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.