In Great Waters: Four Stories

by Thomas A. Janvier

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.