Within three minutes, it is clear that their quest is hopeless – not that they stop poling and paddling because of it. Within seven minutes, the pursuing yawl is just 100 yards behind their two rafts, easily close enough that those in the lead can hear the hot cries of anger coming from behind them across the water.
‘Waar gaat u naartoe? Where are you going?’
There is so much ominous portent in the question that neither the provost nor any of his people, all rowing furiously, reply.
So, standing in the prow of the yawl, David Zevanck switches from asking questions to issuing commands. ‘Blijf staan! Stand to!’ he bellows to them across the waves, through hands cupped around his mouth. ‘In the name of the Kapitein-Generaal, I command you to blijf staan!’
They do no such thing.
And now, in shaken horror, the 110 members of the ship’s company on Batavia’s Graveyard, and some of those 40 poor struggling souls on Seals’ Island, watch what happens next.
The yawl of Zevanck and van Huyssen has no sooner overtaken the two makeshift boats from Traitors’ Island than the Mutineers are leaning over and viciously swinging their swords at the provost and all the rest! The provost’s party is all but entirely defenceless, except for the oars, with which they are uselessly trying to parry the Mutineers’ brutal thrusts. When Jan Hendricxsz leads three others in leaping from their yawl onto the rafts, flailing their swords – nearly overturning the rafts from the weight of Hendricxsz alone – four of the provost’s men leap into the water, despite the fact they can’t swim. There follows a small amount of desperate splashing and then they are seen no more. Another four men, who are able to swim, take to the sea. Still trusting in Jeronimus, they head for the shore of Batavia’s Graveyard to seek refuge with the Onderkoopman. Surely he will stop all this murderous madness.
In an instant, all the fight goes out of the provost and his remaining party members. Zevanck’s cronies instruct that outraged but fearful man, standing in front of his cowering wife and crying daughter in an attempt to keep them safe, that both rafts must now make their way back to Batavia’s Graveyard, propelled by the remaining men. The instruction is followed.
At the approach to the shore of the yawl and the two makeshift rafts, the gathered crowd disperse like mice before approaching serpents. These men are killers, and if they can attack innocents like that, without even bothering to go through the pretence of a legal process, then it is clear that no one is safe.
Zevanck is first to jump ashore, and he issues strict instructions to his men that the provost and the survivors of his party must stay exactly where they are on the beach until he receives further orders from Jeronimus. From the beach, the provost watches with trepidation, his child’s arms wrapped fearfully around his legs, as Jeronimus emerges from his tent and consults with Zevanck for all of 30 seconds. What is to be their fate?
Zevanck turns and is running back towards them, shouting. The first shout is carried away by the wind, but the second is all too clear: Dood hen! Kill them!
Immediately, Coenraat van Huyssen and the other Mutineers, led by those most brutal of brutes, Jan Hendricxsz and Lenart van Os, fall upon them and butcher the provost, the two children and two of the men. Meanwhile, the four men who have been swimming to shore now arrive. Not having seen the previous conversation between Jeronimus and Zevanck, they run towards Jeronimus, thinking he is the one who can save them, who can put a stop to this cold-blooded murder.
‘Onderkoopman! Onderkoopman!’ they cry, unintentionally aggravating Jeronimus further, as he is now known exclusively as ‘Kapitein-Generaal’ to all in his domain.
Infuriated at the insolent attempt of these people from Traitors’ Island to save their own lives, it is Jan Hendricxsz, surprisingly fast for such a big man, who quickly runs down one of them and holds him underfoot so that another, newly joined, Mutineer, Andries Jonas, can ram his pike directly through his throat until the death rattle is heard. Not to be outdone, with two blows from his own trusty sword, another of Zevanck’s men, Rutger Fredericxsz, kills two more of the provost’s lowly curs.
What, then, of the remaining hapless three women, including the provost’s wife, all of them still on the raft and aghast at what they have just witnessed? Clinging to each other and weeping in complete futility, they have no choice but to wait until Hendricxsz and the other Mutineers return. Are they, too, to be killed?
It seems not, for the Mutineers now sheathe their swords, return to their yawl and, for a reason the women don’t understand, tow them on their raft back out to the channel. Ah, but they do have a purpose in mind. For when they are all mid-channel, the Mutineers overturn their raft and watch curiously – amid all the gasping, flailing of arms and brief resurfacing – as they drown. Everyone who was once on Traitors’ Island has been killed.
Of the murders to date, these have been the bloodiest, most merciless and most public. One who witnesses the whole thing, including the drownings, is Gabriel Jacobsz, along with several of his people on Seals’ Island. While they are at least relieved to not be on the same island as the murderers, what they have just seen is beyond alarming. At Jacobsz’s insistence, they redouble their efforts to build their own rafts. Clearly, things are now out of control on Batavia’s Graveyard – or maybe, even, all too firmly in the control of Jeronimus – and the best hope for them all is to get away and seek succour with Wiebbe Hayes and his men.
9 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
The Predikant’s daughter Judick – like her mother, a generally sullen if notably dutiful woman – stands stirring the stewing seal meat in her tent and waits and waits and waits . . . wishing that she could wait forever. Grote God, my God, if only it were so. But now the flap of her tent flies open, and there before her is her ‘husband’, Coenraat van Huyssen, returned from another day’s killing.
As a little girl, Judick, like all Dutch children, was raised on the legend of Boeman – the ‘bogeyman’ of the Netherlands – who had sharp claws, dressed in black and was prone to kidnapping naughty children who had not done what their parents had asked. Here and now, on the Abrolhos in 1629, it feels like she is married to him. Now, Boeman himself, Coenraat, towers before her, dripping from head to foot with both seawater and blood. Just who has he killed this time?
‘When is dinner ready?’ he asks matter-of-factly, as if it is the most normal thing in the world to be dripping with blood. (By now, it practically is.) Stifling a sob, Judick tells him that it will be perhaps half an hour and then helps the beast to remove his bloody cassock. She then gets a bowl of seawater boiling on the fire so she can hopefully remove the worst of the bloodstains and have the cassock dry again by the following morning. Coenraat always likes to look neat.
The macabre mass murder of the provost’s party has a profound effect on the survivors on Batavia’s Graveyard, who all stood by helpless throughout. Large globs of blood still stain the coral where the last of the men died. A pall of fear, of growing terror, hangs over the island, as each step in the night sounds like death on the march towards them, the shriek of the wind the sound of the souls of those who have just been murdered. Who will be next? What can they, as ‘Survivors’, do?
For, in the wake of these open murders, they, too, feel a formal bond with each other, in the sense that they are non-Mutineers and therefore, as Survivors, are all under common threat. On this island, there is no separation between the people ‘fore of the mast’ and ‘aft of the mast’ – there are only those who are with Jeronimus and those who are not.
10 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
And now, in the early evening, Andries de Vries is ushered into Jeronimus’s august presence in his massive tent. After some minimal pleasantries – none of which calm the deeply upset youth, still shocked beyond all redemption by everything that has happened to him in the last few days – the Kapitein-Generaal comes to it.
‘Andries,’ Jeronimus says softly to the tremulous young man, ‘I am sorry about that unpleasantness of a
few days ago, and I am very glad that you were spared. But I am wondering if . . . you could perhaps render us a small service?’
Andries, wide-eyed and trying not to shake, nods eagerly that he will do anything they ask.
‘Good,’ Jeronimus replies. ‘Because we have something of a problem with the eleven people in the sick tent. They are all going to die anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t be there, but in the meantime they are only suffering, even as they eat precious food and drink precious water. Really, it will be a great kindness to all of them to stop their suffering immediately. So . . . Andries . . . I ask you now. Would you be prepared to take a knife tonight, and quickly and quietly cut all of their throats? We would take it as a sign of your great friendship to us. Andries, would you be prepared to do that?’
Andries starts weeping pitifully and is unable to speak.
In a harder tone now, Jeronimus asks again, ‘Andries, would you be prepared to do that?’ He leans forward, interested on an intellectual level, apart from everything else, just how this youth will react to the deal he has put before him. Andries is not naturally bad like Zevanck or Pelgrom, but how far could a good man be pushed to do not just evil but the worst kind of evil? For a while, Andries just sits there shuddering with the horror of it all. Finally, though, Jeronimus gets his answer.
For Andries nods his head.
Yes, he will do even that, if only they will spare his own life.
And yet there is still one more thing. Jeronimus has noted that Andries likes to talk to Lucretia. The Kapitein-Generaal does not like this. Does Andries understand that, ‘If ever in your life you talk to her again, you will have to die?’
Again, the young man nods miserably. Yes, he understands that.
Good. With a languid hand of dismissal from Jeronimus, he is allowed to leave.
Shortly afterwards, the still-shaking Andries is escorted to the sick tent by David Zevanck, Gijsbert van Welderen and Coenraat van Huyssen. It is a night of yet more shrieking wind, and their eyes sting from the sand whipping off the top of the surrounding dunes like spume from the surface of a swollen sea.
Zevanck now personally hands Andries a very sharp knife, before he is given some quick instruction by van Huyssen on how to cut a human throat. Ideally, you see, you must have the victim face down and then pull the head up, exposing the key vein, which, once cut, will cause the victim to die quickly and relatively silently, if bloodily. Not to worry about the blood, that cannot be helped. The bonus is that, if done right, the victim cannot even scream, which should be useful if Andries is to quickly get through 11 of them in this tent.
Can Andries do it?
There seems to be another pitiful nod, although so badly is he shaking it is hard to tell. But yes, Andries steals into the tent while the trio of Mutineers waits outside and listens carefully. There! First, they hear a cough, then a gurgle, and then the curious ripping sound that a knife makes when it slashes a throat . . . and then a small sob.
But that is all right, that is just Andries being a hoerenjong, son of a whore.
The main thing, as the next coughs, gurgles and ripping sounds come to them, is that he is clearly getting on with the job, and silently at that, preventing an outcry that could have woken the whole island and been very upsetting.
Ten minutes later, Andries emerges, with the dripping knife hanging loosely by his side. More butcher than bookkeeper, he is covered in blood from head to toe – whole streaks of it drench his shirt, as if he had himself been slashed six or seven times with a sword across his torso.
Job well done, Andries. Fine handiwork indeed.
The butcher cannot speak, just nods mutely and wanders, as if drunken, alone to the small beach in the vain hope that he can wash the blood from his clothes, if not his soul.
11 July 1629, Hayes’s Island
Wiebbe Hayes just cannot work it out. It is more than passing strange that their smoke signals have drawn no response. For the last two days since they discovered the water, they lit their bonfires, sending the smoke spiralling skywards and thereafter peering out hopefully towards the south-east, expecting to see David Zevanck or Coenraat van Huyssen returning with the promised yawls to fetch them. But there has been not the slightest sign.
Were it not for the fact that in all their time on these islands they have regularly seen smoke coming from the fires of the people on Seals’ Island and Batavia’s Graveyard – though, strangely, no longer on Traitors’ Island – Hayes would have feared that the people left there had been wiped out by thirst or hunger. Yet that is clearly not the case. So what is the explanation? For the life of him, Wiebbe Hayes cannot make sense of it. Nor can any of the other men, though it is a subject of constant discussion. For now, all they can do is continue to establish themselves in their new base, right by the water supply, and wait to see what happens.
11 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
From the time they left Texel, things have not been easy for Jan Pinten, the only Englishman of the ship’s company. He’d be buggered if he could understand a word anyone was saying, and when an order is issued from on high, rather than snapping to it immediately, all he can do is to carefully watch and imitate his fellow soldiers.
As an Englishman, the sole representative of a nation that the Dutch bitterly resented, he found that life at sea was a surprisingly lonely affair, just as it has proved to be on this cursed island. While others have formed small groups, capable at least of looking out for each other, no one wants De Engelsman, the Englishman, in their group. The net result is that, when he falls ill through dehydration and malnutrition in the second week of July, no one realises it for quite some time. It isn’t until he remains in his tent for a number of days in a row that Zevanck bothers to poke his perfumed head around the tent flap to see what might be the matter. Confronted by the grey spectre of what has formerly been a strapping young man, Zevanck quickly reports the matter to the Kapitein-Generaal.
In response, Jeronimus nods and then whispers just a few words to the gunner Allert Jansz and Jan Hendricxsz, both of whom nod in keen agreement and quickly head off to Pinten’s tent.
‘Goede morgen aan u, Engelsman, good morning to you, Englishman,’ Hendricxsz greets him upon entering, as the sick man manages to lift an arm in pathetic salutation.
With not another word spoken, Hendricxsz then nods to Jansz, who has followed him in, and the younger Mutineer suddenly drops down and sits with his full weight on the invalid’s chest.
‘Kalmeer u, Engelsman, calm yourself, Englishman,’ Hendricxsz says to him kindly in simple Dutch as he stands over him. ‘It will only make matters worse.’
Too weak to resist, yet a soldier to the last, Pinten arches his back to try to throw Jansz off, his neck automatically forming a tight part of the arch.
Alas, in one smooth action, Jansz draws his dagger with a flourish and slits the taut neck of the sick soldier. The murderers watch in mute fascination as gouts of blood quickly stain the crude deathbed stark red.
And that is the end of Jan Pinten.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Say Your Prayers
It was a busy time of it all right.
Gillis Phillipsz of Malmediers, blacksmith
12 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
As supreme ruler, Jeronimus is now all but in his hay. Apart from the fact that he still has not managed to lure the fragrant Lucretia into his bed, the only thing that has not gone his way is that they haven’t yet managed to kill off Wiebbe Hayes and his men, who have now found water. Although, the fact that Hayes and his soldiers are not with them on Batavia’s Graveyard has proved to be a masterstroke . . .
Under different circumstances, there would be an obvious option open to the Survivors: uniting as one and attacking the Mutineers, whom they still greatly outnumber. It would be brutal, it would be bloody, but if such an attack were well organised – striking in the middle of the night, killing first Jeronimus, David Zevanck and Coenraat van Huyssen to deny the Mutineers lead
ership – there would be a good chance of exacting a bloody triumph. But an attack of that nature on Batavia’s Graveyard, leaving aside the issue of weaponry, requires two things: moral resolution among the men left on the island and sufficient leadership to organise it properly. Neither is present without Wiebbe Hayes and his band.
Instead of rising up against the tyranny of Jeronimus, most of the Survivors on Batavia’s Graveyard simply cower in the face of his reign of terror. Though fearful, the only way out the men can see is to do the tasks that are allotted to them, keep their heads down and remain as inconspicuous as possible, hoping that they will not attract the attention of the Mutineers. As to the women for common service, their best chance of surviving is quite the reverse. They must continue to attract a different kind of attention from all of the Mutineers they can accommodate, and that process continues day and night.
All up, not only is there a lack of organised resistance from the Survivors to the rule of the Mutineers, but Jeronimus and his lieutenants are now inundated by men wanting to join them. In fact, with each fresh brutality they are gaining in strength.
This drive to join them is largely through fear of the consequences of not being with them, partly through a desire to share in the improved rations and exquisite red finery of the Mutineers (while the starving Survivors remain dressed in rags), not to mention their access to the women as well as the boats, and partly because of the still seething anger among the Survivors at their abandonment by Pelsaert and Jacobsz.
Whatever else, Jeronimus has not abandoned them. Ironically, with his departure to Batavia, Pelsaert has provided the very thing that Jeronimus was looking for, the act that would turn the broad mass of the people against the Commandeur.
As soon as they join up, they get to carouse with the other Mutineers in the tent of the Kapitein-Generaal. They love to guzzle his fine wine and eat the best fish and birds that have been caught on the day, together with the remaining delicacies from the stores of the Batavia. They adore running their fingers through the jewels stored in his tent and talking about the gloriously rich future before them – the women they will have, the finery they will wear! – once they have captured the rescue yacht and got away from these infernal islands. And, of course, they delight in gossiping lightly about their most recent killings.
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