Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [86]
Inside the case were four bags of jewels, worth nearly 60,000 guilders, which the merchant would allow his men to run through their fingers, and a large agate cameo, almost a foot from end to end, which Pelsaert was taking to India at the request of an Amsterdam jeweler called Gaspar Boudaen. The cameo had been carved in the Eastern Roman Empire early in the fourth century, possibly on the orders of Constantine the Great; it depicted a classical scene, and the commandeur believed that it would find favor at the Mogul court. Boudaen had mounted it within a golden frame studded with precious stones, creating a piece so rare and valuable that even the Gentlemen XVII had not been permitted to inspect it before it was loaded onto the Batavia. Pelsaert had anticipated selling the jewel at a profit of perhaps 50 percent; the VOC was to receive more than a quarter of its value as commission, but in all likelihood the commandeur had also arranged to keep a portion of the sale price for himself. The cameo had thus been central to his hopes of earning a fortune trading luxuries and “toys” with the Great Mogul, and now it assumed an equally important place in Jeronimus’s plans.
While he watched his men caress the agate, the under-merchant spoke seductively of the wealth that they could earn from piracy. The mutineers were captivated by the stories that their leader spun. They were, said Andries Jonas, later, willing to do Cornelisz’s bidding, “for they were led into thinking that they would all be rich for life.”
While the under-merchant’s men lay back and dreamed of wealth and luxury, life for the remaining loyalists became a waking nightmare. They all existed in a constant state of fear. Trapped on a tiny island with a group of ruthless murderers, there was little they could do to save themselves. They were thousands of miles from everything they knew and just as far from help. They were unarmed, with nowhere to hide and no way to escape. Life on Batavia’s Graveyard thus became a matter of waiting for one’s turn to die.
The apparently arbitrary nature of the killings only made things worse, for it was impossible to know who would be the mutineers’ next victim. The under-merchant’s followers had grown accustomed to murder and needed little excuse, or none, to kill again. Standing out in any way—being too loud or too quiet, or failing in some task—could only hasten the inevitable moment when Zevanck or Jan Hendricxsz would appear, ready with some trumped-up charge and brandishing a sword.
Days in the Abrolhos were bad enough—but the nights were worse. Most of the murders took place after dark, when the islands seem to bulge with wind and even the endless thunder of the surf is drowned out by the calls of terns and mutton birds,*32 whose endless keening sounds exactly like the screams of human babies. By mid-July the moon had waned, so that the only illumination came from stars pulsing feebly from behind the scudding clouds, and the survivors had grown wary of approaching lights. Once the bobbing firefly of a watchman’s lantern, threading its way through the little settlement, had been a symbol of security. Now it could, and often did, mean death. Lying in their makeshift beds,