Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [84]
The brutal killing of the little girl perhaps affected the Batavia survivors more than any of the other early murders. The other victims had at least been tried by the ship’s council, while Pieter Jansz and his men had arguably been guilty of disobeying Zevanck’s orders. Awful though their deaths had been, there had at least been some sort of explanation for them. Hilletgie’s murder seemed senseless in comparison, for not even Cornelisz argued she had been guilty of a crime. The girl’s death thus marked a significant deterioration of conditions in the archipelago. From then on, none of the retourschip’s passengers and crew could be certain they were safe. Showing loyalty to the under-merchant, obeying orders and working hard were no longer any guarantee of Jeronimus’s favor. He and his followers had begun to murder indiscriminately.
Matters were very different for the under-merchant’s gang, who now felt a sense of liberation. The first days of the mutiny cannot have been easy for David Zevanck and his friends. Their work was difficult and dangerous, and the risk of discovery was very real. By the middle of July, however, the assistant and his friends had gained considerably in confidence, parading openly about the island, fully armed, and taking what they wanted for themselves. “The whole day long it was their catch-call, ‘Who wants to be boxed on the ear?’ ” remembered Gijsbert Bastiaensz.
“So we all of us together expected to be murdered at any moment, and we besought God continuously for merciful relief . . . O cruelty! O atrocity of atrocities! They proved themselves to be nothing more than highwaymen. Murderers who are on the roads often take their belongings from People, but they sometimes leave them their lives; but these have taken both, goods and blood.”
Among their many privileges, Cornelisz’s most trusted men enjoyed better rations than the other Batavia survivors, eating cask meat instead of sea lion and bird, and drinking wines and spirits rather than rainwater. They had better clothes and larger tents, and their access to the boats gave them a freedom of movement that was denied to the loyalists. Significantly, the mutineers also experienced—for the first time in their lives—complete freedom from the constraints that had previously governed them. In the United Provinces they had generally been men of little significance and few resources, who struggled to make a living and were subject to the rule of law. In the Abrolhos they had status and wielded power over men and women who were their nominal superiors. They felt, moreover, little fear of retribution. Cornelisz’s position in the archipelago appeared to be unchallengeable, and the prospect of arrest and punishment remote.
Jeronimus had perhaps derived some satisfaction from crushing Hardens, for he next turned his attention to Andries de Vries. The young Zeelander was lucky to be alive, having escaped death by drowning at the beginning of the month, but he had yet to demonstrate his loyalty to the men who had spared his life. On 10 July Jeronimus gave De Vries that opportunity. He was told to prove his worthiness by killing on the under-merchant’s orders.
The chosen victims were people in the sick tent. There were 11 of them in all—useless mouths, Cornelisz observed, who were so weakened by scurvy and fever that they would offer no resistance. De Vries crept into their tent by night and cut their throats, one by one, while Zevanck, Van Huyssen, and Van Welderen stood over him to make quite sure he carried out his task. Three days later the assistant was compelled to return and slaughter another four or five men who had taken sick in the interim.
From then