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When she heard that "Lorelei-Mascotte's" motor had been injured slightly, and we could not go on, she suggested that while we were waiting we might take steamer to the island, stop all night, and come back to Enkhuisen next day. By that time Hendrik, our chauffeur, would have repaired the damage. "Urk isn't worth seeing," said our skipper. Nell asked if he had ever been there.

It would take four or five hours, and we should have to sleep there, taking the steamer when it started back in the morning. Kampen was beautiful, he told us, with old buildings and water-gates; but even if it hadn't been, we were convinced that it must be better than Urk; so we joyously engaged a large fishing-boat owned by the brown man and his still browner father. We made poor Mr.

"Lorelei-Mascotte" was speeding to our rescue, across the Zuider Zee, all alone, without fat, waddling "Waterspin." I don't believe, if I'd heard that some one had made me a present of the Tower of London, with everything in it, I should have been as distracted with joy as I was now, for the Tower couldn't have got us away from Urk, and "Lorelei-Mascotte" could.

In his rage at my refusal Van Luck came at me with a belaying pin in his hand, but I had fought many a battle with the fisher lads upon the sands at Urk, and was well able to take my own part, so that when Van Luck was almost upon me I nimbly stepped aside, and with a trick I had been taught by an old smuggler at Urk, I tripped him as he passed so that he fell into the scuppers, when, with a muttered oath, he scrambled to his feet, and, plucking a pistol from his belt, he would have shot me had not Hartog at this moment appeared on deck, and commanded him to throw down his arms.

Mr. van Buren said, for his part, he would have tried to persuade his friend to punish Nell by leaving her to her fate, if he hadn't been sorry to have it involve me and, of course, the others. When Jonkheer Brederode found that by ferociously hard work on his part and Hendrik's, the damage could be repaired sooner than he had expected, he at once proposed following us to Urk.

I felt the blood mount to my face as I answered that for all I knew to the contrary it prospered well enough, although I had for some years past been away from Urk, and could therefore not answer the question as fully as I might otherwise have done. "You've been a pirate since you gave up the fishing," sneered the Count, "and to some purpose if report speaks true."

Accompanied by some of his friends as boisterous as himself, he came over to where I was sitting, and, planting himself in a vacant chair on the other side of the table in front of me, he asked rudely how the fishing trade prospered at Urk.

She argued with the captain, or somebody in authority and velvet slippers; but he being particularly Dutch, and very old, even her fascination had no power. Even Mr. But Nell said, think of Urk, and how seeing Urk would make up for everything.

Again, before all these eyes, her modesty was so shocked that she gave one groan, flopped over and died in the tub. Woe to the poor father and mother at Urk! They came back to find their old home gone. Unable to get into it, they swam out to sea, never stopping till they reached Spitzbergen. What became of the body of the Mermaid Queen?

Before taking possession of my new home I paid a visit to my family at Urk, where I found that my father had retired from the active management of his fishing business, which was now carried on by my eldest brother, who was married, and blessed with three sturdy boys. My two younger brothers were also married, and both had begun to rear families.