w that I could have
struck this cowardly noble would have hurt him so much as this
exposure. With shamefaced looks his seconds led him away. This was the
last I saw of him, for he soon after left Holland, and took service
with the Spaniards, with whom he had long been in league. Some years
later he was condemned as a heretic, and suffered death by torture at
the hands of the Inquisition.

Nothing now stood between me and my marriage with Anna, which was duly
celebrated with much pomp at the Count of Holstein's town palace, after
which Anna and I retired to my country estate, there to live, as I
thought, the rest of our days in peace.

Dirk Hartog, to whom I bade good-bye after the wedding, for his
restless spirit was away again upon a fresh voyage, predicted I would
one day become weary of inaction.

"If ever the roving spirit comes over thee, Peter," he said as he wrung
my hand at parting, "there's always a place for thee aboard my ship.
Travel once tasted is a lodestone that draws the spirit from the
cosiest corner to fresh adventure."

But at this I shook my head. "Here is my lodestone," I said, and I
pressed Anna to my heart.

But who can foretell the future, or predict the decrees of Fate?

CHAPTER XXVII

ONCE MORE TO THE SOUTH

Five years of wedded happiness followed my return to Amsterdam from my
second voyage with Dirk Hartog into the Southern Seas.

I had now come to regard myself as being past the age of adventure. My
income was large, my estate substantial; and the wealth I had brought
back with me from the Island of Gems, shrewdly invested by my
father-in-law, the Count of Holstein, enabled me to maintain a position
compatible with the dignity of the noble family into which, through my
marriage with Anna Holstein, I was admitted a member. Nothing,
therefore, was farther from my thoughts and inclinations than a return
to the life of peril through which, in my younger days, I had passed,
when suddenly the blow fell which changed all my plans.

During the year 1630 an epidemic known as the "Black Death" raged
through the Netherlands, and, as one of the victims to the fell
disease, Anna, my wife, was taken from me. I followed her to the grave,
and returned to my desolate hearth determined to die also. To this end
I shut myself in the room which Anna had lately occupied, where I would
permit nothing to be disturbed, nor would allow any to enter. Such food
as I required was brought, by my order