166 Hans Brinker

Ludwig and Lambert looked anxious and disappointed. It
was no slight thing to lose the credit of having skated all the
way from Broek to the Hague, and back again; but both
agreed that Jacob should decide the question.

Good-natured, tired Jacob! He read the popular sentiment
at a glance.

“Oh, no!” he said in Dutch. “I was joking. We will
skate, of course.”

The boys gave a delighted shout, and started on again with
renewed vigor.

All but Jacob. He tried his best not to seem fatigued, and,
by not saying a word, saved his breath and energy for the great
business of skating. But in vain. Before long, the stout body
grew heavier and heavier; the tottering limbs, weaker and
weaker. Worse than all, the blood, anxious to get as far as
possible from the ice, mounted to the puffy, good-natured
cheeks, and made the roots of his thin, yellow hair glow into
a fiery red.

This kind of work is apt to summon vertigo, of whom good
Hans Andersen writes, — the same who hurls daring young
hunters from the mountains, or spins them from the sharpest
heights of the glaciers, or catches them as they tread the step-
ping-stones of the mountain torrent.

Vertigo came, unseen, to Jacob. After tormenting him a
while, with one touch sending a chill from head to foot, with
the next scorching every vein with fever, she made the canal
rock and tremble beneath him, the white sails bow and spin as
they passed, then cast him heavily upon the ice.

“ Halloo!” cried Van Mounen. “ There goes Poot ! ”

Ben sprang hastily forward.

‘¢ Jacob, Jacob, are you hurt?”