The Blansaerts assured their superior that entire reliance might be placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men in Leyden “as firm as trees and fierce as lions,” whom they would engage—­a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two other mechanics.  The looseness and utter recklessness with which this hideous conspiracy was arranged excites amazement.  Van Dyk gave the two brothers 100 pistoles in gold—­a coin about equal to a guinea—­for their immediate reward as well as for that of the comrades to be engaged.  Yet it seems almost certain from subsequent revelations that they were intending all the time to deceive him, to take as much money as they could get from him, “to milk, the cow as long as she would give milk,” as William Party expressed it, and then to turn round upon and betray him.  It was a dangerous game however, which might not prove entirely successful.

Van Dyk duly communicated with Stoutenburg, who grew more and more feverish with hatred and impatience as the time for gratifying those passions drew nigh, and frequently said that he would like to tear the Stadholder to pieces with his own hands.  He preferred however to act as controlling director over the band of murderers now enrolled.

For in addition to the Leyden party, the Reverend Slatius, supplied with funds by van Dyk, had engaged at Rotterdam his brother-in-law Gerritsen, a joiner, living in that city, together with three sailors named respectively Dirk, John, and Herman.

The ex-clergyman’s house was also the arsenal of the conspiracy, and here were stored away a stock of pistols, snaphances, and sledge-hammers—­together with that other death-dealing machinery, the whole edition of the ‘Clearshining Torch’, an inflammatory, pamphlet by Slatius—­all to be used on the fatal day fast approaching.

On the 1st February van Dyk visited Slatius at Rotterdam.  He found Gerritsen hard at work.

There in a dark back kitchen, by the lurid light of the fire in a dim wintry afternoon, stood the burly Slatius, with his swarthy face and heavy eyebrows, accompanied by his brother-in-law the joiner, both in workman’s dress, melting lead, running bullets, drying powder, and burnishing and arranging the fire-arms and other tools to be used in the great crime now so rapidly maturing.  The lean, busy, restless van Dyk, with his adust and sinister visage, came peering in upon the couple thus engaged, and observed their preparations with warm approval.

He recommended that in addition to Dirk, John, and Herman, a few more hardy seafaring men should be engaged, and Slatius accordingly secured next day the services of one Jerome Ewouts and three other sailors.  They were not informed of the exact nature of the enterprise, but were told that it was a dangerous although not a desperate one, and sure to be of great service to the Fatherland.  They received, as all the rest had done, between 200 and 300 guilders in gold, that they would all be promoted to be captains and first mates.