Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A STARTLING CANNON-SHOT AT the dawn of that fair first day of April, New /"% Amsterdam lay dreaming between the rivers which washed her sides. The night stars still were shining, and the earth was hushed and gray, but the waking cocks were crowing bravely, and the eastern sky was touched with light. "It is a fine spring morning," said the night watch, and with that they blew out their lanterns and went trudging homeward through the lanes among the cabbage-patches. The day broke cold and clear and bright. The higher tree-tops caught the glory of the sun. The crows began their clamor in the edges of the forest, or in long files, high overhead, flapped westward to the mainland. The burghers of the town awoke, yawned, stretched, arose and dressed themselves, and having duly breakfasted and filled their long clay pipes, went straight about their business in the city. The breakfast smoke still lingered in the chimneys of the town, and the hoar-frost still defined the shadows on the ground, but the red sun had run its course an hour up the sky, and the bustle of the new day ceased in quiet. In Metje Weasel's tavern by the waterside, where the drowsy sailors slowly drained their pewter mugs, it was so still that one could almost hear the needles click as Juffrouw Metje knitted by the fireside. Suddenly there came a crash that sent the echoes flying from the finger-post at Copsey Hook to the gray sand-hills where sweet Minetta-water ran. "Hei!" cried the sailors, dropping their mugs. "Where?" gasped Metje, dropping her knitting. " Fizz-zz-zz!" said the cat, and flew under the cupboard, her tail swelled as big as a blacking-brush. The brewer's boy in Stony Street was hoisting a sack of malt to the loft. '' Heigh-ho!" he cried. '' My faith! what '...