Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [63]
Ariaen Jacobsz had been enjoying himself in the upper-merchant’s absence. For almost a month he had been the undisputed master of the ship, and his self-confidence had increased proportionately. He had faced down those who sneered at his dalliance with the servant Zwaantie Hendricx, and publicly acknowledged the girl as his companion. Indeed, so enamored was he of her blowsy favors that he vowed (as Pelsaert later heard) “without taking any thought of his honour or the reputation of his office, that if anyone made even a sour face to the foresaid Zwaantie, he would not leave it unrevenged.”
Jacobsz made a powerful protector, and it is not surprising Zwaantie “readily accepted the caresses of the skipper with great willingness and refused him nothing, whatsoever he desired.” Nevertheless, Ariaen remained either unable or unwilling to commit himself fully to her; south of the Cape, when their frequent couplings led Hendricx to suspect she had conceived, the skipper shied away and asked her to spend an evening with his friend Allert Janssen. He got the pair of them drunk and left Zwaantie alone with Janssen, “who has done his will with her, because [Jacobsz] thought that she was pregnant and that she should wed Allert.”
The serving girl seems not to have minded this, and the skipper soon missed having her in his bed when it transpired the pregnancy was a false alarm. Within days they were together once again. But something must have changed in their relationship, for Ariaen now took to making dangerous promises to Zwaantie. Convinced Pelsaert was as good as dead, the records of the voyage relate, “he took from her the name and yoke of servant, and promised that she should see the destruction of her Mistress and others, and that he wanted to make her a great Lady.” Pelsaert’s recovery was thus a setback for the skipper and for Zwaantie. In consequence, Jacobsz resigned himself to action, shrugging: “I am still for the Devil; if I go to the Indies then I have come to shame in any case.”
It was now 13 May, and so confident had Jeronimus been that the commandeur would die that for the best part of a month he and Ariaen had not bothered to seek out further mutineers among the crew. Pelsaert’s unexpected recovery forced a rapid reassessment of their plans. If they were to be successful now, Cornelisz and Jacobsz needed to more than double the number of men they could rely on when the moment came to mutiny. Apparently, the two malcontents had already approached their own most trusted acquaintances, and those of Jan Evertsz and Jacop Pietersz, too. To sound out others, in whom they had less confidence, would be to take a considerable risk. A better way of proceeding, they now decided, would be to rouse the whole crew against the commandeur.
They selected as their instrument the unattainable Lucretia Jans. She was, they knew, as desired by Pelsaert as she had been by the skipper. By arranging for her to be attacked by masked members of the crew, they expected to provoke the upper-merchant into punitive retaliation; and by concealing the identity of her assailants, they hoped that any measures that were taken would be manifestly unfair to the majority of the men on board. Thus, they thought, a larger number of the crew could be persuaded to support their mutiny.
“The skipper and Jeronimus,” Pelsaert later recorded in his journal,
“in the presence and with the knowledge of Zwaantie, decided after long debates and discourses, what dishonour they could do the foresaid Lady, which would be most shameful to her and would be supposed the worst by the commandeur. In order therefore that confusion might be sought through her and through the punishment of those who took a hand in it, Jeronimus proposed that she should be given a cut over both cheeks with a knife, which could be done by one person, and few would perceive that they had been the instigators of it. The skipper was of another mind, that it would be better that many should have a hand in it, then the commandeur could not punish the many, or there would be a big outcry,