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Updated: June 20, 2025
He crossed himself reverently. "Thank God for our soldiers," he said, and Mother De Smet, weeping softly, murmured a devout "Amen." Little did Jan and Marie dream as they listened, that this blessing rested upon their own father, and that he had been one of the Belgian soldiers, who, firing from the trenches, had delivered them from the hands of their enemies.
You mustn't talk so loud," whispered Mother De Smet. "You roar like a foghorn on a dark night. The Germans won't have any trouble in finding out about the potatoes if you shout the news all over the landscape." Father De Smet looked out over the quiet Belgian fields. "There's nobody about that I can see," he said, "but I'll roar more gently next time."
Soon they were safely in dock and Father De Smet was unloading his potatoes and selling them to the market-men, who swarmed about the boats to buy the produce which had been brought in from the country. "There!" he said with a sigh of relief as he delivered the last of his cargo to a purchaser late in the afternoon; "that load is safe from the Germans, anyway."
Now, Netteke was a proud mule and she wasn't used to being slapped. Father De Smet knew her ways, and knew also that her steady, even, slow pace was better in the long run than to attempt to force a livelier gait, and Netteke was well aware of what was expected of her. She resented being interfered with.
All the tribes feared the Blackfeet, especially that terrible sub-tribe called the "Blood Indians." The Snakes, too, were a common enemy to all the river-tribes. Father De Smet, the Belgian priest, with great intrepidity started for the Blackfoot country, although receiving numerous warnings of the risk he incurred. He encamped in the heart of their country.
"Here we are again, war or no war!" cried Mother De Smet, as the boat came alongside. Father De Smet left the tiller and threw a rope ashore. "Whoa!" cried the boy driving the mule. The mule stopped with the greatest willingness, the boy caught the rope and lifted the great loop over a strong post on the river-bank, and the "Old Woman" for that was the name of the boat was in port.
So, at least, Father de Smet said. He alone did not despair. He alone tried neither charm nor curse. He dressed him an altar in the wilderness, and he prayed at it but not for impossible things. When in a day's journey you come across two lodges of Indians, sixty souls in each, lying dead and distorted from the plague in their desolate tepees, you do not pray, if you are a man like Father de Smet.
It was after ten o'clock at night when the "Old Woman" at last approached the twinkling lights of Antwerp, and they knew that, for the time being at least, they were safe. They wore now beyond the German lines in country still held by the Belgians. Here, in a suburb of the city, Father De Smet decided to dock for the night.
Her potatoes spilled over the deck, while a wail from the front of the boat announced that one of the babies had bumped, too. Mother De Smet picked herself up and ran to see what was the matter with the baby, while Father De Smet seized a long pole and hurried forward. Joseph left the mule to browse upon the grass beside the tow-path and ran back to the boat.
Their father, hidden away, in the earth like a fox, as little dreamed that he had helped to save his own children from a terrible fate. When the Twins awoke, early the next morning, they found that Father and Mother De Smet had been stirring much earlier still, and that the "Old Woman" was already slipping quietly along among the docks of Antwerp.
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