Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat by John Eubank Read Free Book Online

“windfall” or limbs that had come down. The boiler consumed a tremendous amount of fuel, but they always found plenty of free wood to load into the automatic feeder, which could keep the firebox burning for several days.
    “Want some?” Angelica said, breaking off pieces of chocolate and handing them out.
    They were already on the second bar. Will knew he should have stopped her, that they needed to start pacing themselves. Autumn was near. After the apple harvest, the cold would shut down their garden. Then, there’d only be eggs and cream to trade.
    In winter, his dad’s boiler repairing talents were in high demand, and that was when they got their best trades - except now he’d vanished. With their animals and steam-heated greenhouse, they wouldn’t starve. But when machines and tools started to break, Will had no idea how he’d get parts needed to fix them.
    Stop worrying , he thought. Maybe Dad will be there when we get home.
    As they slowly passed a cornfield, an overly large shadow on the ground caught Will’s attention, and he looked back. What he saw made no sense. A somewhat short but nevertheless menacing man wearing a leather cap with goggles hovered in mid-air, reaching at them with his hand.
    Instinctively Will put an arm in front of his sister and drew back his fist, but the strange man smiled big and gracefully turned his reaching hand into an exaggerated wave. Furthermore, he wasn’t floating. His other hand grasped a rope ladder that descended from a dirigible that’d slowly and silently drifted up behind them.
    Angelica gasped when she saw him and tried to say: “Rasputin!” She was so startled, however, that the word came out as an unintelligible squeak.
    The man’s shiny green coat boasted a double row of brass buttons, decorative gold stitching, and epaulets on padded shoulders. With pale blue eyes, a pencil moustache and a pointed goatee, he could’ve stepped out of a photo from 1890.
    “My young cousins!” he gushed with an English accent and exaggerated friendliness. “How wonderful to meet you at last!”
    “Cousins?” Angelica asked.
    “Why yes, I’m your father’s first cousin, Marteenus Steemjammer Skelthorpe.”
    Will narrowed his eyes. “If you’re family, why were you peeking in our windows?”
    “Peeking? Oh, that. I was merely trying to see if I had the right house. I’ve been looking for you for years.”
    “Why don’t you speak Dutch?”
    The man smile disarmingly. “My word, you’re suspicious.”
    “So you don’t speak any?”
    “Ya, Ick kan Dutch spreken. I also speak a little French and a smattering of German.”
    He took off his cap and bowed his head. The children gasped as dark red kinky hair popped out. Three strong symmetrical cowlicks made it swirl over the top of his head and shoot straight out to the left almost a foot.
    “Why haven’t we met you at family reunions?” Giselle asked, sensing Will’s suspicion.
    “Your father hasn’t told you about me? No, of course he hasn’t, but there’s much I could tell you about him .”
    “I don’t like how you were sneaking up on us,” Will challenged.
    “A surprise, dear boy. I only meant to – whoops!”
    A change in the wind began carrying him off.
    “Regretfully I must tend to my airship,” he said with forced politeness. Pulling an envelope from his pocket, he dropped it. “Be a sport and see that your father gets that. Until we meet again, adieu.”
    Scurrying up the ladder, he slashed a hanging rope with a shiny knife. A brown ballast sack full of sand fell to the ground with a thud. The airship, an oblong beige gas bag perhaps 150 feet in length, rose into the sky. From the gondola they heard a steam engine clatter to life as it began to spin a large wooden propeller.
    “What a creep!” Giselle said.
    Will craned his neck to watch the airship speed away. “He can’t really be our cousin, can he?”
    “He has ‘Amish’ hair,” Angelica observed.
    Will scowled. “I should