Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [81]
In any normal circumstances, the discovery of wells on the High Land would have come as a huge relief to the survivors of a wreck. Jeronimus’s scheme for the capture of a rescue ship, however, depended on dividing the Batavia’s people into different camps, which he could deal with one by one. If water were found, however, the survivors would expect Cornelisz to gather all four of his parties at the wells, with the inevitable result that the mutineers would once again find themselves in a small minority. This was something that the under-merchant could not allow to happen.
The discovery of several cisterns on the High Land, which occurred on 9 July, thus threw his schemes into utter disarray. The under-merchant watched in disbelief as first one beacon, then a second, then a third, flared into life along the shoreline of Hayes’s islands. These signal fires confirmed that Wiebbe was still alive, 20 days after he and his men first went ashore, and informed the people of Batavia’s Graveyard that the longed-for water had been found. They were also the agreed sign that rafts should be sent to pick up the landing party.
For the first time since he had come ashore, Cornelisz found himself in a quandary. The signals could not be concealed—the beacons were clearly visible from the survivors’ camp—and yet they had to be ignored. Jeronimus had no intention of permitting Hayes and his troops to leave the High Land, but by refusing to send rafts to rescue them, he and his councillors gave the men and women of Batavia’s Graveyard the first clear indication that the councillors of the raad did not have their best interests at heart. Wiebbe, too, would doubtless realize that something was wrong, and it would no longer be easy to surprise him. To make matters worse, the soldiers could now survive indefinitely on their island, while Cornelisz and his men remained dependent on the intermittent rains for their own supplies of water. Hayes’s fires were thus not merely signs but portents—an indication that Jeronimus’s plot was beginning to unravel.
Almost as soon as the signal beacons were lit, indeed, Jeronimus noticed a flurry of activity on Traitors’ Island. He and his followers could see the people there struggling to launch two small, handmade boats from the north side of their coral cay. Pieter Jansz was the first man aboard, and he was followed by his wife and child. Then came a German soldier, Claes Harmanszoon of Magdeburg, whose wife was also with him, and a woman named Claudine Patoys, who took a child with her. The other members of the party were all men: a mixed group of soldiers and sailors, almost all Dutch. They picked up rough paddles carved from driftwood and began to propel their rafts through the shallows, heading north.
Cornelisz knew at once where they were going. He had lured the provost and his men onto their barren islet with the assurance that they could sail on to the High Land when the soldiers there found water. It had been an empty promise, of course, but evidently Jansz had been watching out for signal fires, looking for any opportunity to leave his miserable base, and now he was making for Hayes’s Island. The prospect of reinforcements reaching the soldiers on the High Land infuriated the under-merchant. While Jansz’s rafts were still