Batavia's Graveyard (30 page)

Creesje therefore yielded in the end; but she did so unwillingly. Like the women
kept for common service, the girl had acted to save her life, and as long as the
captain-general was happy she at least assured herself of decent food and drink, and
protection of a sort. The rest of the survivors on Batavia’s Graveyard—the
menfolk and the boys—enjoyed no such assurance. Hungry, thirsty, ill, they lived in
constant terror of their lives. Now that a good deal of the killing had been done, the
mutineers’ existence on the island was increasingly routine, and they began to look
for fresh diversions; attracting the attention of any of Cornelisz’s henchmen was
unwise, and a few mutineers, perhaps unstable to begin with, became deranged.

The most extreme case was that of Jan Pelgrom, the cabin boy, whose
“gruesome life” is vividly sketched in the ship’s journals. “Mocking
at God, cursing and swearing, also conducting himself more like a beast than a human
being,” Pelgrom lacked any self-control, “which made him at last a terror to all
the people, who feared him more than any of the other principal murderers or
evil-doers.” The boy’s sudden elevation—he had been one of the lowliest of
the
Batavia
’s crew, and now found himself among the most
powerful—practically unhinged him, and he took to racing around the island “like
a man possessed,” spewing out challenges and blasphemies to anyone who would listen.
“[He] has daily on the island run,” the journals observe, “calling out,
‘Come now, devils with all the sacraments, where are you? I wish that I now saw a
devil. And who wants to be stabbed to death? I can do that very beautifully.’
”

In this highly charged and dangerous environment, it is no surprise that the
killings on the island did not cease with the murder of the
predikant
’s family
on 21 July. Cornelisz and his blood council still sat in judgment on their dwindling band
of subjects, and the captain-general continued to order executions.

What did change was the nature of the violence. For two weeks, Jeronimus’s
men had killed—ostensibly at least—to limit the drain on their supplies. In
reality they had also done so to remove potential rivals and ensure that there could be no
challenge to their authority, but, whatever the motive, the murders themselves had been
cold-blooded and considered. The slaughter of Gijsbert Bastiaensz’s wife and children
changed that. The
predikant
’s family had, it would appear, been marked for
death in the usual way; there were eight of them, not including Bastiaensz and Judick, and
they must have been consuming a good deal of food and water. But the act of killing had
roused David Zevanck and his men, and they had gone on to dispose of the unfortunate
Hendrick Denys and Mayken Cardoes without orders from Jeronimus. Denys had been dispatched
by Jan Hendricxsz, who was apparently in the throes of some sort of blood lust. Andries
Jonas had been ordered to kill Cardoes, probably because he had taken no part in the
general massacre and Zevanck wished to ensure that he shared responsibility for what had
taken place that night. From this perspective, the murder of the girl can be seen as an
attempt by Zevanck to assert control and ensure conformity within Jeronimus’s band.
So far as can be ascertained, the deaths of these later victims had not been planned; both
killings were atypical, and, when they occurred, one phase of the mutiny ended and another
one began.

From that day on, the captain-general killed to kill. A handful of
Jeronimus’s later murders were intended to settle scores or punish dissent, but
increasingly they were ordered out of boredom or to defuse tension among the mutineers.
There was no real need for further bloodshed; the number of survivors on the island had
been satisfactorily reduced, rains continued to fall, and by now enough fish and birds
were being caught to provide everyone with food. But life had become so worthless on
Batavia’s Graveyard that a dispensation to kill became simply another way for
Cornelisz to reward his followers. In the end he and his men were slaughtering for mere
entertainment.

By the last week of July, the captain-general had already begun to set himself
apart from the men whose support he had depended on at first. The law that death sentences
could be passed only by the council, sitting in solemn judgment, was ended; the gardener
Jan Gerritsz and a sailor, Obbe Jansz—drowned by Zevanck, Van Huyssen, and Gsbert Van
Welderen on 25 July—were the last men to be executed in this way. From then on,
Jeronimus ordered further murders merely on his own authority, and in an increasingly
casual and arbitrary way.

On 6 August, for example, Cornelisz found himself dissatisfied with the work done
by one of his carpenters:

“Jan Hendricxsz was called by Jeronimus in the morning when he was standing
in the tent of Zevanck, and he gave him a dagger which he carried in his own pocket, with
the words, ‘Go and stab Stoffel Stoffelsz, that lazy dog who stands there working as
if his back is broken, through the heart.’ Which Jan Hendricxsz did with two stabs so
that he was killed immediately.”

On other occasions, Cornelisz continued to make his men murder as a test of
their loyalty. Rogier Decker, a 17-year-old cabin boy, had been the under-merchant’s
personal servant on board the
Batavia.
As such, Decker apparently enjoyed some
degree of protection on the island. He was not one of the mutineers—at least he had
not signed the oath taken on 16 July—but one day “when he was frying some fish
in his tent,” Jeronimus unexpectedly appeared. The cabin boy was taken to the
captain-general’s tent, given a beakerful of wine for courage, and handed
Cornelisz’s own dagger. Jeronimus then told him to stab another carpenter, Hendrick
Jansz, who could be seen nearby. Decker carried out the order without protest, but the boy
knew for certain that he himself would have been killed had he refused to do it. No
attempt was ever made to explain why the blameless Hendrick Jansz was chosen as
Decker’s victim, and perhaps there never was a reason; but now that he was blooded,
the servant boy became a full-fledged mutineer, and he signed the oath of 20 August with
the others.

Pelgrom did not have to be told to kill; he begged the captain-general for the
opportunity. Even the boy’s companions seem to have found his intense desire to be a
murderer strange and perhaps a little wearing, but Cornelisz evidently approved of it. He
did nothing to curb Pelgrom’s daily rampages around the island and twice attempted to
oblige the boy by finding him a victim. Jeronimus’s first choice was Anneken Hardens,
one of the women kept for common service. Perhaps she had failed to give satisfaction or
was chosen to help keep her husband, Hans, in line (the mutineers, it will be recalled,
had already strangled the couple’s daughter, Hilletgie). In any case, Pelgrom was
brought to the under-merchant’s tent one night and told that he could kill her.
Andries Liebent and Jan Hendricxsz were to assist him. Jan, it seems, “was very glad,
and he went quickly,” but he was also small and weak for his age and in the end
Hendricxsz and Gsbert van Welderen had to strangle Anneken, using her own hair ribbon,
while Liebent and Pelgrom held her legs.

The cabin boy would not give up. For two more weeks he pestered Cornelisz
continually, until Jeronimus at last gave way. By this time the number of people on the
island had been reduced to the point where only a small group of useful artisans remained
alive alongside the mutineers themselves. One of their number was Cornelis Aldersz of
Yplendam, a boy kept busy mending nets. On 16 August, when almost a week had passed
without a murder on the island, Jeronimus decided that they could do without
him.

As soon as he heard that Aldersz was to die, Pelgrom “begged so very much
that he be allowed to do it” that Cornelisz agreed. Once again, however, the boy
found himself frustrated by his puny body:

“Jeronimus said to him, ‘Jan, here is my sword, which you have to try
on the Net-Maker to see if it is sharp enough to cut off his head.’ Whereupon he was
very glad. Zevanck, hearing the same, maintained that he was too light for that. Meanwhile
Mattys Beer came, who asked if he might do it, which was granted to him. So he took the
sword. Jan would not willingly give it because he wanted to do it himself, but [Beer] tore
it out of his hands and took it immediately to Gillis Phillipsen
^*41
in order to file it
sharp. Meanwhile Jan was busy blindfolding the boy in the presence of Jeronimus, who said
to [him]: ‘Now, be happy, sit nicely, ’tis but a joke.’ Mattys Beer, who
had the sword under his cloak, [then] slew him with one blow, cutting off his
head.”

Cornelisz, Zevanck, and Beer found this incident tremendously amusing. But
Pelgrom, who had “daily begged that he should be allowed to kill someone, because he
would rather do that than eat or drink,” did not share in their laughter: “When
he was not allowed to cut off the head of the foresaid youngster, Jan
wept.”

The decapitation of the net-maker was a mere diversion for the captain-general, a
game played to pass the time one afternoon. But other murders that occurred at about the
same time had a more serious purpose, for though the mutineers had won undisputed control
of their little patch of coral, they could still not feel entirely secure. Even Jeronimus
could not control every aspect of life on Batavia’s Graveyard, and, elsewhere in the
archipelago, the soldiers who had been left to die of thirst on the islands to the north
were still alive. Cornelisz, like so many dictators, was consumed by the fear that his
followers might either cheat or challenge him, or defect to his enemies at the first
opportunity.

The first man to fall foul of the captain-general in this respect was Andries de
Vries, the assistant whose life had been spared by the mutineers. Andries had unwisely
formed a friendship with Lucretia Jans, who, in the first weeks of July, was still
resisting Jeronimus’s efforts at seduction. News of their relationship aggrieved
Cornelisz; grimly, he forced De Vries to swear “that if ever in his life he talked to
her [again], he would have to die.” On 14 July, the day after he had been forced to
slit the throats of the remaining sick, Andries was caught by David Zevanck calling to
Creesje “from afar.” Zevanck ran to tell Jeronimus, and the apothecary summoned
Jan Hendricxsz, Lenert van Os, and Rutger Fredricx to his tent. The men were given a
beaker of wine and a sword apiece, and at noon, in front of all the people on the island,
they confronted the assistant. Andries guessed why they had come, and tried, uselessly, to
save himself. What followed was in effect a public execution: “When De Vries saw that
his life was forfeit, he fled into the water. But Lenert Michielsz, following him the
quickest, chiefly hacked him to death.”

A second mutineer only narrowly avoided the same fate. The
Batavia
’s
senior cooper, Jan Willemsz Selyns, was a hanger-on who had played only a minor role in
the killings and had perhaps failed to show the necessary enthusiasm for Jeronimus’s
schemes. On 5 August, Cornelisz sent Wouter Loos and Hans Jacobsz Heijlweck to dispatch
the cooper in his tent; but Loos, who had felt no compunction in hacking Mayken Cardoes to
death two weeks earlier, liked Selyns, and instead of killing him he begged the
captain-general to spare the artisan’s life. Jeronimus, surprisingly, gave way, and
nothing more was heard of the matter; but that afternoon, when the under-merchant ordered
the murder of another potential defector, Heijlweck was among the four men chosen for the
task, and Wouter Loos was not.

The new object of Cornelisz’s suspicions was Frans Jansz. The surgeon
appears to have retained a good deal of influence in the archipelago—no doubt because
of his involvement in the first survivors’ council—and for a while he and David
Zevanck had competed for the captain-general’s favor. Zevanck won this contest,
becoming Jeronimus’s chief executioner; but the assistant did not forget Jansz and
was irritated to find him “in the way” on more than one occasion. The surgeon,
meanwhile, retained a certain degree of independence. He was not one of Jeronimus’s
band (that is, he did not sign the oath of 16 July); but he took part in some of its
operations, and as he was still the most senior member of the
Batavia
’s crew
in the islands, the mutineers could not ignore him altogether. Exactly what Jansz said,
and did, in the survivors’ camp after Cornelisz supplanted him was never written down
and is now lost. What we do know is that the under-merchant did not trust him and decided
to remove him because “he would not dance exactly to their pipes.” The four men
chosen to kill him accepted the commission eagerly. They were Lenert van Os, Mattys Beer,
Heijlweck, and Lucas Gellisz.

By now they were well schooled in the art of murder. The surgeon was taken to one
side “on the pretext of searching for seals,” and when he was well away from any
source of help, his executioners fell on him together. Their attack was unusually violent,
indeed excessively so, and suggests a certain personal antipathy: “Lenert Michielsz
first stabbed him with a pike right through his body; after that, Hans Jacobsz [Heijlweck]
smote his head with a Morning star, so that he fell down, and Mattys Beer has cleft it
quickly with a sword.” Each of these blows would have been fatal on its own, but
Lucas Gellisz wanted to make certain, and he “stabbed Mr Frans in his body with a
pike,” finishing him off. “Which Gruesomeness,” it was subsequently
observed, “he could just as well have omitted, because the man was already so hacked
and stabbed.” The four men watched the surgeon die, then went to tell Cornelisz that
Jansz would not, after all, be running off to Wiebbe Hayes.