For all Pelsaert’s joy, however, he is soon flooded with a fury of frustration. This is focused on the wretched Ariaen Jacobsz, whose calculations as to the site of the shipwreck placed it no less than 30 miles to the north of where they have now actually found it! The time they wasted on the search was unbearable, and now Pelsaert is intent on not wasting a minute more of it.
After Skipper Jacob Jacobsz navigates through the dangerous shoals, constantly shouting orders to Claas Gerritsz and the sailors to sound for depth beneath the keel, they drop anchor just off the nearest island to the ship, which Pelsaert now recognises as the same island he visited three months earlier, straight before departing for the mainland. He decides to go ashore in the yawl and quickly explore this closest island for signs of life, before heading towards the promising smoke on the other island. The yawl is taken from the deck of the Sardam, thus, and Pelsaert and six of the crew climb aboard and head to the shore.
Row faster! From two directions, the boats of Hayes and Stonecutter race towards the yacht. Though the occupants of both boats know roughly where that yacht is situated, because they can at least see the top of her sail in the distance, peeking over the top of the eastern island, neither Pelsaert nor his men – who cannot see the boats as they start off – have any idea that they are the finishing point for this race.
They are not long in finding out, however. As soon as the Commandeur and his men land on the beach, they are startled to see a boat with five men in it being rowed frantically towards them from around the northern promontory of the far island. Wonderful! People are alive. But why are they rowing with such terrible energy, as if pursued by a shark?
Pelsaert’s crew stiffen and instinctively grip more tightly to their weapons, not knowing what to expect. The makeshift boat now lands on the beach and a man jumps out and rushes towards them.
Why . . . why . . . it is Wiebbe Hayes, the soldier, who Pelsaert remembers was so helpful on the day immediately following the shipwreck. The Hayes of that time, though, had the sallow complexion and slight frame of one who had barely seen the sun for months, as he had spent most of his time cooped up on the orlop deck. This Hayes is burned brown by this southern sun and looks as strong as a bull, even if he is dressed in a combination of rags and some kind of animal fur, while his feet seem to be bound with strips of ragged cloth to give them protection from the sharp coral.
‘Welkom, welkom!’ the soldier cries. ‘But you must return on board as quickly as you can, for there is a band of villains on the islands near the wreck of the Batavia. They have a sloop and intend to seize your vessel!’
Rough parts of the wider story now babble out of Hayes as he tries to communicate the gravity of what has happened in recent months and the urgency of the current situation.
The Commandeur can only just follow the thread of it, but even that thread is clearly bathed in blood, as Hayes gives scant details of what has occurred. There is staggering talk of over a hundred men, women, cabin boys and children being miserably murdered by drowning as well as by strangling, hacking and throat-cutting, and much of it on the orders of none other than the Onderkoopman, Jeronimus Cornelisz, who, apparently, they have captured.
Hayes also speaks of how he has become ‘the captain of 47 people, who, to save their lives, have taken refuge on this island’, how they have been under attack this very morning and how the whole thing now lies in the balance, depending on how quickly he can convince the Commandeur to take urgent action to defend themselves and the yacht.
‘Hurry . . . we must hurry!’ Hayes finishes, exhorting Pelsaert to move.
Reeling as he is from the news, and the fact that the Onderkoopman – the Onderkoopman! – appears to be involved in it, Pelsaert decides to believe him. The fact that Hayes and his men have come unarmed is as clear an indication as any that they bear the newcomers no ill will and all they want for the moment is for them to get back to their yacht and prepare for a possible attack by the villains. Pelsaert agrees to do exactly that and orders Hayes in the meantime to go back in his yawl and bring the bound Jeronimus to him on the yacht.
As it turns out, Pelsaert is only just able to get back on the yacht before, exactly as Hayes has said would happen, he and his crew on the Sardam suddenly see a boat fast approaching them, coming around the southerly point of the westernmost High Island. In total, there are 11 men in the boat. Sharply giving orders, Pelsaert makes sure that all those on the Sardam are ready for their potentially villainous visitors.
As the boat comes close, he can see they are nearly all in clothes of the finest red cloth, all of it trimmed with golden lace, that is, Company lace, and they have no right to it! – something that further confirms things are amiss. The men in the boats are heavily armed, with everything from swords and daggers to muskets.
As they pull alongside the yacht, Pelsaert greets them but comes straight to the point: why have they approached the yacht so heavily armed? It is Stonecutter who speaks in reply, saying that they will explain everything once they are on board and even makes to climb up onto the yacht without first being bidden.
There is an insolence in this huge, red-garbed man’s reply and subsequent action that gives Pelsaert final confirmation that everything Wiebbe Hayes has told him is true, and that the men in this boat are dangerous enemies of the Company.
At Pelsaert’s sudden signal, thus, all of those with guns on the Sardam instantly reveal them and train them on the boat of Mutineers. Included in those guns is nothing less than one of the ship’s cannons, packed, primed and ready to fire.
The moment of stunned silence that follows is broken by Pelsaert as he orders all the Mutineers in the boat to throw their weapons into the sea and to carefully come aboard unarmed. As all the Mutineers now discover, the only thing blacker than the blackness of the muzzle of a musket pointed straight at you is the blackness of the barrel of a cannon pointing the same – and in this case it is as black as the Devil’s very soul. Now, like Loos, all of the fight goes out of them. It is Stonecutter who breaks the impasse by slowly standing and doing exactly as Pelsaert has bidden – throwing first his sword, then his dagger and then finally his musket in the water. In short order, all the other Mutineers follow suit and then carefully, oh so carefully, climb the sides of the yacht to the deck, where, with no fewer than ten muskets trained upon them, they are clapped in irons in the ship’s hold for their trouble.
It is over.
Pelsaert ensures the prisoners are securely guarded as he begins to question the villains one by one, right there and then, to get at the truth.
It is, quite surprisingly, the Mutineer Jan Hendricxsz – wild-eyed and desperate to cooperate with the new power – who proves particularly forthcoming. He not only exposes the Onderkoopman, Jeronimus Cornelisz, together with the skipper Ariaen Jacobsz and the bosun Jan Evertsz in their monstrous scheme to seize the Batavia – to kill Pelsaert and everyone else bar those they needed to run the ship before going off pirating – but also confesses to personally murdering and assisting in the murder of 17 to 20 people. All by order of, that man again, Jeronimus Cornelisz, whom he refers to as Kapitein-Generaal. Pelsaert winces to hear Jeronimus so described but for the moment allows it to pass. A man who has confessed to so many murders could be fairly relied on to be telling the truth about everything else, and Hendricxsz’s outpourings have the air of a purging of what remains of his soul.
And so Hendricxsz continues and Pelsaert continues to listen, appalled, as the width and terrible depths of the whole plot become clear. All of Hendricxsz’s initial testimony points in the same direction: Jeronimus Cornelisz is the Devil incarnate. At least heartening, though, is the story of the heroism of Wiebbe Hayes and his men, confirmation that somehow, through it all, some goodness, decency and loyalty to the Company have prevailed.
Evening is falling on this same day as Wiebbe Hayes boards the Sardam with the prisoner he has held captive for the past 15 days. It is Jeronimus, bound in chains and barely recognisable in Pels
aert’s tattered red clothes, unwashed and with his hair matted with filth.
Pelsaert takes pause, and would later record his thoughts in his journal:
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Somehow, despite the lowly circumstances of Jeronimus, his eyes still burn strong, the more so the instant they light upon the Commandeur.
‘Jeronimus Cornelisz,’ Pelsaert begins, ‘why have you allowed the Devil to lead you so far astray from all human feelings to do that which has never been so cruelly perpetrated among Christians – yet without any noticeable hunger or thirst but solely out of cool bloodthirstiness to attain your wicked ends? How have you allowed yourself to be so denuded of all humanity, to be changed into a tiger animal, to let flow so much innocent blood, and also have had the same intention to do that with us?’
Avoiding the question, Jeronimus begins in reply, ‘Commandeur, I thank the Lord and all providence that you are here. There have been outrages committed in your absence, sir, outrages. Infamy, I tell you, sir, infamy!’
And so it goes, Jeronimus denying outright that he has done any wrong and explaining the rest of it away on the evil desires of those who cannot possibly defend themselves because they are dead.
Finally exhausted, the Commandeur holds up his hand to cease the apothecary’s confections; this is not a conversation he can afford to continue. The Commandeur silently nods to Hayes, who frogmarches the manacled Onderkoopman towards the hole, the makeshift prison in the fo’c’sle of the Sardam, roughly depositing him alongside the other merchants from the underworld, the worst of the Mutineers, those Devil’s agents.
18 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
And now it is time to truly ‘tidy up’ Batavia’s Graveyard, as Jeronimus might have put it. On this fine morning, Pelsaert and the skipper of the Sardam take some of their best men in the yacht’s yawl and longboat and make their way to Hayes’s Island. Pelsaert is both stunned and proud to see how well these good men and loyal Company employees have acquitted themselves, with their forts, their habitations, their water and food supplies so wonderfully well organised. Arming ten of Hayes’s men with musketry and swords, they row to Batavia’s Graveyard.
Upon that isle, the sight of the boats in the distance provokes instant consternation. For those few remaining Mutineers, the vision of the sun glinting off the forest of musketry and swords raised to the skies is nothing less than their death warrant.
‘Now the noose is around our necks and we are all dead men!’ they say to each other, thinking that the boats will no sooner land than the shooting will start, and yet that is not how it turns out. Pelsaert’s men simply come ashore and begin rounding up the Mutineers – as both parties know that any attempt at resistance from the Mutineers would be futile – before binding them hand and foot.
Two of Hayes’s men, however, have other things on their mind. All Jan Carstenz wants is to be reunited with his wife, Anneken Bosschieters. It has been well over three months since he was last able to embrace her, and from talking to those men who first escaped from this infernal isle he now knows only too well what she has been through.
Claas Jansz the Trumpeter is in the same position, having left his wife Tryntgien Fredericxs and her sister Zussie on Batavia’s Graveyard to go with Pelsaert on the longboat all the way to the Batavia citadel, and now he is back. He was first overjoyed to hear that Tryntgien and Zussie are still alive, and then appalled and outraged to hear what has occurred.
And here is Trynnie now. Her eyes having searched for her husband’s from the moment the boat appeared on the water, just as he has been looking for her, she runs up to Claas and embraces him as soon as he steps ashore. Lost in that impact between utter desolation and wild jubilation, where no words can even begin to express their feelings, where both know that for the rest of their lives they will remember this moment, neither speaks.
Just a small way over, Jan Carstenz is lost in a similarly troubled embrace with Anneken Bosschieters. For a long time, there are no words, until slowly, mumblingly, they begin to speak . . . They are words of neither explanation nor expiation – just small words, the bare beginnings of a very long and difficult dialogue.
In the meantime, Pelsaert is pursuing his own private passion. It is obvious from the first which of the tents must have been Jeronimus’s – the grand one – and Pelsaert makes straight for it. He sees Lucretia emerging from the tent at the same instant as she sees him, giving them both a start. For the barest moment, they pause, then Pelsaert rushes the last few steps towards her, taking her hand in his.
‘Commandeur,’ she says simply. ‘You have come. I knew you would.’
‘Of course, madam,’ he replies. ‘I am glad to see you are alive.’
And then he gets to the subject that has long been on his mind, and never more so than right now. ‘The Company’s money chests,’ he says. ‘Are they secure?’
Wordlessly, Lucretia simply waves her hand towards the entrance of the tent, and Pelsaert steps quickly forward to see for himself. Entering, he gasps. It is a near-perfect miniature recreation of his cabin, right down to the carpets on the floor, his old oak desk and the brass lanterns!
And there in one corner is his own, open chest of valuables, complete with the Great Cameo. Instantly crossing to it, Pelsaert quickly establishes that the cameo is undamaged and soon confirms that the four bags of jewels he left inside the case are all still there. It is something, at least. Not the dozen money chests he is hoping for, but certainly a good start.
Quickly opening all of the bags of jewels for further reassurance, Pelsaert ascertains that they are substantially intact.
And then . . .
What is this? Right down at the bottom of the fourth bag of jewels, he finds three pieces of parchment, all with signatures at the bottom of a formal piece of writing. He begins to read the first one . . .
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And so on.
Quickly scanning all of the parchments, Pelsaert again realises that everything he has been told about Jeronimus is true, and here is the proof of that. The names of the signatories to these oaths – Coenraat van Huyssen, Jacop Pietersz, David Zevanck, Jan Hendricxsz, Mattys Beer, Jan Pelgrom – instantly give him a list of those whom it is most urgent to interrogate. The one name that leaps out at him, however, and takes his breath away for its sheer incongruity among what he now knows is a list of murderers, is that of Salomon Deschamps! How could this be? The most loyal Company servant he has ever come across, his colleague and friend for all of the last decade, has his name on the list as a Mutineer?
And so, there will be much work to do in these interrogations, but it is work that will allow Pelsaert to engage in what has always been his strong point in working for the Company. And that is the settling of accounts . . .
In the late afternoon of this day, the bulk of the Mutineers are placed on Seals’ Island under secure guard, where they can be sent for as they need to be interrogated – while Jeronimus, Jan Hendricxsz and a few other particularly dangerous ones are kept in the hole on the Sardam.
Pelsaert can now move on to the urgent matter of retrieving the dozen money chests submerged at the wreck site. It is almost more than he can bear to see the skeletal remains of the wreck first-hand, the once mighty ship now no more than a shattered remnant of what she was. Fully impaled atop the reef, a substantial part of the bulwark at the back of the vessel remains above the water, while lying in the shallows before it is a large piece of the bow of the ship, in which lies iron and brass pieces of cannon. Other bits of the wreck are clearly visible in deeper water, but at first glance it certainly does not look as though it is going to be a simple matter of sending down the divers to retrieve the missing chests.
Against that, upon returning disconsolately to Batavia’s Graveyard, Pelsaert is immensely comforted to hear from one of the Survivors, Chief Steward Reynder Hendricxsz, that a month earlier a day came so fine and calm that he was able to paddle a raft out to the wreck to go fishing, and he no sooner tried to s
pear his first fish than he hit a money chest by mistake!
It is heartening confirmation that the chests are still out there, and if this fellow could hit one with his spear, then it surely won’t be too hard to find more.
It is wet and dark in the prison hole this night – so wet and so dark it gives the illusion to the prisoners that they are totally isolated from the rest of the Sardam’s company and can thus speak frankly to each other in complete privacy.
Grunting with the hideous discomfort of the chains and their cramped position, Jeronimus questions the hulking Hendricxsz. ‘What happened? Why did you not take the little boat when you had the chance? Why did you not fire your muskets? Was your powder wet?’
Jan Hendricxsz replies, ‘If we could have fired a musket, we should have captured the boat for certain; but the gunpowder burned away three to four times from the touchhole.’
A groan of frustration comes from Jeronimus before he hisses, ‘If you had used cunning, you would easily have conquered while on the water, and then we should have been all right.’
In the darkness, it is the Sardam’s bosun, Jan Willemsz, one of Skipper Jacob Jacobsz’s best men, who overhears the conversation. He slips away to find someone who can write down what he has just heard . . .
19 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
On this morning, Pelsaert is making notes once more on just who should be interrogated and what areas of inquiry should be focused on when his reverie is interrupted by the sound of shouting, coming from the direction of the beach . . .
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