Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates / Серебряные коньки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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[231]. Carl certainly was bold enough now. He took the lead while three others aided him in turning the helpless man.

While the robber lay face up, 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 boots. 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[232] 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.

“A pretty hour,” said mine host, gruffly. “It is high time we were before the court. Fine business, this, for a respectable inn. You will testify truly, young masters, that you found most excellent fare and lodging at the Red Lion?”

“Of course we will,” answered Carl saucily, “and pleasant company, too, though they visit at rather unseasonable hours.”

A stare and a “humph!” was all the answer mynheer made to this, but the daughter was more communicative. Shaking her earrings at Carl, she said sharply, “Not so very pleasant, either, master traveler, if you could judge by the way YOU ran away from it!”

“Impertinent creature!” hissed Carl under his breath as he began busily to examine his skate straps. Meantime the kitchen boy, listening outside at the crack of the door, doubled himself with silent laughter[233].