11.  By this time day was dawning, the whole population, soldiers and burghers, men, women, and children, were thronging about the little band of marauders, and assailing them with every weapon and every missile to be found.  Schenk fought with his usual ferocity, but at last the musketeers, in spite of his indignant commands, began rapidly to retreat toward the quay.

12.  In vain Martin stormed and cursed, in vain with his own hand he struck more than one of his soldiers dead.  He was swept along with the panic-stricken band, and when, shouting and gnashing his teeth with frenzy, he reached the quay at last, he saw at a glance why his great enterprise had failed.

13.  The few empty barges of his own party were moored at the steps; the rest were half a mile off, contending hopelessly against the swollen and rapid Waal.  Schenk, desperately wounded, was left almost alone upon the wharf, for his routed followers had plunged helter-skelter into the boats, several of which, overladen in the panic, sank at once, leaving the soldiers to drown or struggle with the waves.

14.  The game was lost.  Nothing was left the freebooter but retreat.  Reluctantly turning his back on his enemies, now in full cry close behind him, Schenk sprang into the last remaining boat just pushing from the quay.  Already overladen, it foundered with his additional weight, and Martin Schenk, encumbered with his heavy armor, sank at once to the bottom of the Waal.

15.  Some of the fugitives succeeded in swimming down the stream, and were picked up by their comrades in the barges below the town, and so made their escape.  Many were drowned with their captain.  A few days afterward, the inhabitants of Nymwegen fished up the body of the famous partisan.  He was easily recognized by his armor, and by his truculent face, still wearing the scowl with which he had last rebuked his followers.

Definitions.—­2.  Mo’ri-on, a kind of helmet.  Free’boot-er, one who plunders.  Mus-ket-eer’, a soldier armed with a musket.  Quar’ter, mercy. 6.  Burgh’ers, inhabitants of a town.  Gar’ri-son, troops stationed in a fort or town. 9.  Flo-til’la, a fleet of small vessels. 11.  Ma-raud’ers, plunderers.  Quay (pro. ke), a wharf 14.  Foun’dered, sank.  En-cum’bered, weighed down. 15.  Par’ti-san, a commander of a body of roving troops.  Tru’cu-lent, fierce.

LXXXIV.  THE SEASONS. (237)

1.  Spring.

H. G. Adams, an English writer, has compiled two volumes of poetical quotations, and is the author of several volumes of original poems.  The following is from the “Story of the Seasons.”

A bursting into greenness;
  A waking as from sleep;
A twitter and a warble
  That make the pulses leap: 
A watching, as in childhood,
  For the flowers that, one by one,
Open their golden petals
  To woo the fitful sun. 
A gust, a flash, a gurgle,
  A wish to shout and sing,
As, filled with hope and gladness,
  We hail the vernal Spring.