.  What are canals?”

“Grachten; the drawbridge is ophaalbruggen.”

“Whew!” whistled Paul.

“But you can observe something like open-bridge in the sound.  You see that the spiegels are very common here.”

“I see they are; but I haven’t the least idea what they are.”

“The little mirrors placed outside the windows.”

“I saw plenty of them in Antwerp.”

“They are not as common there as in Holland, where they are to be seen attached to almost every house.  By this contrivance a Dutch dame can see every person that passes in the street, without raising the blinds.  But I think the hour is nearly up, and we must return to the steamer,” said Mr. Fluxion.

The party went on board, and the steamer returned to Rotterdam by a different route from that by which she had come.  The next day was Sunday.  After the second service on board the ship, Mr. Fluxion, having occasion to go on shore, invited Paul to accompany him.

“It will not seem much like Sunday to you in Rotterdam,” said the vice-principal, as they landed at the quai.

“I supposed the Dutch were very strict.”

“Some of them are.  Look down that street,” said Mr. Fluxion, as he pointed to the broad avenue which bordered the great river.  “You observe that the quais are all lined with ships.  In the houses opposite live the merchants.  They occupy the upper stories of the buildings, while the lower are used as counting-rooms and storehouses.  The ship-owner sits at his parlor window and witnesses the unlading of his vessel.”

They walked up to the Hotel des Pays-Bas, which the traveller is informed by its card is situated in the Korte Hoogstraat, wijk N, where Mr. Fluxion desired to see a gentleman who had engaged to meet him there.  In one of the public rooms a party were playing cards, drinking, and smoking, and talking Dutch in the most vehement manner.  After a stay of an hour at the hotel, they returned to the quai, passing through Zandstraat, which was filled with people, shouting, singing, and skylarking.  About every other shop appeared to be a drinking saloon, in which a fiddle or a hurdy-gurdy was making wild music, while the floor was crowded with men and women dancing.

In another street they encountered a mock procession of girls and boys, singing in the most stormy manner as they marched along.  It was not at all like Sunday, and Paul was so shocked at the desecration of the day, that he was glad to regain the silence of his cabin in the Josephine.