The young men and women of Marken, who never had known old Jaap save as a madman, felt toward him much as the children did; though as they got older, and came to understand the cause of his madness and the effectiveness of his curse, their dread of him was apt to take on a more serious cast. Even Krelis Kess, a notorious daredevil in all other directions, and for a long while one of old Jaap's most persistent tormentors, came in the end to treat him with a very obliging civility. But then, to be sure, Marretje de Witt was old Jaap's granddaughter--and everybody in Marken knew that this gentle Marretje, because of her very unlikeness to him it was supposed, had made capture of Krelis Kess's much too vagrant heart. One person, it is true, did dissent from this view of the matter, and that was Geert Thysen--who declared that Krelis was too much of a man really to care for a pale-faced thing fit only to marry another oyster like herself. And Geert's black eyes would snap, and her strong white teeth would show in a smile that was not a pleasant one as she added: "A live man who knows the nip of gin-and-water does not waste his time in drinking weak tea!" But then, to quote the sense of the island folk again, everybody in Marken knew that to win Krelis's love for herself Geert Thysen would have given those bold black eyes of hers, and would have said thank you, too!
Among the old people of Marken, who had known old Jaap before his madness came upon him, a very different feeling prevailed. They dreaded him, of course, because they knew what his curse could accomplish; but, also, they sorrowed for him--remembering the cruel grief which had come upon him in his youth suddenly and had driven him mad. Well enough, they said, might he call down his strange curse upon those who angered him, for twice had he known the bitterness of it: when death, and again worse than death, had struck at that which was dearer than the very heart of him through the wrath of the Zuyder Zee.
It all had happened so long back that only the old people had knowledge of it--in the great storm out of the Arctic Ocean which had driven into the Zuyder Zee the North Sea waters; and there had banked them up, higher and higher, until the whole island of Marken was flooded and half the dykes of the mainland were overrun. Old Jaap--who was young Jaap, then--was afloat at his fishing when the storm came on, and his young wife and her baby were alone at home. In her fear for him she came down from the Kerkehof, where their home was, to the Hafenbeurt; and there, standing upon the sea-wall that shelters the little harbour, watching for him, was the last that ever was seen of her alive. When his schuyt came in she had vanished--caught away by the up-leaping sea. That was bad enough, but worse followed. A month later, when he was at his fishing again--glad to be at work, that in the stress of it he might a little forget his sorrow--his net came up heavy, and in it was his dead wife.