Batavia (26 page)

Landing the boat anywhere is out of the question, so, after discussion, six members of the crew who are strong swimmers volunteer to dive off and swim to the shore, in the hope of making contact with the people. As close as possible to the fallen rocks at the base of the cliffs, while still remaining safely beyond the breakers, the longboat is anchored in 25 fathoms, and those on the boat watch enviously, if somewhat fearfully, as the six men dive into the cool, green water and begin thrashing their way to the shore. The most stunning thing is when they go through the breakers and two of them are caught by a particularly large wave just as it breaks. All in the longboat lean forward, straining to see where they are and whether they will survive. And there they are! Staggeringly, they are nearly on the shore. The first of them climbs out of the sea and waves furiously back at the longboat. Far from being fearful, he almost seems . . . exhilarated. In short order, he is joined by all the others, who also haul themselves onto the rocks.

On this day, Mundooroo of the Yinggarda nation is happy. After four days’ hard hunting, living off only witchetty grubs and the odd goanna, at last Willarrangujithu, the spirit of the skies, has smiled upon them. Just an hour earlier, it was
Mundooroo’s own mighty arm
that threw the spear that had brought down their wonderful quarry.

Some half-day’s walk in the direction of the rising sun lies their people, waiting for them to bring back just such a piece of bounty. By first light of the following day, they will be on their way, carrying
marloo
back to their tribe – not a little cliff-face
pigurda
but a big kangaroo of the open plains – back to where their women and children and the tribal elders are awaiting them.

It is his brother Tondogoro who sniffs it first, coming from the shore, where Ngujithi of Wirriya, spirit of the saltwater, lives. From there, coming at them on the sea breeze, is something none of them have ever smelled before. It is only faint, true, but even the trace of it is clearly unpleasant, and, whatever it is, it is coming closer, the smell getting progressively stronger.

Silently, Mundooroo lifts his fingers to his forehead and makes the signs they all understand and are all expecting: shrink back, circle around and meet again further upwind at whatever point it is that the smell is coming from.

Silent as shadows, in as long as it takes a snake to dart down a hole, the four have extinguished their fire with sand and are gone into the bushes, Mundooroo being the only one delayed, as he first has to secrete their prize kill in a spot where it will be secure from
marbanoo
, the dingo, and
punka
, the great goanna.

What sweet relief it is for the swimmers from the longboat to once again put their feet upon solid land, on a surface that does not rise and fall, where they have precious space to move around! For a few minutes, they all stagger about like drunken men, until they get their ‘land legs’ back. But now to the task at hand – that is, for them all to safely climb to the top of the escarpment, look for fresh water and try to make contact with the hopefully friendly people who have the fire.

It takes some time to get to the top of the escarpment – after so long in the ship and then on the boat, they have been terribly weakened physically – but finally they all make it. Looking around at the arid red landscape, they despair of finding any water at all here, which makes finding the people who made the fire their top priority. Carefully, slowly, they make their way forward, confused by the fact that the thin plume of smoke seems to have suddenly disappeared. Nevertheless, they continue in the direction it was coming from, pausing only to forlornly dig here and there in the hope of finding fresh water.

Then, suddenly, a veritable clash of two worlds occurs. For 40,000 years and more, the people of the continents of Europe and this part of
het Zuidland
had developed in entirely different ways, with no contact at all between them. Now, for the first time, on this bluff bit of dirt, men from those two races come face to face. And neither side is impressed.

It is a moot point which of the two parties is more frightened, the whites or the blacks. The Dutch sailors were walking towards the spot where they thought the fire was when, suddenly, they looked up to see themselves surrounded by four men, three of whom were crouching as if they were about to spring, and one of whom is now up and coming towards them.

The whites, conscious that they are intruders in a strange land, break and begin racing back towards the cliffs . . . even as the four Aboriginal men race off in the other direction.

For the rest of Mundooroo’s life, he will tell the story to his tribe around the fire, to his children, and his children’s children, and all young ones alike. One day, their ancestral souls swarmed from the sea, all of them with the pale skin of the underworld, the mark of those back from the dead. They came, lost and fevered, roamed about willy-nilly, peering this way and that, before Mundooroo, Tondogoro and the others chased them away and they went back to the sea on a piece of the sun’s discarded headdress. So powerful is the story, and such a grip does it hold on the tribe, that even long after Mundooroo’s own spirit has gone to the ocean, the tribe acts out the event in their corroboree.

It is getting dark now. After their confrontation with the four naked black men, the six Dutch sailors keep close to the shore, unwilling to risk a second meeting and always wanting to have their means of escape – the water and the longboat – handy. They search for fresh water with one eye while keeping the other eye out for the natives, and the end result is they simply get thirstier and have nothing to show for it.

On the longboat, just before sundown, Jacobsz, Pelsaert and all the rest are relieved to see them reappear on the shore and start swimming towards them. For their part, the Aboriginal men on the shore, expertly hidden to the point that they have simply melded with the land, are stunned to see these six strange white beings, with their curious fur – the likes of which they have never seen – somehow propel themselves out towards the largest canoe they have ever seen, a real monster, and get hauled onto the boat by even stranger-looking beings.

‘Did you see them? Did you see them?’ the sailors cry as they rejoin the boat, dripping and bloodied from being thrown onto the rocks by the surf. ‘Monsters, they are – savages – with teeth like tigers and hands like gorillas. They ran at us like elks! Their skin is black, their hair wild and their limbs thin. They wear not the least clothing, not even a loincloth! We were wondering whether they were spirits or were really human beings when one of us frightened them. They stood up and ran away.’

All on the boat are agog at what the sailors report, while also depressed that they have come back without water. It means they will have to remain on the ration of just a half-pint of water per person per day. There is nothing for it but to weigh anchor and continue up the coast.

14 June 1629, aboard the
Batavia

Out on the
Batavia
in the early morning, the waves continue to pound into the wreck, further weakening it with every blow and bringing the whole lot ever closer to the embrace of Neptune, who, of course, claims all ships in the end. For two days now since the ship broke up, Jeronimus has remained strapped to the only part still clear of the water, the bowsprit.

The act of so tying himself was his last rational one before falling into a terrified torpor, aided by the copious amounts of wine and brandy he has drunk to get him through these last terrible days. Whimpering, staring glassy-eyed at the water beckoning below, Jeronimus knows only that he has no choice. He cannot swim and is so terrified of the water and of drowning that it has been completely beyond him to do what others did in the days after the wreck, which was to grab something that would float and jump into the water. But it is no longer a possibility to stay on the ship, for it can now only be hours before the final break-up occurs. All he can do is wait for whatever gods there may be to decide his fate . . .

Finally, the gods do decide, and in the wee hours of this storm-battered morning, one last hammer-blow from a massive wave hits the wreck and finishes the last of it off. With an agonised scream from the ship, the bowsprit breaks free and starts to fall, followed by a shorter scream from Jeronimus that is terminated as he hits the water and immediately descends into the dark, briny depths of the boiling ocean.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Grip Tightens

. . . and the men who were still on the ship came gradually from aboard, some of them were drowned, others came ashore where we were, amongst whom was Jeronimus, Undermerchant of the ship
Batavia
, who has been elected Chief; and this Merchant in the beginning behaved himself very well . . .

The
Predikant

14 June 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

On this morning, something appears in the distance, bobbing lightly up and down on the gentle swell and gradually getting closer and closer to their tiny island. With the survivors ever alert for supplies drifting their way from the wreck, it is spotted a couple of musket-shots distant from the shore, and a small crowd gathers. Whatever it is, everyone there wants, if not their fair share, at least whatever share they can get against the claims of everyone else who has the same attitude. Although the council has decreed that all supplies that drift ashore are to be carried to a central spot where they can be portioned out fairly, that decree has been entirely ignored, and, indeed, even some council members have gathered in this crowd, making sure they don’t miss out. Slowly, the thing forms up into something they recognise. Though they have all been willing it to be a barrel of bread, or perhaps red wine, it is in fact . . . why . . . it is a man lashed to a piece of wood!

When the man is some 70 yards from the shore, a couple of braver young men in the crowd wade into the water and swim out towards him, to haul him and the bowsprit pole in.

As one, the crowd gathers around the seemingly dead man. But then there is a gurgle, followed by a cough, and then a retching and shuddering from his whole body as water suddenly bursts from his mouth.

Hij leeft!
He is alive!

They turn him over and are stunned to recognise none other than the
Onderkoopman
, the half-drowned Jeronimus.

The word quickly spreads around the island and reaches Lucretia in the sick tent – a place that has been set up by the council for those needing extra care (this is the one initiative the council has taken that has had a genuine, positive effect). In tending to the sick under the care of Frans and Aris Jansz, the kindly ship’s surgeons whom she has grown to know in the course of looking after Pelsaert, Lucretia has come into her own in a way she never did on the
Batavia
, where she was isolated from all bar Pelsaert.

When the news of the
Onderkoopman’s
survival and arrival comes to her, she is one of the few who do not react with excitement. She merely continues mopping the fevered brow of a young child with a rag and seawater. Since her own dreadful experience at the hands of her eight assailants, she has found an empathy and warmth, a humility, a common cause with the lower classes that she has never felt before. And
the sick ones are now far more important to her
than the arrival of the
Onderkoopman
, whom she never warmed to in the first place.

Groaning, unable to support himself after two days in the water, Jeronimus is carried by the other survivors up to the central camp on the north-eastern section of the island, where he is placed in the shade of a suspended sail and slowly brought back to full awareness as he is given small sips of water and bits of hardtack. Dry clothes are brought for him, and, after he has eaten enough of the wretched biscuit to get a tiny bit of strength back, he is even given a hot meal consisting of a bit of cooked sea lion. It is Upper-Surgeon Frans Jansz who tends to him personally, and his care and kindness is, as ever, an inspiration for all to see.

Not long after Jeronimus is truly aware and awake, he decides that what he most wants to do is sleep, and for the next few hours he sleeps the sleep of the dead and the dead exhausted.

15 June 1629, on the coast of
het Zuidland

The morning after their first contact with the natives, those in the longboat find a reef running roughly parallel to the coast, on the land side of which the water is very calm. In their own rough swell, they look at that calm enviously, hoping to find an entry through the reef. Then, at noon, at the rough latitude of 23 degrees south, they have what appears to be a rare stroke of luck when just such an opening appears. Better still, they soon find a spot to land right next to some dunes, and for the first time in a week the whole lot of them are able to stand on solid ground.

Immediately, Pelsaert and Jacobsz set everyone to digging for water, but they find only saltwater. However, a small party of sailors who warily head to some nearby higher ground – always keeping an eye out for the dreaded blacks – are very fortunate to find some small cavities in the rocky surface that do retain some fresh water left over from the rain. After
drinking themselves to the point of bursting
, the sailors send a messenger back to bring the others, so they, too, can get their complete fill before they load up the small barrels to take back to the boat.