To Die a Dry Death: The True Story of the Batavia Shipwreck (33 page)

Still, only time would tell. Perhaps they would all have perished on that forsaken shore. He prayed again to God for their deliverance.

33

The yawl’s sail dropped and the occupants reverted to rowing. “They’re heading for the small island,” said Smit, shading his eyes with his hand.

The sea glittered, diamonds of light flicking off the tops of wavelets. The boats almost disappeared in the sparkling light as it passed between the watchers and the early morning sun. Had the occupants been different, Hayes could have imagined a heavenly visitation.

“Will you speak with them, Wiebbe?” asked the predikant. He held his treaty document in both hands. “With the Merchant gone, surely they will wish to make peace.”

“Yes,” said Hayes. “If they’ll talk to us.” He wasn’t so sure. In the dark of the night sometimes he looked at the stars and wondered what he would do were he leader of the Merchant’s scoundrels. Make peace, perhaps. But if a rescue ship arrived and they were taken to task for their misdeeds, many of them would face death. No, more likely they would seek to defeat his men and seize the ship, as Daniel Cornelissen had admitted. He had a strong defensive position and his men were fresh and well-nourished. But the scoundrels must now be desperate, and desperation gave men the sinews of bulls.

A dozen men in the first boat landed on the islet four hundred yards from the shore where Cornelisz had assembled all his followers fourteen days ago. But the second boat came on, rowing towards the little beach where Hayes and his men waited.

“No more than six men,” said Smit. “Maybe they are here to talk.”

But this time, instead of running the craft in to the beach, they ran it hard onto a sandbar not twenty yards from the shore. Hayes frowned but Smit voiced his thoughts.

“Why would they do that?”

Without pause the predikant splashed into the water, wading towards the boat. “We have a treaty. We can have peace, in God’s name,” he cried.

Wouter Loos stepped onto the mud bank with his colleagues. He and three others held pikes.

Smit sucked in a breath. “Wiebbe. They have muskets.”

Already the two men holding the guns were preparing them for firing. Ball in hand, smoking wick dangling, they poured powder into the priming pan, placed the musket butt on the ground and inserted the ball and wadding. The pikemen stood around them, ready, waiting to defend them while they were re-loading.

“Those men are soldiers,” said Wiebbe. “They know what they’re doing.”

The musketeers had inserted the ramrods and rammed down the wadding and shot. The predikant reached the boat. Hayes struggled to hear his words.

“Welcome,” said the predikant. “Welcome and well met. I have written a script that you should consider, so that we can have peace and harmony between your people and ours.”

Loos took the document from Bastiaensz’s hands, glanced at it and tore the paper to pieces. “Get back to the land, Predikant,” he said as the scraps of paper tossed on the wavelets. “We are not here to talk.” His voice carried clear across the shallows.

The two musketeers placed their muskets in their rests.

The predikant pushed himself through the water as fast as he could go. Ripples spread behind his progress, his face drawn with effort.

Their weapons primed and ready, the musketeers lifted the wicks and blew on them until they glowed red.

Hayes glanced over the labouring man’s shoulder at the two muzzles. “Hurry, we need to reach shelter.”

The first shots boomed and banged and echoed around the island as the predikant stumbled onto the shore. Startled seabirds screeched and wheeled in the air and one man cried out in pain, clapping a hand to his chest.

Hayes grabbed the preacher’s arm, dragged him behind the shelter of the dry-stone wall just beyond the beach and went to the wounded man. Dircxsz grimaced, teeth clenched. Blood seeped between his fingers, clutched to his stomach. A lucky first shot.

“Get him up to Aris,” said Hayes. Just as well the under barber had avoided Cornelisz’s murderous henchmen. At least they had someone with a little medical skill. “Be careful. They’ve had time to reload.”

The musketeers waited, butts at their shoulders.

Hayes glanced at Dircxsz’s face, white under the tan, eyes screwed closed. “You’ll have to risk it.” For a moment he fought with himself, wanting to go with the young man and knowing he should not. “Pieter, Bessel, get him along to the fort. Try to keep low.”

Boom
. A musket ball whistled through the air and pinged harmlessly off the rocks and into a shrub. The two men scurried, almost carrying Dircxsz between them. Another boom sent the seabirds shrieking again. Pieter Haas grunted and stumbled but the three carried on. Willing hands helped them into the protection of the fort.

One more casualty, thought Hayes, and nothing he could do. His home-made weapons were no match for real pikes, let alone muskets in well-drilled hands. These two fellows must have been experienced campaigners, probably in the German wars. For a moment he wondered why Cornelisz hadn’t used them before. He shrugged the thought off. It hardly mattered; in fact it was just as well.

*

Another dawn, another day. The sky over the South Land, fifty miles to the east glowed palest yellow. The rising sun cast long shadows over the deck, a distorted spider web of lines and stays.
Sardam
drifted at anchor, stern to the south. Men murmured at their stations, a soft accompaniment to the ever-present creak and groan of timber and the endless sough and slurp of the waves.

The second watch was underway, under the watchful eyes of Claas Gerritsz, when Pelsaert opened the hatch of the quarterdeck and dragged himself up the steps and out. He’d hardly slept all night. Clutching the stern rail, he stared to the southern horizon. There. A darker shadow distorted the line of the sea.

A soft step beside him, then Gerritsz said, “The High Island,
Commandeur
. It seems so long ago.”

“Indeed it does,” said Pelsaert.

He’d prayed, in the night; prayed to the Lord God and to Saint Nicholas that the people he had left behind had survived these months. Faces had haunted his dreams. Lucretia, of course. And Jeronimus Cornelisz, his urbane under merchant. The predikant and his wife and children. The youngest one can’t have been more than seven or eight years old. And interspersed with these were the darker images, of dead men floating, monsters from the deep feeding. More than once he’d jerked awake, sweating, as some half-remembered horror slipped out of his mind. He was sure he’d seen the line of the reef yesterday; the reef
Batavia
had struck. But the steersmen would have none of it.

“The wind is from the north. With care, we’ll make the island in a few hours.” said Gerritsz, his voice intruding on Pelsaert’s reverie.

At last, at this final hour the wind blew favourably. Perhaps it was a sign. For weeks the ship had tacked against the wind. One whole day they lost when they hadn’t even been able to raise the anchor because of the power of the gale. And more than once they’d only made a few miles in a whole day’s sailing.

But now, with a wind from the north they’d need care. Pelsaert remembered the reefs and shoals and shallows the longboat had picked across as they sailed and rowed from the wreck to the High Islands. Unthinkable that they might lose another ship here, in the very act of bringing salvation to… whomever might remain.

“You’ll sound, of course,” said Pelsaert.

Gerritsz shot him a look before he answered. “Of course.”

“You remember how treacherous—”

“Yes. I do.” The steersman looked around him. “Light enough.” He strode down the deck. “Get the anchor up, lads.”

*

“I’ve done what I could, Wiebbe, but I don’t think it will be enough. I couldn’t find the shot.” Aris Jansz turned sorrowful eyes to young Dircxsz, lying under a blanket in the protection of the fort.

Hayes agreed. The youth lay silent now, his moans of pain replaced with shallow ragged breathing. Perspiration beaded his brow. The wings of the Angel of Death shaded his face. “The others?”

“Bandaged as well as I could. I dug out the lead. But they will be of little use to you.”

“Do your best for them, Aris,” said Hayes, an encouraging hand on the under barber’s shoulder. Three men wounded, one would most certainly die. Another such attack and Loos could even the odds against him, perhaps enough to land his men and force an attack.

“We’re going to have to find some way of countering the muskets,” said Allert Jansz. “If we don’t, they’ll just come back day after day and seek to kill us one by one, until they feel safe to land with their swords and pikes.”

And put them all to the slaughter, Hayes thought. There would be no more talk now. It was a battle to the death. He stared north, past the green and blue reef flats, past the long, almost straight shore of the High Island and its tiny hill. Far off on the horizon, where the sea met the sky the air seemed to shimmer. Please, God in Heaven, he prayed, send us the rescue ship. Forgive us our sins and bring us salvation.

And as he spoke the words in his mind the shimmer grew points. He narrowed his eyes, put his hand across his brows. Masts?

“A sail. That’s a sail,” said Jansz. He leapt up and down, grabbed Hayes by the waist and flung him round in a jubilant jig. “And it’s coming this way.”

A sail. At last, a sail. Joy surged. Around Hayes the men shouted and laughed and cried. A few fell to their knees and thanked the good Lord. “Saved. We’re saved.” Others slapped backs, embraced each other.

Saved. Yes, they were saved. Unless.

Hayes grabbed Jansz’s shoulders, pulling him to a halt. “Allert. Allert. Listen to me. All of you. Be silent and listen.” He gazed at the islet where the scoundrels waited. Pray God they hadn’t seen the sail. “They must not know,” Hayes said, catching men’s eyes. “You must keep them here, keep them engaged until I can warn the ship. Do you understand?”

A nod from Jansz was all Hayes needed.

“Hans, Gerrit, Claas, come with me now, to the boat.”

He sprang over bushes, raced over rocks, familiar now after three months. The boat was hidden on the north side to keep it from covetous eyes. He beat the three sailors, but not by much. “Hurry,” he gasped. “We have to get there first but we’ll have to take the long way, around the island so we’re not seen.”

He pushed at the boat, shoving it down the beach and into the water.

God was on their side, thought Hayes as he took an oar. This tiny vessel drew less water than the bigger yawls. They had further to go, but they had less weight to push.

No one spoke. The oars dipped and swept, dipped and swept. The yawl carved a path, water swirling in its wake as they rowed up the west coast of the High Island. Pray God the extra height of the island had given him enough advantage, the extra time he needed, before the scoundrels saw the approaching ship.

*

“Smoke! Look! God be praised, smoke!”

Hope leapt in Pelsaert’s heart as he ran along the deck to the bow. “Where?”

The sailor pointed a finger at the High Islands, now no more than a mile away. But the smoke seemed to be coming from the second island, the one Adriaen Jacobsz and his men had crossed to but found barren. “And over there, as well, m’lord.” He swung his hand round to the south east, in the direction Pelsaert knew the wreck to be.

Pelsaert screwed up his eyes and peered. Yes, a finger of smoke curled into the sky, from a place beyond the reef. He sagged, head down, against the rail, legs turned to water. Someone had survived, surely. Thank God. Oh, thank the blessed Lord.

He made his way back up along the crowded deck to the poop, where Jacob Jacopsz stood with Gerritsz.

“Glad news, indeed,
Commandeur
,” said Jacopsz.

“Wonderful news.” Pelsaert stared at the island with its hill and recalled the day four months ago when they had eaten cats’ meat and rested. Surely this island was a better place to stay than the one they called Batavia’s Graveyard. And yet if people had come here, there was no sign of them. No one stood upon the beach to welcome him. Hope wavered. But perhaps they were further inland and hadn’t seen the ship.

“How much farther can we go, Captain?” asked Pelsaert.

“A little, I think. But not much further.”

“Then as soon as you deem you have gone as far as you dare, have the boat prepared for me. I want a barrel of water, a barrel of bread and a keg of wine.”

34

Pelsaert clambered over the side and down the rope ladder into the waiting boat, conflicting emotions clashing in his mind. Would they even welcome him, or still cast him as a villain who abandoned them? The man who sailed away and left them to their fate? He’d stewed on that over many a night, too. But he’d always intended to return. With water, if he could. And even when he tried to bring them one precious cask of water from Traitors’ Island, Evertsz had stopped him, ordered the sailors to turn the boat around. Always, his good intentions were thwarted.

The sailors bent their backs, pulling towards a little beach in a cove. The breeze ruffled his hair and in the sky a large white bird, wings outstretched, hung on the air currents. The place was as silent as Pelsaert remembered it, with only the lonely far-off boom of surf on the reef and the occasional sea bird’s cry. The creak and splash of oars, the grunt of the men as they rowed; all else was a brooding background.

The
commandeur
leapt out of the boat as soon as he felt the bottom crunch on the sand. Heart beating a ragged tattoo, he stared around a desolate landscape. The smoke they had seen before had gone, disappeared like morning mist. Maybe that was what it had been. Doubt gnawed.

“
Commandeur
. A boat.”

Pelsaert whirled and saw a yawl approaching, cutting through the water as if in a race. Joy exploded in his chest. People from the
Batavia
. Surely. He stepped forward to meet them as one man, bearded and sweating, jumped out of the boat and ran towards him.

“Welcome,” he shouted, “but go back on board your ship immediately. There is a party of scoundrels on the islands near the wreck, with two sloops, who have the intention to seize the yacht.”