About this time, the testy little governor of the
New Netherlands appears to have had his hands full,
and with one annoyance and the other to have been
kept continually on the bounce. He was on the
very point of following up the expedition of Jan Jansen
Alpendam by some belligerent measures against the
marauders of Merryland, when his attention was suddenly
called away by belligerent troubles springing up in
another quarter, the seeds of which had been sown
in the tranquil days of Walter the Doubter.
The reader will recollect the deep doubt into which
that most pacific governor was thrown on Killian Van
Rensellaer’s taking possession of Bearn Island
by wapen recht. While the governor doubted
and did nothing, the lordly Killian went on to complete
his sturdy little castellum of Rensellaersteen, and
to garrison it with a number of his tenants from the
Helderberg, a mountain region famous for the hardest
heads and hardest fists in the province. Nicholas
Koorn, a faithful squire of the patroon, accustomed
to strut at his heels, wear his cast-off clothes, and
imitate his lofty bearing, was established in this
post as wacht-meester. His duty it was to keep
an eye on the river, and oblige every vessel that passed,
unless on the service of their High Mightinesses, to
strike its flag, lower its peak, and pay toll to the
Lord of Rensellaersteen.
This assumption of sovereign authority within the
territories of the Lords States General, however it
might have been tolerated by Walter the Doubter, had
been sharply contested by William the Testy, on coming
into office and many written remonstrances had been
addressed by him to Killian Van Rensellaer, to which
the latter never deigned a reply. Thus by degrees
a sore place, or, in Hibernian parlance, a raw, had
been established in the irritable soul of the little
governor, insomuch that he winced at the very name
of Rensellaersteen.
Now it came to pass that, on a fine sunny day, the
company’s yacht, the Half Moon, having been
on one of its stated visits to Fort Aurania, was quietly
tiding it down the Hudson; the commander, Govert Lockerman,
a veteran Dutch skipper of few words but great bottom,
was seated on the high poop, quietly smoking his pipe,
under the shadow of the proud flag of Orange, when,
on arriving abreast of Bearn Island, he was saluted
by a stentorian voice from the shore, “Lower
thy flag, and be d——d to thee!”
Govert Lockerman, without taking his pipe out of his
mouth, turned up his eye from under his broad-brimmed
hat to see who hailed him thus discourteously.
There, on the ramparts of the forts, stood Nicholas
Koorn, armed to the teeth, flourishing a brass-hilted
sword, while a steeple-crowned hat and cock’s
tail-feather, formerly worn by Killian Van Rensellaer
himself, gave an inexpressible loftiness to his demeanor.
Govert Lockerman eyed the warrior from top to toe,
but was not to be dismayed. Taking the pipe slowly
out of his mouth, “To whom should I lower my
flag?” demanded he. “To the high and
mighty Killian Van Rensellaer, the lord of Rensellaersteen!”
was the reply.
