hought savages
were going to kill you in the night.

Jonkheer Brederode was almost superhumanly nice, considering what he had
endured at Nell's hands, and that it was really through her obstinacy
that we'd suffered so much, and made ourselves and everybody else
concerned so much trouble. 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. He knew what it was like, and
how, within a few minutes after landing, we would hate it. He was
certain that we would be in despair at being tied to the wretched island
for the night, and he had proposed to go teuf-teufing to our succor. The
lack of wind which had meant ruin to our hopes, was a boon to the
motor-boat, which had flown along the smooth water at her best speed.
And when "Mascotte" was received by us with acclamations, our noble
skipper did not even smile a superior smile.

He only said that, when he found he could, he thought he might as well
follow, and spin us back, if we liked to go, and he hoped Miss Van Buren
would pardon the liberty he had taken with her boat.

If she had been horrid to him then, I do believe I should have slapped
her; but she had the grace to laugh and say that "Mascotte" really was a
mascot. There is something, I suppose, in having a sense of humor, in
which I'm alleged to be deficient.

XXV

That was the way it happened that we had two nights at Enkhuisen; but
the second we spent on "Lorelei-Mascotte" and "Waterspin," sleeping on
the boats for the first time, and it was great fun. The next morning
early, we had a picnic breakfast on board, making coffee with the grand
apparatus in Mr. Starr's wonderful tea-basket, which he had bought at
the most expensive shop in London, like the extravagant young man he is.
We didn't wait to finish before we were off; and then came the trip to
Stavoren, which Jonkheer Brederode would not have let us make on the
boat, if the weather had not been calm, for once more we had to steer
straight across the Zuider Zee for several hours.

When we had arrived it was hard to realize that Stavoren had once been a
place of vast importance, and that a powerful king had lived there in
o