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By Root 361 0

experience, but we know that the under-merchant had picked him out from among the 70 or more private soldiers on the Batavia, which implies that he possessed a certain presence. Unknown to Jeronimus, however, Hayes was also a man of considerable ability, and his character and sense of purpose seem to have been unusual for a private soldier of this time. It appears unlikely that he was a member of the grauw, the impecunious and uneducated rabble who had peopled the lower decks of the Batavia, and possibly he, like Coenraat van Huyssen and David Zevanck, came from a comfortable background and had somehow fallen on hard times. It was not entirely unknown for the children of respectable but impoverished parents to enlist with the VOC as ordinary soldiers, but if Hayes did come from such a family, he plainly had even less money and influence than men who could at least secure themselves commissions as cadets.

In any event, Wiebbe was able to keep his men alive on the High Land for almost three weeks. The soldiers soon discovered—as had Pelsaert and Zevanck before them—that there were apparently no wells on the smaller and more easterly of the two islands, but they did find small puddles of rainwater among the coral, and these sustained them while they completed their exploration. After several days, they moved west onto the larger cay, waiting for low tide and stumbling across the mile of mudflats that separated the islands to begin the search again. There they found abundant wildlife but no water, and once again they had to scour the ground for little pools of rain. Again, they found just enough to keep them alive. They continued this precarious existence for 20 days, searching endlessly for wells, hunting for food, and keeping watch for rafts from Batavia’s Graveyard that never came.

The first part of Jeronimus’s plan was now complete. The dispatch of landing parties to the four outlying islands had reduced the population of Batavia’s Graveyard by one-third, to somewhere between 130 and 140 people, and nearly four dozen able-bodied men and two dozen boys had been lured onto other cays where they posed no threat and would most likely die. Cornelisz and his followers were still outnumbered by the loyalists among the crew, but the under-merchant guessed that few of the 90 other adult males still with him on Batavia’s Graveyard had much stomach for a fight. He now guessed he could survive until a rescue ship arrived. The trick would be to seize it when it came.

The notion of capturing a jacht was certainly enticing, but Jeronimus knew that it would be no easy task. A frontal assault was out of the question; even the smallest VOC craft had cannon, boarding pikes, and muskets enough to fend off an attack. Nor was it likely to be possible to surprise and seize a ship at anchor in the archipelago, since the attackers’ boats would be seen approaching from a distance.

A better way, the under-merchant thought, might be to lure the jacht’s crew onto land. If a boatload of sailors from a rescue ship were to come ashore on Batavia’s Graveyard, they would be outnumbered by Cornelisz’s men. And if the mutineers could cut the landing party’s throats, they would probably leave themselves no more than 20 men to deal with on the ship.

Jeronimus, we know, believed that this idea had merit. But he also saw at once that it could not succeed while there were so many people on the island. For one thing, the supplies of food were still so low that they might all starve before a rescue ship arrived. For another, most of the Batavia survivors were still loyal to the VOC; there was every chance that they would try to warn their rescuers of the danger they were in. Once again, the solution to the problem struck the under-merchant as self-evident. The people in his way would have to die.

Most leaders would have balked at the idea of slaughtering 120 of their own men, women, and children, but Cornelisz regarded the prospect with his customary detachment. He was the leader of the ship’s council and thus invested with the power of the VOC. In his warped