The great lady of Stavoren opened her eyes wide and wider. She was amazed and frightened, for she remembered the captain’s words. “Can it be,” she thought, “that they are to come true?”
It proved to be just as she feared, for that same afternoon she received word of the destruction of all her ships, of the loss of all her houses and lands, of the pillaging of her chests of gold. She was no longer the richest woman in Stavoren, but was as poor as any beggar. She went from house to house, begging for food as pitifully as the people at the port had begged her for wheat, but no one helped her, and at last she died from cold and hunger.
The other rich folk of Stavoren still lived on in the old selfish way. They drove through the streets in sumptuous carriages. They wore costly clothing and jewels, they danced and feasted and sailed their vessels out across the seas, forgetful of every one but themselves. There were still many poor in the city, but they neither thought nor cared about them. They believed themselves to be so great and powerful that nothing could harm them, and they refused to listen to advice.
After a while the port of Stavoren became blocked by a great sandbank. It rose just at the spot where the lady’s cargo had been thrown into the sea, and was covered with wheat. Ships could no longer go in and out. Commerce was ruined, and because there were no vessels to unload, the poor lost the only way they had of making a living. They begged the rich people to help them dig the bar away, but they refused. They had enough to eat and plenty of gold, so what cared they for the distress of the laborers?
Then something else happened. One night as they feasted, a man came running into the banquet hall. “I have found two fish in my well,” he said. “The dike is broken. Protect the city! Protect the houses of the poor that are close to the sea wall and will be swept away.”
But one of the great folk said haughtily, “Let the beggars take care of themselves. The sea cannot harm us. We must finish the banquet.” They turned away from him and went on with their revelry, but only for a short time. A few hours later the entire dike gave away, and the ocean rolled in and covered the houses,—not only the huts of the poor which were in the low quarter of the city, but even the palaces of the rich who had declared they could not be harmed. The great perished as well as the humble, and the waves of the Zuider Zee rolled where the banquet laughter had sounded.
It rolls there still. The sailors say that sometimes when the weather is fine and the sea is smooth as glass, they see spires and domes and stately columns far down under the water. They declare, too, that often strange, weird music like the sound of distant bells falls upon their ears, and then they look and listen and nod to each other, for they think of the palaces and chimes of Stavoren, once the fairest city of the Netherlands, submerged hundreds of years ago while the poor cried for help and the mighty danced.
THE LUCK BOAT OF LAKE GENEVA
A Swiss Legend