Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [119]
It was then that Pelsaert and the rescue ship sailed over the horizon.
8
Condemned
“The justice and vengeance of God made manifest.”
GIJSBERT BASTIAENSZ
PELSAERT STEERED THE SARDAM as close to the islands as he dared, tacking cautiously through the treacherous maze of shallows to the north. It was difficult work, and it was not until midday that the jacht came to anchor in a natural deep-water channel on the southeast side of the High Island, still two miles away from Wiebbe Hayes’s Island and about four from Batavia’s Graveyard. She was on the edge of further shallows there, and the commandeur could go no deeper into the archipelago.
Pelsaert had arrived in the Abrolhos not knowing whether he would find the Batavia’s people alive or dead. The sight of smoke rising from the islands in the group had caused him to hope—as Cornelisz had once predicted—that some, if not all, of them might still be saved. As soon as the Sardam had dropped anchor, he had one of the ship’s boats loaded with supplies of bread and water and rowed for the nearest land, which happened to be the southwest corner of the High Island. It was not far away, and as the Sardam’s men strained at their oars, the commandeur examined the beaches and the interior of the island for any sign of life. There was none to be found but, even so, he leapt ashore as soon as the boat grounded in the shallows, still confident that survivors would be found. The oarsmen followed—and as they did so, Pelsaert glanced back out to sea and saw a wonderful sight. “A very small yawl with four Men” was heading toward him as swiftly as her crew could manage. The men in the boat were still too far away for the commandeur to determine who they were, but he could now at least anticipate that the Batavia’s story would turn out well.
The sudden appearance of the jacht, coming as it did at the height of the climactic battle between the Defenders and the mutineers, had had a dramatic effect on the men fighting on both sides. For Wiebbe Hayes it seemed to be, quite literally, the product of divine intervention. Salvation had arrived when everything seemed lost, and he and his men greeted the ship’s arrival with frantic relief. For Loos and the other mutineers, Pelsaert’s return meant something altogether different: not life, but death; not rescue, but the certainty of retribution. All their plans had depended on dealing with Hayes’s men before the appearance of a rescue ship; now that strategy lay in ruins, and when the ship was seen they broke off the action almost at once and retired in some confusion to their camp. Hayes, meanwhile, ran for his own boats in order to warn the commandeur of what had happened in the archipelago.
While Pelsaert tacked slowly through the shallows, the mutineers on Batavia’s Graveyard were debating what to do. Wouter Loos—who had never held the men in thrall as Jeronimus had—lacked the captain-general’s demonic singleness of purpose. Without the advantage of surprise, the fight had gone out of him. But other members of Cornelisz’s band, including Stone-Cutter Pietersz, Jan Hendricxsz, and Lucas Gellisz, were not yet ready to surrender. “Come on,” Jan Pelgrom urged, “won’t we now seize the jacht?” Loos demurred—“No, I have given up the idea,” he replied—but Pelgrom found plenty of support for his idea, and within minutes a group of heavily armed mutineers were tumbling into the most seaworthy of their boats and pulling as quickly as they could for the High Island.
The Defenders and the mutineers raced to be the first to reach the Sardam. Wiebbe Hayes kept his skiffs on the north side of his island, safe from capture by the mutineers; to reach them he had to cross almost two miles of rough ground, thick with nettles and riddled with the burrows of nesting birds, and then row the best part