Katherine looked for Mrs. Gordon in vain; she was not in the kirk, and
she did not arrive until the festival dinner was nearly over. Batavius
was then considerably under the excitement of his fine position and fine
fare. He sat by the side of his bride, at the right hand of Joris; and
Katherine assisted her mother at the other end of the table. Peter
Block, the first mate of the "Great Christopher," was just beginning to
sing a song,--a foolish, sentimental ditty for so big and bluff a
fellow,--in which some girl was thus entreated,-"Come, fly with me, my own fair love;
My bark is waiting in the bay,
And soon its snowy wings will speed
To happy lands so far away, "And there, for us, the rose of love
Shall sweetly bloom and never die.
Oh, fly with me! We'll happy be
Beneath fair Java's smiling sky."
"Peter, such nonsense as you sing," said Batavius, with all the
authority of a skipper to his mate. "How can a woman fly when she has no
wings? And to say any bark has wings is not the truth. And what kind of
rose is the rose of love? Twelve kinds of roses I have chosen for my new
garden, but that kind I never heard of; and I will not believe in any
rose that never dies. And you also have been to Java; and well you know
of the fever and blacks, and the sky that is not smiling, but hot as the
place which is not heaven. No respectable person would want to be a
married man in Java. I never did."
"Sing your own songs, skipper. By yourself you measure every man. If to
the kingdom of heaven you did not want to go, astonished and angry you
would be that any one did not like the place which is not heaven."
"Come, friends and neighbours," said Joris cheerily, "I will sing you a
song; and every one knows the tune to it, and every one has heard their
vaders and their moeders sing it,--sometimes, perhaps, on the great
dikes of Vaderland, and sometimes in their sweet homes that the great
Hendrick Hudson found out for them. Now, then, all, a song for "'MOEDER HOLLAND.
"'We have taken our land from the sea,
Its fields are all yellow with grain,
Its meadows are green on the lea,--
And now shall we give it to Spain?
No, no, no, no!
"'We have planted the faith that is pure,
That faith to the end we'll maintain;
For the word and the truth must endure.
Shall we bow to the Pope and to Spain?
No, no, no, no!