ch, however, I found to be somewhat lessened when it was known I had come back with empty pockets. My father urged me to give up the sea, and to stick more closely to the

conceal from her that my worldly condition was not yet sufficiently i

when she heard of my attachment to Anna she decl

, to compensate for the expense of my upbringing. 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 accordin

lstein. Anna was rich. It would have shamed me to go to her, a penniless husband. Still, love is blind, and that An

t natural. Anna was young, beautiful, and wealthy, the only child of a proud noble, so that when Count Hendrick Luitken proposed for her, Anna's father regarded his suit with approval, and recommended him to his daughter's good graces. But Anna, whose heart was wholly mine, had evaded the Count's attentions, alth

to keep up the deception that I am heart-whole and fancy-free, and yet indifferent to Count Hendrick's attentions. Indeed, my father openly upbraids me with being fickle, inconstant, unmaidenly,

oner than see you wedded to Count Luitken I would strangle him with

I'll marry none other, and the Church does not now sanction marriage vows given

"We are both young, and by patience and i

expect nothing more than a clerkship so long as I remained in his service. His son, then a boy at school, would inherit his business, and it might be many years before I could hope to buy a

rn of the "Endraght", who offered to take me as first officer on the "Arms of Amsterdam"

id. "There is an island I have heard of which, if we can strike it, will make us rich men. Nothing vent

I should go. The sale of the pearls which the king of Pearl Island had given Hartog had more than repaid the merchants for sending out the "Endraght", and with the "Arms of Amsterdam" they hoped to accumulate further treasure. I was influenced also by Hartog's description