This plan was unanimously voted to be a capital one--in theory, at any rate--and thus it was that in our subsequent wanderings about Flanders, under the guidance of the indefatigable Professor, we often crossed our trail, and now and then visited the same place more than once. In practice it did not accomplish quite all that was expected of it by its learned originator--but what plan ever does, or ever will? That it enhanced the interest of the trip manyfold we all agreed; it often sustained our flagging zeal, and it helped us to know Flanders--the Flanders of the past especially--far better than we would have done in any other way. CHAPTER II VIEUX BRUGES AND COUNT BALDWIN OF THE IRON ARM It is not the purpose of this veracious chronicle to recount the doings and sayings, the incidents or lack of incident, on the voyage across. Suffice it to say that in due season the good ship _Lapland_ turned its prow away from the white cliffs of Dover and straight toward the low-lying shores of Flanders. As she crossed the North Sea scores of fishing boats with brown sails hovered around her, while throngs of seagulls soared overhead, or now and then dashed madly into her foaming wake to grasp some morsel flung from deck or porthole, or fight fiercely with each other for its possession. Presently, in the haze ahead, a faint outline of land could be distinguished, and soon we could see through our glasses the heaped up dunes that mark the battle line between the North Sea and the fertile Flemish polders behind them. Here and there the shore was strengthened by rows of pilings to keep the waves of Winter from washing it away. As a "sight," however, it was dreary and uninviting enough--not at all like the picturesque headlands of Merrie England we had been looking at only a few hours before. Now, for a time, the ship kept its course parallel to the shore, but at a distance of a mile or more. Gradually the coast became more inhabited, and soon we could see a row of stone and brick buildings facing directly on the beach which some one said was Blankenberghe. No doubt there were other rows of houses behind the first, but either they were lower, or in the haze our glasses could not distinguish them. Then the panorama of the Flemish coast unrolled a little further and we saw the long curved breakwater of Zee-Brugge, with its white lighthouse. This is an artificial port connected with the ancient capital of Flanders by a ship canal. Entrance to the canal from the sea is effected by a large lock which was faintly visible. Another beach city, Heyst, next appeared--the ship seeming to stand still while the shoreline marched slowly past. Then came a smaller place, which from our maps we concluded must be Knocke. Here the coastline of the present Kingdom of Belgium ends, the little River Zwyn--once famous as the channel up which one hundred and fifty ships a day made their way to Bruges in the days of its greatness--forming the boundary.