Somehow, though, they make it through long enough, may the Lord be praised, for the storm to begin to dissipate. As the wind changes to west by sou’-west, they are able to turn to the north once more. Though the seas remain high, they are not as perilous as before, and the exhausted crew and company settle.
10 June 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
The rain! The blessed rain!
Back on the Abrolhos, the heavens have opened up overnight, just in time to avoid major catastrophe. For many, on the point of expiry, it is all they can do to roll their faces skywards and open their mouths, in most cases leading to instant revival. All are delighted, but perhaps none more so than the Predikant, who takes it as proof of the power of his prayers, as he publicly expresses his gratitude to the benevolent God who has saved them all. His face upturned to the heavens, his hands spread wide once more, he intones over and over again, ‘Oh, blessed Vader, Father, thou gracious generosity be blessed, may we be forever dankbaar, thankful, for your benevolence and may you continue to hear our prayers. Oh, blessed Vader, thou gracious generosity be blessed . . .’
God is with them on this island after all! While most of the Predikant’s family are gathered tightly around him as he prays, many others among the survivors now spread out and are all but dancing, their faces ghoulish in the flashes of lightning, their teeth bared and their mouths open to the heavens as they gulp down every precious drop and glory in the feel of the fresh rain drenching the rest of their bodies.
However, not all those on Batavia’s Graveyard are so wanton in their joy. Over at the soldiers’ encampment, Wiebbe Hayes is simply busy. In the preceding days, in hopeful anticipation of rain, he worked out a system of suspending a large section of salvaged sail between eight posts and putting a stone in the middle to weigh it down. Via a small hole made next to that stone, they could fill their water barrels by placing them underneath the sail when it rained, using the contraption as a funnel.
And it is working. Under Wiebbe Hayes’s guidance, the soldiers in his immediate group carefully ensure that every drop of rain that falls on the canvas is running into empty barrels, and when each of those barrels is full they quickly replace it with a new one, without spilling any of the precious water. It is exacting work, which nevertheless has to be done. Their time for celebration will not come until the precious rain has stopped falling – at which point, they know, the only puddles of water that will be left will be tiny ones on the odd rocky surface, while the rain falling on the sand will be immediately absorbed, leaving no trace. For the moment, though the rain begins to dissipate a little, the storm itself, with all its thunder, lightning and howling winds, continues to rage.
11 June 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
Others, as it turns out, are having more problems with alcohol than with water.
In Ryckert Woutersz’s whole life, he has never had the access to alcohol that he does now. A barrel of wine that washes up on the shore of Batavia’s Graveyard is quickly retrieved by himself and two of his shipmates, and then secreted – and all three of them continue to drink enough to keep themselves in a stupor. Woutersz’s two shipmates fall into a drunken slumber, but Woutersz is not like that. When drunk, his tongue loosens, making him say things that, when sober, he would have kept as the closely guarded secrets they were meant to be.
‘Waar is Ariaen Jacobsz?’ he is heard to slur on the night after the rainstorm, as he staggers around the encampment. ‘It was all right for him to lead the mutiny we had planned when all was going well, to take down that dog Pelsaert, but once we hit the rif, waar is hij? Gone with Pelsaert in the boat to save his own hide, leaving the rest of us here to die!’
Unfortunately for Woutersz, he has said this within the earshot and cold stare of Coenraat van Huyssen, his fellow Mutineer. Van Huyssen does not take kindly to the open discussion of a plot that, in normal times, would see them all on the gallows. Yes, these are not normal times, but if the wreck’s survivors are to be rescued and those times return, the disclosure of the plot would lead to their deaths. As to Jacobsz and Pelsaert, Coenraat van Huyssen has some sympathy for the view that they are dogs, but nothing can change the fact that they remain the best, and in fact the only, chance of the ship’s company being rescued. As quietly as he can, thus, he hisses to Woutersz to hold his tongue, lest he have it ripped out.
11 June 1629, in the longboat
Had they looked hard at the landform just on their starboard quarter in the late-afternoon light, it is just possible that, way up high, the people in the longboat would have seen a curiously dull glint winking at them through the trees. Unbeknown to them, they are passing the island that Dirk Hartog and his men from the Eendracht landed on 13 years earlier, where he had left the pewter plate nailed to a post. And perhaps if they had not had their fill of rain just a short time earlier, they might have landed on the same island and found the plate, but, as it is, Jacobsz decides to push on.
12 June 1629, aboard the Batavia
Back on the Batavia, just after dusk, the entire port side of the ship – the one most exposed to the continuous battering of the waves – bursts open, and the sea hungrily hurtles in, roaring from chamber to chamber through all of the Batavia’s now fully uncovered innards, relentlessly tugging at her ribs and carrying away anything and everything not securely attached. The detritus, including boxes, barrels, rats and no fewer than 30 men, spews out into the ocean.
Most of the men drown, though some manage to grab on to driftwood and do indeed float to Batavia’s Graveyard. Jeronimus himself only survives because he is on the highest part of the ship at the time, right on the upper poop deck, but it grants him only temporary reprieve. For, around and about him, the ship continues to break up, every wave washing through the shattered carcass of the vessel and carrying progressively more before it. Jeronimus’s only means of staying safe is to keep climbing higher and higher onto the only parts of the ship still above water, but soon enough it is clear that even that is coming to an end. For, before long, all that is left is the ship’s bowsprit marsse, the mast-like timber that rises just above the horizontal and extends right out to the front of the ship. With great trepidation, Jeronimus climbs onto it, and wonders what to do next . . .
14 June 1629, in the longboat
His face now burned red by the searing sun, with never an ounce of shade for relief that the night itself has not provided, Ariaen Jacobsz puts down his mariner’s astrolabe just a couple of minutes after noon and quickly does his calculations. By his reckoning, they are now at the latitude of 24 degrees south. They have travelled further in the last day than he expected, with what has been a favourable wind. The rocks now seem redder than before, ‘entirely red stone hewn off without a foreshore’, indicating a small change of the landscape – any change is welcome after the banality they have seen – and a lot of those rocks have fallen into huge piles at the base of the still forbidding cliffs. The previous gentle breeze of the morning has now given way to a dreadful calm, meaning, to Jacobsz’s disgust, that the sail now has no more wind in it than a piglet’s fart. In such a latitude of lassitude, the longboat is at the mercy of the strong current that, against their desire, keeps pulling them too far away from the shore.
As they continue to meander along, following the coast nor’ by nor’-east, the lack of even the tiniest of sea breezes has made the heat even more intolerable, as the sun seems to simply stop high in the sky. The air is even filled with the acrid fumes of the tar that has been used to caulk the cracks in their boat, which is starting to melt. All up, while being driven onto the fallen rocks is a major danger for them, still it is not the most threatening one. That worst danger comes from above. And below. Both ways, the sun is, bit by bit, sucking the life out of all of them, as surely as a parasite sucks blood, weakening them and sapping their resolve with every passing hour. Those rays that don’t get you on the way down compensate by getting you on the way back, thrown at you from a hundred angles off the moving feast of mirrors that is
the sea at any time of day.
When the sea is at its calmest, as it is now, it is as though their little boat is making its way north on one huge liquid mirror, with the sun managing to throw upon them all its firepower without fracture – they are literally roasting, turning redder by the minute as their exposed skin begins to peel, offering up the layers beneath for further cooking. Yes, their water was replenished two days earlier with the rain, but it still has to be severely rationed – two cups a day – against the possibility that it might not rain again for some time.
If in the first two days there was much groaning and wailing at this infernal fire, by this time, their sixth day at sea, that groaning has mercifully subsided – not because everyone has decided to make the best of it but because almost no one has the strength left for the wailing.
Except the baby. A constant sound through so much of their journey has been the pained cries of the infant. And on this day, as the baby’s wails are the only noise that accompanies the gentle lapping of the waves and the throbbing of the sun, it is Ariaen Jacobsz himself who at last voices the feelings of everyone in the boat: could the mother of the child please find a way laat het godverdomme ophouden, to make it stop, Goddamn it! How could such a tiny thing, weakened as it is, possibly make so much noise for so long?
In response, the mother of the unfortunate child begins herself to wail, and Jacobsz is just about to turn his fire upon her when, from up near the bow of the boat, Jan Evertsz cries out, ‘Rook! Smoke!’
As one, the entire boat looks to the front on the starboard side to where Evertsz is eagerly pointing to a thin plume coming from far on the northern horizon – at the point where the visible coast and the sea intersect. It is clearly coming from just one source, a single fire, so tightly does the column rise on this oppressively still day, and it can only mean one thing. Where there is smoke, there is fire; where there is fire, there are humans; and where there are humans, there is water!
A muted but optimistic buzz takes over the boat, as they all will their vessel forward. Within two hours of sailing, they are offshore of the point from which the smoke is coming only about a musket-shot or two inland.
If there are humans nearby, it seems unlikely that they are even a remotely maritime people, as the cliffs on the shore at this point seem every bit as forbidding as the rest of het Zuidland’s towering coast. There is no beach, no river, no smiling people coming out to meet the longboats in canoes proffering pineapples or the like, and certainly no bare-breasted dusky maidens as some had vainly hoped for . . . just that one thin plume of smoke a small way inland from the forbidding cliffs.
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 r
esult 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.
Batavia Epub Page 18