On the way I admired the diligence and skill which had reared a Dutch town in so short a time. A wide street of substantial houses, mainly built of wood, it is true, ran from west to east, and at either end of the street there were workshops, storehouses, and what I took to be an arsenal. As I afterwards learned, a good deal of the material had been brought over ready shaped, needing only to be put together on the spot. Some acres of ground were covered with pumps, wind-mills, sluice-gates, carts, in sections or complete, and machines and parts of machines of which I could not guess the use or purpose. One thing I saw certainly. The men who had embarked in this enterprise would not lightly abandon it. They had precise and definite plans, and they had expended vast sums of money. The settlement was fortified as for a siege, and there were several pieces of artillery. In an open space stood the gallows, and near by a pole from which flew the Dutch flag, surmounted by the royal standard of England. To drive these people out of the Isle would require an army, and a general. As for judicial sentences, I remembered that it was a legal maxim that possession was nine points of the law. Looking round on the evidences of the king's authority, and of the wealth at the disposal of Vermuijden, and of the determination of the settlers, it came home to me that my father was losing his labour and spending money in vain. And yet I rejoiced to think that Mistress Goel was likely to remain in the Isle. It did not occur to me that I might be banished from it.
My guards led me to the doctor's house, where we found him seated at a table on which were spread a handful of feathers, a piece of fish--smelling stale--bits of touchwood, and other rubbish. As we entered the room, he laid down a queer shaped lens, through which he had been gazing at some of these things, and greeted me cordially. He and the men held a short parley, and they turned to go, when I begged the doctor (in very bad French) to assure them of the harmlessness of my man Luke, lest they should take it into their heads to shoot the poor fellow. After further talk with them, the doctor informed me that one of the men had a little English, and had promised to certify Luke that all was well with me. The doctor and I talked in a heavy fashion, bad French on my side, broken English on his, for a few minutes, when Mistress Goel appeared. She had not tarried to don her finest clothing, as is the wont of so many damsels, but came in household garb, her round, white arms bare to the elbow, her head covered by some kind of hood, which, however, she threw back as she entered the room, her fair face flushed as by her work, but a smile of welcome in her eyes--more beautiful than ever in her homely neatness. In the course of our chat, she told me that the watchmen were on the alert, because last night some bold fellows had scaled the palisade, broken some costly machinery, and endeavoured to set fire to the buildings. Vermuijden's lieutenant had given strict command to shoot every intruder who did not enter by the gates, of which it seemed there were two.