Part 3
What the Marken folk still speak of as "the great storm"--the worst storm of which there is record in the island's history--set in a good four-and-twenty hours before the December day on which Geert Thysen and Krelis Kess were married. From the Polar ice-fields a rushing and a mighty wind thundered southward over the Arctic Ocean and down across the shallows of the North Sea--sucking away the water from the Baltic, sending a roaring tide out through the English Channel into the Atlantic, and piling higher and higher against the Holland coast a wall of ocean: which broke at the one opening and went pouring onward into the Zuyder Zee.
Already on the morning of that wild wedding-day the waves were lapping high about Marken, and here and there a dull gleam of water showed where the marshes were overflowed. Just before daybreak the storm lulled a little, but came on again with a fresh force after the unseen sunrise, and grew stronger and stronger as the black day wore on. Down by the little haven the fishermen were gathered in groups anxiously watching their tossing boats--in dread lest in spite of the doubled and tripled moorings they should fetch away. Steadily from the black sky poured downward sheets of rain.
According to Marken notions, even a landsman should not have ventured to marry on a day like that; and for a fisherman to marry while such a storm was raging was a sheer tempting of all the forces which work together for evil in the tempests of the sea. Every one expected that the wedding would be put off; and when word was passed around that it was not to be put off, all of the older and steadier folk refused with one voice to have anything to do with it. How Krelis succeeded in inducing the minister to perform the ceremony no one ever knew--for the minister was one of the many that day on Marken who never saw the rising of another sun. He was not well liked, that minister, and stories not to his credit were whispered about him; at least so one of the old women told me--and more than half hinted that what happened to him was a judgment upon him for his sins.
Even when the wedding-party came across from the Kerkehof to the Hafenbeurt, some little time before mid-day, the marshes on each side of the raised path were marshes no longer, but open water--that was whipped southward before the gale in little angry waves. There was no chance for a show of finery. The men wore their oil-skins over their Sunday clothes, and the women were wrapped in cloaks and shawls. But it was a company of young dare-devils, that wedding-party, and the members of it came on through the storm laughing and shouting--with Geert and Krelis leading and the gayest madcaps of them all. So far from being dismayed by the roaring tempest, those two wild natures seemed only to be stirred and aroused by it to a fierce happiness. They say that Geert never was so beautiful as she was that day--her face glowing with a strong rich colour, her eyes sparkling with a wonderful brilliancy, her full red lips parted and showing the gleam of those strong white teeth of hers, her lithe body erect and poised confidently against the furious wind which swept them all forward along the path.
But as the party came near to the graveyard, lying midway between the Kerkehof and the Hafenbeurt close beside the path, some of the young men and women found their merriment oozing out of them. In that day of black storm the rain-sodden mound was inexpressibly desolate. All around it, save for the pathway leading up to its gate, the marsh was flooded. The graveyard almost was an island--would be quite an island should the water rise another foot. Rushed onward by the gale, shrewd little waves were beating against its windward side so sharply that the soft soil visibly was crumbling away--a sight which recalled a dim but very grisly legend of how once a great storm had hurled such a sea upon Marken that the dead bodies lying in that very spot had been torn from their resting-places by the tumultuous waves. But crueler still was the shivering thought of Marretje, only two months dead, lying in that sodden ground in her storm-beaten grave.
And then, as they came closer, the memory of Marretje was brought home to them still more sharply and in a strangely startling way: as they saw old Jaap uprise suddenly from where he had been crouched amidst the graves. Bareheaded, with his long grey hair and long grey beard soaked with the falling torrent and flying out before the wind, he stood upright on the crest of the mound close above them--his tall lean figure towering commandingly against the black rain clouds, defiant as some old sea-god of the furious storm.
He seemed to be speaking, but the storm noises were as a wall shutting him off from them, and not until they had passed on a little and were to leeward of him could they hear his words. Then they heard him clearly: speaking slowly, with no trace of anger in his tones but with a strange solemn fervour--as though he felt himself to be out beyond the line which separates Time from Eternity, and from that vantage-point uttered with authority the judgments of an outraged God. It was to Geert and Krelis that he spoke, pointing at them with one outstretched hand while the other was raised as though in invocation toward the wild black sky: "For your sins the anger of God is loosed upon you in His tempests, and in His name I curse you with a binding curse. May the raging waters be upon you! May you perish in the wrath of the Zuyder Zee!"
A shudder went through all the wedding company. Even Krelis, half stopping, suddenly paled. Only Geert, bolder than all of them put together, held her own. With a quick motion she drew Krelis onward, and her lip curled in that way of hers as she said to him: "What has old Jaap to do with you or me, Krelis? He is a mad old fool!" And then she looked straight at old Jaap, into the very eyes of him, and laughed scornfully--as they all together went on again through the wind and rain.
But when they came to Jan de Jong's tavern, where the wedding-breakfast was waiting for them, Krelis was the first to call for gin. He said that he was cold.
XI
It was the strangest wedding-feast, they say, that ever was held on Marken: with the black tempest beating outside, and all the lamps in the big room lighted--although the day still was on the morning side of noon. Young Jan de Jong--the same who is old Jan de Jong now, and who now keeps the tavern--remembers it all well, and tells how his mother was for bundling the whole company out of doors. Such doings would bring bad luck upon the house, she said--and went up-stairs and locked herself into her room and took to praying when her husband told her that bad luck never came with good money, and that what Krelis was willing to pay for Krelis should have.
But it was the wife who was right that time--as the husband knew a very little later on. For that night Krelis's boat was one of those swept away from their moorings and foundered, and Krelis's fine house was undermined by the water and went out over the Zuyder Zee in fragments--and so the wedding-feast never was paid for at all. And she always said that but for her prayers their son would have been lost to them too. Old Jan was very grave when he told me about this--and from some of the others I learned that it was because of what happened to him that night that he gave over the wild life that he had been leading and became a steady man.
At first, what with the blackness of the storm and the ringing in everybody's ears of old Jaap's curse, the company was a dismal one. But the plentiful hot gin-and-water that Krelis ordered--and led in drinking--soon brought cheerfulness back again. As for Geert, she had no need of gin-and-water: her high spirits held from first to last. Seated on Krelis's right--just as she had been seated only a little while before on the day of Marretje's funeral--she rattled away steadily with her gay talk; and every now and then, they say, turned to Krelis with a look that brought fire into his eyes!
The walk after breakfast was out of the question. As the afternoon went on the storm raged more and more tumultuously. There was nothing for it but to have the room cleared of the chairs and table and go straight on to the dancing; and that they did--excepting some of the weaker-headed ones, whose legs were too badly tangled for such gay exercise and who sat limply on the benches against the wall.
This time it was not by favour but by right that Geert led the dance with Krelis--her black eyes shining and her face all of a rich red glow. And as she took her place at the head of it she said to Jaantje de Waard: "Who's got him now, this lover of mine you said I'd lost, Jaantje? Didn't I tell you that it's one thing to lay the net, but it's another to haul it in?" And away she went, caught close to Krelis, with a laugh on those red lips of hers and a brighter sparkle in her black eyes. Jaantje said--it was she who told me, an old woman now--that somehow this speech of Geert's, and the sudden thought that it brought of dead Marretje out there in the graveyard, made her feel so queasy in her stomach that she left the dance and went home bare-headed through the storm.
The dancing, with plenty of drink between whiles, went on until evening; and after night-fall the company grew still merrier--partly because of the punch, but more because the feast lost much of its grewsomeness when they all knew that the darkness outside was the ordinary darkness of black night and not the strange darkness of that black day. But there was no break in the storm; and now and then, when a fierce burst of wind fairly set the house to rocking on its foundations, and sent the rain dashing in sheets against the windows, there would be anxious talk among those of the dancers who came from the Kerkehof or the Kesbeurt as to how they were to get home. From time to time one of the men would open the door a little and take a look outside--and would draw in again in a hurry and go straight to the punch-bowl for comforting: for none of them had seen any storm like that on Marken in all their lives.
And so, when at last the storm did lull a little--this was about eight o'clock in the evening, close upon the moonrise--there was a general disposition to take advantage of the break and get away. And Krelis did not urge his guests to stay longer, for he was of the same mind with them--being eager to carry off homeward his Geert with the flashing eyes.
But when the men went out of doors together to have a look about them they were brought up suddenly with a round turn. It is only a step from Jan de Jong's tavern to the head of the path that dips downward and leads across the marshes to the other villages. But when they had taken that step no path was to be seen! Close at their feet, and stretching away in front of them as far as their eyes could reach through the night-gloom, was to be seen only tumultuous black water flecked here and there with patches of foam. Everywhere over Marken, save the graveyard mound and the knolls on which stood the several villages, the ocean was in possession: right across the island were sweeping the storm-lashed waves of the Zuyder Zee!
XII
Though they all were filled with punch-begotten Dutch courage, not one of them but Krelis--as they stood together looking out over what should have been marsh-land and what was angry sea--thought even for a moment of getting homeward before daylight should come again and the gale should break away. And even Krelis would not have been for facing such danger at an ordinary time: but just then his soul and body were in commotion, and over the black stormy water he saw visions of Geert beckoning him to those red lips of hers, and firing him with the sparkle of her flashing eyes.
"It's a bit of sea," he said lightly, "but if one of you will lend a hand at an oar with me we'll manage it easily. Just here it's baddish. But a stiff pull of a hundred yards will fetch us into smoother water under the lee of the graveyard, and beyond that we'll be a little under the lee of the Kerkehof--and then another spurt of stiff pulling will fetch us home. Geert will steer, and we can count on her to steer well. I wouldn't have risked it with Marretje at the tiller--but I've got another sort of a wife now. Which of you'll come along?"
There was a dead silence at that, for every one of the young fellows standing there knew that to take a boat out into that water meant a fight for life at every inch of the way.
"Well, since you're all so modest," Krelis went on with a laugh, "I'll pick out big Jan here to pull with me--and no offence to the rest of you, for we all know that not another man on Marken pulls so strong an oar."
It was old Jan himself who told me this, and he said that when Krelis chose him that way there was nothing for him to do but to say that he'd go. But he said that he went pale at the thought of what was before him, and would have given anything in the world to get out of the job. All the others spoke up against their trying it; and that, he said, while it scared him still more--for they all, in spite of the punch that was in them, spoke very seriously--helped him to go ahead. It would be something to talk about afterward, he thought, that he had done what everybody else was afraid to do. And when the others found that he and Krelis were not to be shaken, they set themselves to bringing a strong boat across from the other side of the village and getting it into the water--in a smooth place under the lee of one of the houses--and lashing a lantern fast into its bows.
When Krelis and Jan went back to the tavern to fetch Geert there was another outcry. All the women got around Geert and declared that she should not go. But Geert was ready always for any bit of daredeviltry, and the readier when anybody tried to hold her back from it--and then the way that Krelis looked at her would have taken her with him through the very gates of hell. She only laughed at the other women, and made them help her to put on the oil-skin hat and coat that Krelis fetched for her to keep her dry against the pelting rain. And she laughed still louder when she was rigged out in that queer dress--and what with her sparkling eyes and her splendid colour was so bewitching under the big hat that Krelis snatched a kiss from her and swore that at last he had a wife just to his mind.
All the company, muffled in shawls and cloaks, went along with them to the water-side to see them start; and because there was no commotion in the quiet nook where the boat was lying, and the darkness hid the tumbling waves beyond, most of them thought that the only danger ahead for Geert and the others was a thorough drenching--and were disposed to make fun of this queer wedding-journey on which they were bound. But the young men who had launched the boat knew better, and they tried once more to make Krelis give over his purpose--or, at least, to wait until the moon should rise a little and thin the clouds. And all the answer that they got was a laugh from Geert and a joking invitation from Krelis to come across to the Kesbeurt in the morning and join him in a glass of grog.
Krelis was to pull stroke, and so big Jan got into the boat ahead of him--with his heart fairly down in his boots, he told me--and then Krelis got in; and last of all Geert took her seat in the stern, and as she gripped the tiller steadily gave the order to shove off. With a strong push the young men gave the boat a start that sent it well out from the shore, and then the oars bit into the water and they were under way.
One of the old women whom I talked with was of the wedding-party, and down there by the shore that night, and she told me that they all cheered and laughed for a minute as the boat with the lantern in her bows shot off from the land. The thought of danger, she said, was quite out of their minds. Right in front of them, less than a quarter of a mile away, they saw the lights of the houses in the Kesbeurt shining brightly, and plainly setting the course for Geert to steer; and they knew that the two strongest men on Marken were at the oars. What they all were laughing about, she said, was that anybody should be going from the one village to the other in a boat--and that it should be a wedding-journey, too!
But it was only for a moment that their laughter lasted. The instant that the boat was out of the sheltered smooth water they all knew that not by one chance in a thousand could she live to fetch across. By the light of the lantern fixed in her bows they saw plainly the wild tumult of the sea around her--that caught her and seemed to stand her almost straight on end as Geert held her strongly against the oncoming waves. The old woman said that a thrill of horror ran through them all as they realized what certainly must happen. By a common impulse down they all went on their knees on the sodden ground, with the rain pelting them--and she heard some one cry out in the darkness: "Old Jaap's curse is upon them! May God pity and help them and have mercy on their souls!"
XIII
Old Jan, who alone knew it, told me the rest of the story--but speaking slowly and unwillingly, as though it all still were fresh before him and very horribly real.
He said that when the boat lifted as that first sea struck her it was plain enough what was likely to happen to them--for they could not put about to make the shore again without swamping, and with such a sea running they were pretty certain to swamp quickly if they went on. But Krelis was not the sort to give in, and he shouted over his shoulder: "I've got you into a scrape, Jan; but if we can pull up under the lee of the graveyard there's a chance for us still." And then he called to Geert: "Now you can show what stuff you're made of, Geert. Steer for the graveyard--and for God's sake hold her straight to the sea!" As for Geert, she was as cool as the best man could have been, and she steered as well as any man could have steered. The light from the lantern shone full in her face, and old Jan said that her eyes kept on sparkling and that her colour never changed.
With that tremendous wind sweeping down on them, and with the waves butting against the boat, and throwing her head up every instant, even Jan and Krelis--and they were the best oarsmen on Marken--could make only snail's way. But it heartened them to find that they made any way at all--as they could tell that they were doing by seeing the lights ashore crawling past them--and so they lashed away with their oars and found a little hope growing again. Presently Krelis called out: "The water's getting smoother, Jan. Another fifty yards and we'll be all right!"
That was true. They were creeping up steadily under the lee of the graveyard, and the closer they got to it the more would it break the force of the waves. If they could reach it they would be safe.
Just as Krelis spoke, the boat struck against something so sharply that she quivered all over and lost way. Neither of the men dared to turn even for an instant; nor could their turning have done any good--all that they could do was to row on. But Geert could look ahead, and the lantern in the bows cast a little circle of light upon the furious sea. As she peered over their shoulders a strange look came into her face, Jan said, and then she spoke in a voice strained and strange: "It's a coffin," she said, "and I see another one a little farther on. The sea is washing away the graveyard--as it did that time long ago!" And then the coffin went past them, so close that it struck against and nearly unshipped Krelis's oar.
Jan said that he trembled all over, and that a cold sweat broke out on him. He felt himself going sick and giddy, and fell to wondering what would happen should he be unable to keep on pulling--and how long it took a man to drown. Then--but because of a ringing in his ears the voice seemed to come faintly from very far away--he heard Krelis cry out cheerily: "Pull, Jan! If we're getting among the coffins we'll be safe in a dozen strokes more!"
It was at that instant that a great wave lifted the bow of the boat high out of the water, and as she fell away into the trough of the sea she struck again--but that time with a crash that had in it the sound of breaking boards. Jan knew that they must have struck the other coffin that Geert had seen, and he was sure that the boat was stove in and in another moment would fill and sink from under them.
For what seemed a whole age to him there was a grinding and a crunching beneath the keel; and then, as the boat swung free again, he saw Geert go chalk-pale suddenly--as she stood peering eagerly forward--and heard her give a great wild cry. And then her color rushed back into her cheeks and her eyes glittered as she called out in a strong voice resolutely: "It's Marretje come to take you from me, Krelis--but she sha'n't, she sha'n't! You never really were her lover--and you always were and always shall be mine! And I hate her and I'll get the better of her dead just as I hated her and got the better of her alive!" And with that Geert let go her hold upon the tiller and sprang forward and clasped Krelis in her arms.
Jan could not tell clearly what happened after that. All that he was sure of was the sight for an instant, tossing beside the boat in the circle of light cast by the lantern, of a lidless coffin in which lay wrapped in her white shroud the dead golden-haired Marretje--and then the boat broached to and went over, and there was nothing about him but blackness and the tumultuous waves. As he went down into a hollow of the sea he felt the ground beneath his feet, and that put courage into him to make a fight for life. Struggling against the gale, and against waves which grew smaller as he battled on through them, he went forward with a heart-breaking slowness; and the strength was clean gone out of him when he won his way at last up the lee side of the little mound--and dropped down at full length there, in safe shelter amidst the graves.
"And Geert and Krelis?" I asked.
"With her arms tight about him there was no chance for either of them," he answered. And then he went on, speaking very solemnly: "The word that was truth had been spoken against them. They perished in the wrath of the Zuyder Zee!"
A Duluth Tragedy
I
Jutting out from the rocky coast, a sand spit nearly seven miles long, Minnesota Point is as a strong arm stretched forth to defend the harbour of Duluth against the storms which breed in the frozen North and come roaring down Lake Superior. Wisconsin Point, less than half its length, almost meets it from the other shore. Between the two is the narrow inlet through which in old times came the Canadian voyageurs--on their way across Saint Louis Bay and up the windings of the Saint Louis River to Pond du Lac, twenty miles farther westward. That was in the fur-trading days of little sailing-vessels and birch-bark canoes. Now, close to its shoulder, the Point is cut by a canal through which the great black steamships come and go.