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Updated: June 11, 2025
Peter Ecoores Van Bu was born upon the island of Urk, in the Zuider Zee, in the year 1596, and was brought up a fisher-lad until the coming to the island of a priest, to whom my parents, ambitious for my advancement, entrusted my education in the arts of reading and writing, accomplishments in little vogue at this time.
She was quite meek and subdued when she answered any question of his, until they differed about something. It was about Urk, a little island she had discovered on the map, exactly in the middle of the Zuider Zee.
One day daddy and the mother left to visit some relatives near the island of Urk. They were to be gone several days. Meanwhile, their daughter was to have a party, her aunts being the chaperones. The mermaids usually held their picnics on an island in the midst of the pool. Here they would sit and sun themselves. They talked about the fashions and the prettiest way to dress their hair.
On my arrival at Amsterdam I obtained leave from my master, De Decker, to visit my parents, and was received by them at my home at Urk with a great show of affection, which, however, I found to be somewhat lessened when it was known I had come back with empty pockets.
The Count of Holstein had resigned the governorship of Urk, and now kept a fine establishment at Amsterdam, to which he frequently invited company, and at one of his banquets I met, as I expected, Count Hendrick Luitken.
But Abel Van Bu, thy father, came to our house one June morning and bade me make ready to marry him that very day, a clerk in holy orders being come to Urk to mate together those islanders who were willing to be wed according to the rites of the Church, and Abel's manner was so masterful that neither I nor my parents dared say him nay.
Next day, to be sure, when Alb brought the motor-boat to our rescue at Urk, the way Nell's big hazel eyes lit up at sight of him, set my heart vibrating again like a pendulum, and I found myself much in the same condition I had been in at first; unable to decide which, after all, was the more indispensable of the two girls.
But there was one at Urk who would miss me more than friends or parents; Anna Holstein, to whom I had plighted my troth, and to whom I looked to be wed on my return. Anna was above me in station as the world goes. Her father was the Governor of Urk, who would not willingly give his daughter in marriage to a poor lad such its I. But who in love is wise?
She was surprised at our indifference to a wonderful pinhead of earth, which had contrived to stick up out of the water and become an island after the great inundation that formed the Zuider Zee. Judging from guide-books, the population was quite unspoiled, as Urk was too remote to be a show place, although the costumes were said to be beautiful.
It may be the poor dear's conscience that troubles her; but I sympathize with her just the same, for mine is far from clear. I have such hard, uncharitable thoughts toward one of my own sex one perhaps not as much older than I am, as she looks. He went on trying to dissuade Nell from going to Urk, but the more he talked the more determined she grew.
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