Batavia (48 page)

From yonder Schagen, however, any walking appears highly unlikely. There is not the slightest sign of movement, bar the growing puddle of blood beneath a headless stump.

Mid-to late-August 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

Schagen’s murder is both a great success and a wonderful talking point. Morale is boosted accordingly, at least among the Mutineers. There being for the moment no outlet for their murderous designs against the Defenders, a fresh burst of killings on their own island soon takes place. As the weather begins to warm slightly, the number of Survivors on Batavia’s Graveyard continues to diminish.

This round of murders satisfies both Jeronimus’s bloodlust and his aim of ultimately reducing the island’s population to 40-odd putatively loyal souls, together with Lucretia, Judick and the surviving women for common service – those who don’t suddenly think they’re too good for it. These women have the example of what happened to Anneken before them if they but once try to close their legs, and there is no further trouble from them.

Still, as the target of 40 comes ever closer, the boldness of Jeronimus runs so high that, though he has long ago left behind the name of
Onderkoopman
in favour of
Kapitein-Generaal
, he now decides to formalise it.

Accordingly, on 20 August, a third oath-swearing allegiance to each other and to the
Kapitein-Generaal
is dictated by Jeronimus and, as before, scribed by Salomon Deschamps:

Click Here

It is signed by 37 Mutineers, including the
Predikant
. It is not that he has actually joined them – he is frankly amazed to still be alive – but he feels it is the best thing for Judick and himself to do.

While Jeronimus is pleased at this re-affirmation of his power, he still has the gnawing worry of the problem of Wiebbe Hayes and his men over on the High Islands – a constant thorn in his side. With every passing day, the likelihood has grown that a rescue yacht will appear, and the consequence of Hayes getting to that yacht first will almost certainly be a death warrant for them all.

On the High Islands, in the meantime, while Wiebbe Hayes and his men are equally aware of the possibility of that yacht arriving, what they can’t work out is – if Pelsaert and Jacobsz and their men did get through to Batavia – why hasn’t the yacht already arrived? By their reckoning, it would likely have taken four weeks to get from the Abrolhos to Batavia, with perhaps a week to get a yacht organised to return, and then another four weeks to come back. But if that was the case, the yacht should have appeared a fortnight earlier. This indicates that either all the men have perished or the yacht is for some reason delayed, or lost, or somesuch. With each day that passes without sight of a sail, hope fades a little more.

Of course, as a soldier, Hayes still has a plan in place for its arrival, together with a constant lookout, but even he wonders whether they are hoping for something that is simply never going to happen. After all,
where can their rescuers be?

25 August 1629, aboard the
Sardam
, off the coast of
het Zuidland

Jacob Jacobsz puts down his astrolabe and quickly does his calculations. ‘We are,’ he reports sorrowfully to Pelsaert, ‘at the latitude of
27 degrees 56 minutes south
.’

This means that, in the previous 24 hours, despite Jacobsz’s efforts to steer due east as they continue to search for the Abrolhos, the current and wind have carried them northward. It is all Pelsaert can do not to shout out his extreme frustration. For two weeks now, they have been trying to find the islands, but all to no effect. The only thing they have ascertained is that the wretched Ariaen Jacobsz was mistaken when he calculated the latitude of the Abrolhos at 28 degrees 20 minutes south, because the
Sardam
has been all along that line and found no sign of the islands.

Their only option has been to continue the search by setting a zigzagging course along Ariaen Jacobsz’s latitude, but therein lies another problem. They find themselves in an archipelago extending some 50 miles in the north–south direction, full of reefs, shoals, shallows and small islands, running roughly parallel to the coast of
het Zuidland
40 miles to the east, which makes it extremely fraught to do
any
searching. In front of every zig, there is a barren reef; before every zag lie impassable shallows. The only way to continue is extremely slowly, with Pelsaert’s faithful
opperstuurman
, Claas Gerritsz, taking constant soundings, in the hope that, by conducting the search as systematically as possible, they will stumble upon the wreck and the Survivors and . . .

And
there
!

On this sparkling mid-afternoon, the man in the
Sardam
’s crow’s nest spies some breakers far to their east, which, after consulting his map, Jacob Jacobsz is sure must be the breakers of the very reef the
Batavia
foundered on. Further, with his eyes straining to the horizon, he is nearly equally convinced that he can see some high islands just beyond that reef, the very thing they have been looking for!

Pelsaert has to resist the urge to exhort Jacob Jacobsz to set the sails to go faster and fidgets with excitement as the
Sardam
edges ever closer. More excited still is Upper-Trumpeter Claas Jansz, who is
willing
the yacht to go faster as he at last feels he is back in the environs where he left his beloved wife Tryntgien and her sister Zussie.

Alas, alas, three hours later they are close enough to the breakers to be able to hear them but, to Pelsaert’s infinite distress, the high islands the yacht’s company have spied prove to be no more than reflections of the clouds on the water. There is nothing for it but to continue their search, slowly and carefully, ever conscious that the only thing worse than having lost the
Batavia
would be to lose the
Sardam
as well. One couldn’t even bear to think about how the Company would regard
that
.

1 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

Jeronimus and his Mutineers are now at breaking point. With the coming of the southern spring and the end of the rainy season, the water on Batavia’s Graveyard starts to run ever lower, as the tension gets ever higher. A desperate
Kapitein-Generaal
, uncertain of how much longer he can sustain the life of his charges, and still coveting his stolen yawl – the yawl that is the greatest threat to them should a rescue yacht appear – hatches a plan.

Two things are clear to him. One is that he can no longer trust his henchmen to do the job of getting rid of Hayes et al. without his guidance. The other is that by now it seems likely that those on Hayes’s Island are living better than they are. Two months earlier, they could only occasionally see thin and spindly smoke columns coming from the odd cooking fire on the far islands; now they see regular thick plumes. It looks like they must be feasting over there!

The Mutineers, meanwhile, if not starving and dying of thirst, are at least feeling the pinch. Much of the supplies that were salvaged from the
Batavia
have now been eaten up, meaning they are more reliant than ever on catching fish and birds to sustain them. So many of the Survivors have been killed that a lot of the Mutineers have been reduced to doing this hard work themselves!

As to water, it is really only Jeronimus and his concubine who do not have to ration it, while
the others are obliged to suck pebbles
and dilute what scant freshwater they are allowed with seawater to get by. Because of all the hardship and the straitened times, some of the Mutineers have become nearly as thin as the few overworked Survivors still left. Both Coenraat van Huyssen and Andries Liebent are particularly insistent that they
cannot
go on living like this. They affirm, loudly, that they are happy to risk death by attacking Wiebbe Hayes and his men, just so long as they have a chance to get their hands on their water and food. There is a look in their eyes, a stridency to their tone, which even makes Jeronimus feel he is in danger of losing control of the Mutineers if he does not find a solution. Something has to be done.

So it is that, on this day, the
Kapitein-Generaal
puts all of his 37 Mutineers and their six womenfolk – the four surviving women for common service, together with Judick and Lucretia – into two yawls and carefully heads towards Hayes’s Island with them. Between them, his men carry every bit of weaponry they can get their hands on. Jeronimus, of course, is armed with his wits and, most particularly, his charm, together with some supplies of cloth and red wine that he is sure the Hayes people will be desperate for. He is confident that, if he can just talk to Hayes and gain the soldier’s confidence, he will be able to work the situation to his advantage so that they can kill them all when the time is right.

Against all that, he is still sure, as they approach the High Islands, to sit at the back of the last yawl, just in case Wiebbe Hayes has any surprises for them, while sitting at the front of the first yawl is none other than the
Predikant
.

And this, of course, the
Predikant
himself realises, is what he has been kept alive for. If the Defenders won’t deal with the Mutineers, then the
Predikant
is the perfect go-between. He is a man of God, so the Defenders will be prone to trusting him, and the Mutineers know that, while they have Judick, he must remain at least broadly in their service.

1 September 1629, Hayes’s Island

As before, those on Hayes’s Island see the approaching yawls long before they come remotely close, and there are soon 50 pairs of eyes watching them closely, ready to react to whatever they do.

If the Mutineers split up and try to attack from different angles, then so, too, will the Defenders split up and defend the same. If the Mutineers try for the full-frontal attack, then the Defenders will mass their forces right in the way.

Strangely, however, the yawls do neither. To the amazement of the Defenders, the armada of red ragamuffins now draws up on the recalcitrant mudflats of the tiny islet directly opposite Hayes’s Island. What’s more, they are close enough that the Defenders can now see that Jeronimus is among them! There, see, the one in the back of the boat just pulling up now. And there are the
women
!

With a start, Jan Carstenz realises that, across the water, one of the women he is looking at is none other than his wife, Anneken Bosschieters, and it appears that the distinctively bulky man with his arm around her –
his wife –
is Wouter Loos!

Barely able to stand it – for he knows from talking to those who have come from Batavia’s Graveyard what his wife and the others have been put through – Jan is more motivated than most to get to grips with these Mutineers. Would that they attack soon so he can properly make reply!

And yet, for the moment at least, the Mutineers show no such inclination. Instead, they simply stand on the opposite shore.

Amazed, disgusted at their seeming cowardice, the Defenders now mass on their own shore and jeer across the water at the new arrivals. Have they come all this way just to stand there, or do they want to fight? The jeers turn to hoots of outright derision when the Defenders see the
Predikant
wading across to them, clearly an emissary from the big bully boys
too scared to do their own dirty work
.

Both sides watch as the
Predikant
wades his weary way across, each step a massive effort. Wiebbe Hayes walks out to greet him and to help him ashore for the last 20 yards or so. When they meet, the young soldier is profoundly shocked at his visitor’s appearance. Whereas, aboard the
Batavia
, the religious man had been as plump as he was pompous, all too aware of his superior class to most of the ship’s crew, the spectre who now stands before him does so as a broken man. If he’s not quite emaciated, it is nevertheless apparent that the rags of clothes he wears hang loosely off him, and even accomplishing so simple a journey as he has just done has completely exhausted him. What Hayes primarily notices, however, are the
Predikant’s
eyes. Whereas previously they shone with the light of religious rapture, they are now the eyes of a man whose whole world has been destroyed, including the spiritual world that he has devoted his life to . . . and now questions the very existence of.

For his part, the
Predikant
is stunned to see how strong and fit Hayes appears, and indeed all of his men look the same. Yes, the clothes they wear are all torn to pieces, mere rags, for they took only one set of clothes with them to the High Islands and there has been no way of repairing them – and some who seem to be missing their pants have even been obliged to use some kind of hastily cured animal fur to cover themselves – but there is no doubting the strength of the bodies beneath. It is true, then. These men really have been living well on these islands.