“Let us fetch Dolf Jeffers,” cried two men.  “No one else will be able to do it.”

“Here is Dolf Jeffers,” cried the good fellow at that moment, “what do you want?”

He recognized the men; they were his friends, his fellow-workers, boatmen, like himself.  All surrounded him, gesticulating.  An old man, wizened as a dried plaice, tapped him on the shoulder, and said: 

“Dolf, for God’s sake!  A fellow-creature is being drowned.  Help!  Perhaps it’s already too late.  Strip off your clothes, Dolf.”

Dolf looked at the water, the lanterns, the night above him, and the men who urged him on.

“Comrades,” he cried, “before God, I cannot.  Riekje is in labor and my life is not my own.”

“Dolf!  Help!” cried the old man again, as with trembling hands he pointed to his dripping clothes.  “I have three children, Dolf, yet I have been in twice.  I have no strength left.”

Dolf turned to the pale faces which stood in a circle round him.

“Cowards,” he cried.  “Is there not one among you who will save a drowning man?”

The greater number bent their heads and shrugged their shoulders, feeling that they had deserved the reproach.

“Dolf,” the old man cried, “as sure’s death’s death, I shall try again, if you do not go.”

“God!  God!  There he is!” cried the men at that moment, who were moving the torches over the water.  “We saw his head and feet.  Help!”

Dolf threw off his coat and said to the boatmen coldly:  “I will go.”

Then he spoke again:  “One of you run to Madame Puzzel and take her back to the Guldenvisch at once.”

He made the sign of the cross and muttered between his teeth:  “Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save sinners, have mercy on me.”

He went down the bank, with bared breast, and the crowd who followed him trembled for his life.  He looked for a moment at the traitorous river, on which the torches dripped tears of blood, as if he saw death before him.  The flood gurgled, as when a great fish strikes the water with its tail.

“There he is,” the same voices cried.

Then the abyss was opened.

“Riekje!” cried Dolf.

The cold river closed about him like a prison.  Increasing circles were all that ruffled that black surface, which seemed blacker than ever by the light of the torches.

Absolute silence reigned among the men who looked on from the bank.  Some stood up to their waist in water, feeling about with long poles; others unfastened ropes, which they sent adrift; three men slipped into a boat and rowed noiselessly, moving their lanterns carefully over the surface of the water.  Beneath all was the gentle murmur of the cruel Scheldt as, lapping the banks, it flowed eternally onward.