Part 37

Oh, didn’t the fellow groan then!

“No use in holding him down any longer, boys,” said Peter, rising, but bending as he did so to draw a pistol from the man’s belt. “You see I’ve been keeping a guard over this pretty little weapon for the last ten minutes. It’s cocked, and the least wriggle might have set it off. No danger now. I must dress myself. You and I, Lambert, will go for the police. I’d no idea it was so cold.”

“Where is Carl?” asked one of the boys.

They looked at one another. Carl certainly was not among them.

“Oh!” cried Ludwig, frightened at last. “Where is he? Perhaps he’s had a fight with the robber and got killed.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Peter quietly as he buttoned his stout jacket. “Look under the beds.”

They did so. Carl was not there.

Just then they heard a commotion on the stairway. Ben hastened to open the door. The landlord almost tumbled in; he was armed with a big blunderbuss. Two or three lodgers followed; then the daughter, with an upraised frying pan in one hand and a candle in the other; and behind her, looking pale and frightened, the gallant Carl!

“There’s your man, mine host,” said Peter, nodding toward the prisoner.

Mine host raised his blunderbuss, the girl screamed, and Jacob, more nimble than usual, rolled quickly from the robber’s back.

“Don’t fire,” cried Peter, “he is tied, hand and foot. Let’s roll him over and see what he looks like.”

Carl stepped briskly forward, with a bluster, “Yes. We’ll turn him over in a way he won’t like. Lucky we’ve caught him!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Ludwig. “Where were you, Master Carl?”

“Where was I?” retorted Carl angrily. “Why, I went to give the alarm, to be sure!”

All the boys exchanged glances, but they were too happy and elated to say anything ill-natured. Carl certainly was bold enough now. He took the lead while three others aided him in turning the helpless man.

While the robber lay faceup, scowling and muttering, Ludwig took the candlestick from the girl’s hand.

“I must have a good look at the beauty,” he said, drawing closer, but the words were no sooner spoken than he turned pale and started so violently that he almost dropped the candle.

“The voetspoelen!” he cried! “Why, boys, it’s the man who sat by the fire!”

“Of course it is,” answered Peter. “We counted out money before him like simpletons. But what have we to do with voetspoelen, brother Ludwig? A month in jail is punishment enough.”

The landlord’s daughter had left the room. She now ran in, holding up a pair of huge wooden shoes. “See, father,” she cried, “here are his great ugly boats. It’s the man that we put in the next room after the young masters went to bed. Ah! It was wrong to send the poor young gentlemen up here so far out of sight and sound.”

“The scoundrel!” hissed the landlord. “He has disgraced my house. I go for the police at once!”

In less than fifteen minutes two drowsy-looking officers were in the room. After telling Mynheer Kleef that he must appear early in the morning with the boys and make his complaint before a magistrate, they marched off with their prisoner.

One would think the captain and his band could have slept no more that night, but the mooring has not yet been found that can prevent youth and an easy conscience from drifting down the river of dreams. The boys were much too fatigued to let so slight a thing as capturing a robber bind them to wakefulness. They were soon in bed again, floating away to strange scenes made of familiar things. Ludwig and Carl had spread their bedding upon the floor. One had already forgotten the voetspoelen, the race--everything; but Carl was wide-awake. He heard the carillons ringing out their solemn nightly music and the watchman’s noisy clapper putting in discord at the quarter hours; he saw the moonshine glide away from the window and the red morning light come pouring in, and all the while he kept thinking, Pooh! what a goose I have made of myself!

Carl Schummel, alone, with none to look or to listen, was not quite so grand a fellow as Carl Schummel strutting about in his boots.

Before the Court

You may believe that the landlord’s daughter bestirred herself to prepare a good meal for the boys next morning. Mynheer had a Chinese gong that could make more noise than a dozen breakfast bells. Its hideous reveille, clanging through the house, generally startled the drowsiest lodgers into activity, but the maiden would not allow it to be sounded this morning.

“Let the brave young gentlemen sleep,” she said to the greasy kitchen boy. “They shall be warmly fed when they awaken.”

It was ten o’clock when Captain Peter and his band came straggling down one by one.