East India

by Colin Falconer

  “All right, enough. Let’s do like he says, Jan. One barrel. He’s the commandeur, after all.”

  ***

  Ambroise sat alone in the bow, watching the backs of the sailors as they rowed the yawl across the channel towards the far cay. The precious barrel of water had been placed in the middle of the boat. The bosun was staring at it as if it were a chest of silver guilders. Well, perhaps it was more precious than coin now. Where on these forsaken islands would a man spend guilders?

  They rowed the whole way in silence, the wind buffeting the little boat, spray drenching their coats. As they came closer the bosun stood up at the tiller and pointed. “Look at those fools,” he said.

  Knots of people were gathering on the beach, he could hear their shouts from half a mile distant, carried on the wind. As they came closer in, they started splashing into the shallows, towards the boat. The soldiers fired their muskets into the air but it didn’t stop them.

  “They mean to capture us,” he said.

  “They are desperate for water,” Ambroise said.

  “Turn about!’ the skipper shouted.

  The men at the oars did not need to be encouraged. They beached their oars and ran up the sail.

  “What are you doing?” Ambroise shouted.

  “Look at those idiots! If they reach the yawl, they'll swamp us!’

  “I order you to go to the beach!’ Ambroise shouted.

  The sailors hesitated, but to a man they looked at the skipper.

  “No,” he shouted. “It's too dangerous! Turn back!’

  “I order you to go to the beach!’ Ambroise shouted. “We cannot just leave them.”

  “You have your choice, Heer Commandeur,” the bosun said. And he nodded towards the beach. “Die with them, if that's what suits you.”

  That would suit him, of course, he thought. He wants me dead with Cornelia Noorstrandt, so he does not have to answer to the Governor General when we reach Bataviva.

  He hesitated.

  His place was with the people, not these mutineers and rapists. The waters here were shallow and he could easily wade to the beach. But if he did not stay with the skipper and the bosun, what chance that they would return with any water, should they find it?

  He was their only hope.

  But there was a moment, before the sail took the breeze, when he might have plunged into the shallows and made for the beach. Instead he sat down again by the bow and watched the skipper set a course back the way they had come.

  He turned around once and watched the people's cay disappear into the haze that hung over these bewitched islands. He stared long after their curses and screams were carried away on the pitiless wind, until they were just specks on an angry, grey sea.

  The Houtman Rocks

  Cornelia watched the yawl turn about and head back across the channel. She had seen Ambroise standing at the bow in his fine red jacket. All yesterday they had waited for him to come. Now this.

  Men were splashing through the shallows, several even tried to swim after it.

  “What is he doing?” the pastor wailed. “Why does he not return?”

  As the yawl beat back across the channel an uncanny silence fell along the beach. Men stared in disbelief. Some of the women started to cry.

  She turned around and there was Michiel Van Texel, grabbing one of the soldiers, asking him why he hadn’t stopped the men running into the sea. But what could they have done? Half of these people were crazy with thirst. Did he want them to just shoot them down?

  He turned and looked at her, and she knew what he was thinking.

  “He’s coming back for us!’ she shouted at him.

  “I hope so, vrouwe. It will give me no pleasure to be right about the man.”

  She turned her back on him in disgust. How could a common soldier pass judgment on such a fine man? Ambroise would be back, she was sure of it.

  ***

  You poxy son of a gypsy whore, Michiel Van Texel thought.

  Not that he was surprised. He understood the logistics of it better than any of these shopkeepers here. The commandeur was thinking like a soldier, making a tactical retreat, sacrifice a few for the overall victory.

  But what did he expect? It was always the soldiers who suffered when things went wrong, whether it was on a battlefield or a shipwreck. The officers always ran first and left the suffering to the ordinary fellows who did not have a horse or a bodyguard.

  But these ordinary people, all these women and children, they deserved something better. Whether you were a sinjeur or a sergeant it was a man’s job to protect them, or that was the way he saw it.

  Still, he supposed it was a commandeur’s job, to think about the Company first, and then decide who should live and who should die. But it didn't make Ambroise Secor any less of a bastard, not least of all because he pretended to be something better.

  The seal island

  It was later that day they saw the two men in the water, clinging to a piece of driftwood. They all gathered on the beach to watch their approach, shuffling their feet in the sand, guilt making them truculent. The skipper had his hands on his hips, his expression unreadable.

  Finally, almost reluctantly, the bosun signalled to a couple of the men and they waded into the shallows to help them. Ambroise recognised Messeker, the skipper’s brother-in-law. The other was one of the passengers, Edwin Post, they were both cut to ribbons on the coral, and Messeker looked like he was ready to start bawling.

  “What are you doing here?” the skipper said.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Messeker gasped, coughing up seawater. “The people think you have abandoned them.”

  “We have to find water. If we don't, we're all going to die.”

  “You have plenty of water! We have none.”

  “Whose fault is that?” the skipper said.

  “We are not abandoning you,” Ambroise said.

  “How did you get away?” the skipper asked him.

  “Me and this fellow Post, we found some driftwood and decided to take the chance on floating across the channel. Better that than die of thirst with the others.”

  “We were not going to leave you to die!’ Ambroise shouted. “I told you. We need to find water, enough for everyone.”

  “That’s not what the soldiers say. They think you intended to leave us there while you head for Batavia.”

  The skipper laughed, deep in his chest. “That was never our intention.”

  Nervous laughter all along the beach. No one meeting anyone's eyes.

  Edwin Post was still doubled over, still retching up seawater. Messeker spat in the sand and helped himself to a pannikin of water.

  Chapter 35

  ALIDA Post sat on the lime white rocks, the waves nibbling and bubbling at the coral at her feet. A gull circled overhead, its shadow chasing the wavelets along the strip of sand.

  Cornelia and Elisabeth looked at each other. What was there to say? Elisabeth went down to try and comfort her. Alida had her head on her knees, didn't even look up when her sister put a hand on her shoulder.

  "Alida, love."

  She was crying, making no sound about it, though Cornelia could see her chest heaving.

  You expected certain things of a man, she supposed. At best, you expected them to be faithful to you, but men being what they were, that wasn't always likely or possible. But even that could be forgiven. At worst you expected them to love you as best they could, in their own way.

  Was it too much to ask that a man should not leave you and save his own skin while you slowly died of thirst on some forgotten place? What was there her sister could say to her? They may all be dead soon but such betrayal would leave a bitter taste as you lay parched and dying. And what faithlessness, to make a woman weep so, when she would have need of her tears in a day or so, when she would give all she possessed for even a thimbleful of dew.

  Cornelia turned away and left them there. All you wanted, sometimes, was someone to believe in.
>
  The seal island

  Ambroise went down to the beach at first light and stopped when he saw the yawl, loaded to her gunwales. The skipper had loaded all their provisions though the islands they were about to explore were, by his reckoning, no more than a few hours’ sailing distant. And they had the woman with them too, that trollop Sara de Ruyter.

  The mood was sullen. The sailors kept their eyes downcast. No one spoke.

  The skipper was shouting orders to the sailors, supervising the loading of the remaining biscuit and water barrels. Ambroise rounded on him, incensed. “I did not give the order for this!’

  The skipper shrugged his shoulders.

  “The aim of our expedition is merely to search for water. We should lighten the yawl and leave our provisions here on the beach.”

  “If there is a storm, and we are stranded on the islands without food or water, you will thank me for this.”

  No one spoke. He saw the bosun touch the knife at his belt. The mood was dangerous.

  He got into the yawl and sat by the bow in fretful silence.

  He had the fever again this morning, he felt faint with hunger, and cold, cold to his bones. As the sailors pushed them out through the shallows, he tried to blow some warmth into his hands. The sea boomed on the reef. No change in the weather, no easy solution to the dilemma.

  And perhaps the skipper is right, he thought. We have to find water first. Once the people are saved, we will set our minds on salvaging the Company's property. When that is done, before God all else is forgiven.

  Chapter 36

  SLOW progress, drifting with the current, sails furled, as the skipper negotiated the maze of reefs that guarded the higher island from the lagoon. Ambroise sat slumped in the bows. He hated this place, these wild currents and strange, harsh-sounding birds.

  They drifted past odd, mushroom-shaped islands, thick with bird droppings, the limestone outcrops undercut at their base by the sea and guarded by sand bars and mud flats. A seal basked in the sun; when it saw them it opened one docile eye and then returned to slumber.

  These islands were no more hospitable than the cays they had left behind, just sand and salt bush. They were inhabited mainly by birds; huge flocks of gulls and cormorants darkened the sky when they passed. Sandpipers and herons waded among the mud shallows. Once he saw a huge sea eagle's nest on one of the headlands.

  As they came closer to the high island, he saw it was not one island but two, the highest point on both of them no larger than the dunes at Texel. The southernmost was larger, perhaps two or three miles long.

  The skipper barked an order to the men at the oars and they glided through the shallows towards a long beach, as white as any he had ever seen. Two of the men jumped out in their bare feet to drag the yawl towards the shore and immediately one of them howled in pain and had to be pulled back on board the boat, blood streaming from his foot. Moments afterwards, the other man met the same circumstance. The thick mud on the bottom was infested with razor sharp shells that cut out huge lumps of flesh from the soles of the feet like a wadcutter.

  The two men groaned and writhed in the scuppers and the skipper spat into the water. “This place is accursed,” he said.

  The High Island

  The beach itself was of perfectly white sand, different from the island they had recently left, which was largely broken coral. Almost as soon as they landed Barents and Messeker discovered rain pools among the limestone outcrops, but they were tainted with seawater and proved undrinkable. After this disappointment the skipper ordered his men to dig holes at various places but they found nothing. They spent the whole day searching, though it seemed to him no one looked very hard, unwilling to wander out of sight of the yawl. They didn’t trust the skipper and they didn’t trust each other.

  He saw the secret glances between the skipper and the bosun. He knew they wanted just to get away from this place as soon as they could. He looked at the new leeboards the skipper had fitted to their yawl overnight, extra planking fashioned from flotsam that would make the craft seaworthy if they took her on the ocean. It seemed he had already decided on what he would do.

  ***

  That night they gathered around a meagre fire and the skipper told them his plan. “There's no water here,” he said. “If we stay, we're all going to die.”

  “One day more of searching,” Ambroise protested, ‘it may be all that stands between the people and death. We cannot give up so soon.”

  “The weather is getting worse. If there is a storm out there, we may never get away from here.”

  “That could work in our favour. A tempest may bring rain.”

  “Then the people will be saved anyway. But with just twenty gallons of water left we cannot afford to find out.”

  Murmurs of agreement from the sailors.

  “If it rains they will live,” a voice said behind him. “If it doesn't they will die.” He turned around. It was the bosun. “It doesn't make sense for us to die with them.”

  “You are making too much haste in this,” Ambroise shouted, hoping for at least one voice of support from the sailors. “Once the ship breaks up on the reef, more water barrels may float ashore.”

  “The water barrels were ruined with seawater the morning of the wreck.”

  “We cannot leave the people behind!’

  “We don't owe them anything,” the bosun said.

  The skipper silenced him with a glance.

  But then Barents spoke up. “It's true,” he said. “You all saw how they behaved when we were trying to load the lifeboats. They would have trampled on their own mothers to get to land.”

  “They set about the provost when he tried to guard the water barrels,” Messeker said. “If they have no water left, whose fault is that?”

  “I still have a responsibility to them,” Ambroise said.

  The skipper jerked his thumb in the direction of the knot of sailors huddled together for warmth by the beached yawl. “And I have a responsibility to them. If we don't find water, we're all going to die.”

  “He's right,” the bosun said. “I say we make for the mainland. How far are we?”

  “No more than forty or fifty miles to the east,” the skipper said.

  So, now he admits it, Ambroise thought. All this time he has maintained they had had hit some unknown sandbank. With this announcement he had admitted they were on the Houtman Rocks.

  “We cannot abandon the people.”

  “If we find any water, on the Southland or any island in between, we shall bring it back here for them. We do not abandon them. On the contrary, we are their only hope of salvation.”

  Ambroise shook his head. “I must have time to think about this.”

  “You don't have time to ponder,” the skipper said. He tossed another twig into the small fire of salt bush. “May I speak with you privately?”

  They walked a little way from the fire, out of the earshot of the others. The wind bruised their faces and they battled just to stay on their feet in the gale.

  The skipper leaned in close. “Would you sacrifice us all so that you can die with an easier mind?” he hissed.

  “My conscience is not at issue here.”

  “Isn't it? Hard decisions have to be made here, Heer Commandeur.”

  He was right, but what was the right thing to do? I have to go with these men, to ensure they do their duty, that they are diligent in their search for water and do not simply sail straight for Batavia and report everyone lost.

  But it was also his duty to guard the Company's goods and treasure. Twelve chests of bullion out there, Company silver, an unimaginable fortune in coin and it was his responsibility, by God.

  And did he not owe a debt to the people also, to ensure they maintained good order among themselves and did not abandon hope?

  “All right, we will sail east as far as the Southland,” he said. “We find water there and come back for the people.”

  “Good. There is no choice, you know.” He clapped
Ambroise on the shoulder. “You are doing the right thing.”

  Was he? Only time would tell.

  Chapter 37

  AMBROISE woke, stiff and cold; a black depression settled on him immediately, as he remembered where he was and how he had come to be in this stark and lonely place. He got up, stamping his feet, and made his way down the beach where he could make out the silhouette of the yawl.

  When I come before God to Judgment he will ask me about this day, he thought.

  An hour later they set out, forty-seven men and two women. In the grey dawn light the skeleton of the Utrecht was now no more than a speck.

  Ambroise sat slumped at the bow. He felt as if he had swallowed stones.

  The skipper shouted commands from the tiller, steered them through the jagged maze of reefs and crouching islands towards the open sea.

  I have done all I can, Ambroise thought, exhausted every avenue in search of water, had even demanded that I be returned to perish with them. What is left to do, if others do not have the fortitude to return to their duty alongside me?

  But inside a voice nagged at him; you are running away. The screeching of gulls sounded like the jeering of a mob.

  Chapter 38

  CORNELIA sat on the lime white rocks, the waves bubbling at the coral at her feet. A gull circled overhead, its shadow chasing the wavelets along the strip of sand. She had her head on her knees, didn't look up when she heard Michiel’s footsteps on the rocks.

  “Vrouwe?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Try to keep faith. Don’t give up yet. If it rains, we’re saved.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. How could she explain it to him? She had looked up to the commandeur; he had been her only light in these dark months of the voyage. Now she felt that there was nothing left to believe in anywhere in the world.