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We crawled across some temporary beams reconstructed by Belgian engineers, and entered the ruins with a handful of Termonde's citizens who had come back for the first time to see what was left of their homes. "I will take you to the center," said Verhagen. "That is where my house was."
Here captain Schouten and Jaques Le Maire went ashore, and were kindly entertained by the general Laurence Real, admiral Stephen Verhagen, and Jasper Janson, governor of Amboina.
They here fell in with two ships belonging to the fleet under Verhagen, which had been driven back out of the South Sea, one of which was commanded by Sebaldt de Weert, who told them he had been five months in the straits, and had only thirty-eight remaining out of 110 men, and not being able to bear up against the storms in the South Sea, had been forced to put in here, while the rest of the fleet under Verhagen held on their course.
"Yes, well," said Verhagen; and so, partly because of charity and partly because we could have him as a useful guide, we took him into the car.
Verhagen and the priest agreed that fright brought on an attack to a woman about to become a mother, and that she fell in the Rue de l'Eglise. A German lieutenant saw the trouble, put her on a stretcher made of window shutters, and called the German army doctor. She was sent to a field hospital and tenderly cared for until she and the child could be moved.
Not far from there the way widened into the light, and before us, breaking the rays of sunset, stood the cross above a heap of cobblestones. "They are buried here," said Verhagen, "and here too is my house." Another alderman, a friend of Verhagen, who had been allowed to remain in Termonde most of the four days that the Germans stayed, had the story detailed in his little pocket diary.
This voyage was not of renown sufficient to procure a general reception to the new name; for when the Dutch, who had now become strong enough not only to defend themselves, but to attack their masters, sent Verhagen and Sebald de Wert into the South seas, these islands, which were not supposed to have been known before, obtained the denomination of Sebald's islands, and were, from that time, placed in the charts; though Frezier tells us, that they were yet considered as of doubtful existence.
Here they found two Dutch ships, which informed them of the loss of Captain Sleerhagen and most of his company at Princes Island; as also of the voyage of Peter Verhagen, who had entered the river of Congo, and had afterwards buried thirty-eight of his company at Cape Gonçalves, whence he had gone some time before their arrival to Annobon.
Twenty-seven miles away, when we whirled through the gates of Ghent later in the evening, we said "Au revoir" to Verhagen and the mendicant priest, and went to our rooms. At midnight came a rap at the door; my gray-haired alderman broke into the room, bursting with the latest news, his eyes aflame with excitement. "Revanche!" he exclaimed dramatically; "our enemies have paid for it in blood!"
We could hear the creak of a lazy windmill, and, coming somewhere from the smoking piles, the hideous howl of starving hounds. Of other human sounds there were none except the voice of Verhagen. Ten days before Termonde had been a thriving town; that day it was a heap of smouldering ashes. America had heard a good deal about Tirlemont and Louvain, but not much of Termonde.
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