The Wrath of the Zuyder Zee by Thomas A. Janvier

What the Marken folk still speak of as "the great storm" -- the worst storm of which there is record in the island's history -- set in a good four-and-twenty hours before the December day on which Geert Thysen and Krelis Kess were married. From the Polar ice-fields a rushing and a mighty wind thundered southward over the Arctic Ocean and down across the shallows of the North Sea -- sucking away the water from the Baltic, sending a roaring tide out through the English Channel into the Atlantic, and piling higher and higher against the Holland coast a wall of ocean: which broke at the one opening and went pouring onward into the Zuyder Zee.

Already on the morning of that wild wedding-day the waves were lapping high about Marken, and here and there a dull gleam of water showed where the marshes were overflowed. Just before daybreak the storm lulled a little, but came on again with a fresh force after the unseen sunrise, and grew stronger and stronger as the black day wore on. Down by the little haven the fishermen were gathered in groups anxiously watching their tossing boats -- in dread lest in spite of the doubled and tripled moorings they should fetch away. Steadily from the black sky poured downward sheets of rain.