Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [133]
Compared with what Jeronimus had suffered, these punishments were merciful, and Wouter Loos—who had, after all, succeeded Jeronimus in overall command of the mutineers—was treated even more leniently. Rebellion against Jan Company in itself meant an automatic death sentence at the time, but for some reason Pelsaert attached comparatively little weight to Loos’s role as Cornelisz’s successor. In addition, the commandeur noted only in passing that Loos had indeed been guilty of “several murders,” though he had actually killed two people—Bastiaen Gijsbertsz and Mayken Cardoes—tied up at least two others so that they could be drowned, and bore a good deal of responsibility for the death of Jan Dircxsz, the Defender, in the final assault on Hayes’s Island. Nor was any mention made of the prominent part Loos had played in the plot to entice the Sardam’s crew ashore and murder them. Pelsaert’s view was that Loos had actually “committed more with his tongue, by means of advice, than with his hands,” and certain factors may have weighed in the soldier’s favor: he had saved the life of Jan Willemsz Selyns, refused to launch an attack on the Sardam, and no one had died on Batavia’s Graveyard after he assumed command of the captain-general’s gang. On the whole, however, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Loos was treated with leniency simply because he was not Jeronimus Cornelisz. The mutineers’ last leader was sentenced not to death but to be marooned, with Jan Pelgrom the cabin boy, somewhere on the South-Land’s coast.
The Sardam sailed for the Indies on 15 November 1629 carrying 77 survivors from the Batavia. Of this total, 45 had fought with Wiebbe Hayes; three, including Pelsaert, had reached Java in the longboat and returned on board the jacht; and the other 29 had been members of Cornelisz’s band, unwilling associates, or concubines of the mutineers. Only five of the survivors were women—Creesje Jans was one of them—and just one was a child. Among the men, fewer than half a dozen of those who had survived Batavia’s Graveyard had done so without throwing their lot in with the mutineers or signing one of Jeronimus’s oaths of obedience. These people—none of them are named—were almost certainly artisans: carpenters, cooks, or coopers whom even Cornelisz could see were more valuable alive than dead. Every other man, woman, and child who had survived the wreck had been murdered in the six weeks from 3 July to 16 August. The killings on the islands had ceased for no other reason than that the mutineers had run out of victims.
The gales of the preceding weeks had at last given way to beautiful spring weather, and the jacht made excellent progress along the coast of the Great South-Land. She dropped anchor at Batavia on 5 December, a little under three weeks after leaving the Abrolhos. The return journey was thus accomplished in less than a third of the time that Pelsaert had taken to sail from the Indies to the archipelago two months earlier.
Only two incidents of any significance occurred during the voyage. On the morning of 16 November, less than a day after leaving Batavia’s Graveyard, Pelsaert spotted smoke rising on the South-Land. The weather was considerably more moderate than it had been on his first trip along the coast, and—hoping that the smoke might come from a signal fire lit by Jacob Jacobsz and the men who had gone missing in the Sardam’s boat—the commandeur managed to put in at an inlet on the coast, not quite 50 miles north of the Abrolhos. No trace of the missing sailors could be found, but the place was evidently