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[48] 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[49] 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[50] 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[51] 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[52] ocean was in possession: right across the island were sweeping the storm-lashed waves of the zuyder zee!
