"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.




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