"To be a sweetness more desired
than spring,--
This is the flower of life."
Joris Van Heemskirk had not thought of prayer; but, in his vague fear
and apprehension, his soul beat at his lips, and its natural language
had been that appeal at his daughter's closed door. For Semple's words
had been like a hand lifting the curtain in a dark room: only a clouded
and uncertain light had been thrown, but in it even familiar objects
looked portentous. In these days, the tendency is to tone down and to
assimilate, to deprecate every thing positive and demonstrative. But
Joris lived when the great motives of humanity stood out sharp and bold,
and surrounded by a religious halo.
Many of his people had begun to associate with the governing race, to
sit at their banquets, and even to worship in their church; but Joris,
in his heart, looked upon such "indifferents" as renegades to their God
and their fatherland. He was a Dutchman, soul and body; and no English
duke was prouder of his line, or his royal quarterings, than was Joris
Van Heemskirk of the race of sailors and patriots from whom he had
sprung.
Through his father, he clasped hands with men who had swept the narrow
seas with De Ruyter, and sailed into Arctic darkness and icefields with
Van Heemskirk. Farther back, among that mysterious, legendary army of
patriots called "The Beggars of the Sea," he could proudly name his
fore-goers,--rough, austere men, covered with scars, who followed
Willemsen to the succour of Leyden. The likeness of one of them, Adrian
Van Heemskirk, was in his best bedroom,--the big, square form wrapped in
a pea-jacket; a crescent in his hat, with the device, "Rather Turk than
Papist;" and upon his breast one of those medals, still hoarded in the
Low Countries, which bore the significant words, "In defiance of the
Mass."
He knew all the stories of these men,--how, fortified by their natural
bravery, and by their Calvinistic acquiescence in the purposes of
Providence, they put out to sea in any weather, braved any danger,
fought their enemies wherever they found them, worked like beavers
behind their dams, and yet defiantly flung open their sluice-gates, and
let in the ocean, to drown out their enemies.
Through his mother, a beautiful Zealand woman, he was related to the
Evertsens, the victorious admirals of Zealand, and also to the great
mercantile family of Doversteghe; and he thought the enterprise of the
one as honourable as the valour of the other. Beside the sailor pictures
of Cornelius and Jan Evertsen, and the famous "Keesje the Devil," he
hung sundry likenesses of men with grave, calm faces, proud and lofty of
aspect, dressed in rich black velvet and large wide collars,--merchants
who were every inch princes of commerce and industry.