Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [118]
Like Cornelisz, Loos required the other mutineers to swear an oath of loyalty to him. This document, which was signed on 8 September, closely resembled the allegiances made to Jeronimus. At about the same time, a new ship’s council was elected. Nothing is known of its composition, but it was, in any case, entirely ineffectual, since Loos’s one real strategy was to continue the war against Wiebbe Hayes. He was encouraged in this by his men’s escalating complaints concerning rationing, but—since it was by now apparent that the Defenders were too strong and too well organized to be easily overrun—it is by no means clear exactly what Wouter hoped to gain by returning to the attack. The most likely explanation is that he planned to inflict sufficient damage to win concessions from the Defenders, particularly with regard to the supply of food and water. It is also possible that he hoped to raise the morale of his dwindling band by reminding them that they had a common enemy. In any case, Loos was determined to proceed. On Hayes’s Island, Bastiaensz was still trying to negotiate a truce—“I had made up a script,” he noted, “that they should have peace with each other, and that they [the mutineers] should not do any harm to the good ones.” But Wouter had no interest in such niceties. “They tore that in pieces,” Gijsbert wrote, “and have come at us.”
The fourth attack on Wiebbe Hayes’s Island began at about 9 o’clock on the morning of 17 September and continued in a desultory fashion for about two hours, for the sides were not well matched. The committed mutineers by now were rather less than 20 strong, and the deaths of Zevanck, Pietersz, Van Huyssen, and Van Welderen had deprived them of four of their best men. Of those who remained, only Loos and seven or eight other soldiers had much military experience. They were supported by a rather smaller number of gunners and sailors who were also useful fighting men, but the other active mutineers were either ill or little more than boys. The camp followers—another dozen or so men who had taken the oath of loyalty demanded by their new captain-general—had played no real part in events thus far, and some at least had signed under duress. Given the opportunity, some, if not all, of this last group might well defect to Wiebbe Hayes. They were certainly not trustworthy, and if they were included in the raiding party, they would all have to be watched. Some or all of them may in fact have been left behind on Batavia’s Graveyard.
The Defenders, on the other hand, still numbered 46 or 47 fighting men. Half of them were soldiers and the rest were able-bodied sailors; they were better fed and rested, and they also had the advantage of the higher ground. In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Loos’s plan was to balance the odds by depending on his muskets. The mutineers had managed to drag two guns from the wreck, and each of them, properly handled, could fire one round a minute. By keeping the action at long range they might hope to pick off the Defenders one by one. Hayes’s men, it seems safe to assume, simply took cover, perhaps sheltering behind slabs of coral. Neither side dared engage the other at close quarters, and so the action sputtered on intermittently throughout the morning.
By 11 o’clock the situation had begun to change. Four Defenders had been hit; three had severe flesh wounds, though only one, Jan Dircxsz, an 18-year-old soldier from Emden, had sustained a mortal injury. The mutineers, however, had suffered no losses at all, and it therefore seemed that Loos’s strategy was working. By keeping the action at long range, he slowly but surely had begun to even the odds against him. In a few more hours, with a little more application by his musketeers, he might hope to inflict more telling casualties; and if he did that, eventually the Defenders