The covenant - James A. Michener [68]
'We must get ashore!' Karel shouted to the captain.
'There is no way,' the captain replied, but Karel judged that if he could lash two barrels together, they would float him ashore, and it was on this rig that Karel and Willem van Doorn landed at the Cape of Good Hope.
The following days were a nightmare. Led by the Van Doorns, the crew of the Olifant tried three different times to reach the sinking Haerlem, but always the surf pounded their longboat so that they had to retreat. Fortunately, two English merchantmen sailed into the bay, homeward bound from Java, and with daring seamanship a boat from the Haerlem succeeded in reaching them with a request for help. To the surprise of the Dutch, the English crew agreed to aid in transferring the smaller items of cargo to the Olifant, and for some days they labored at this as if they were in the pay of Amsterdam: '. . . a hundred sockels of mace, eighty-two barrels of raw camphor, eighty bales of choice cinnamon, not wet, and five large boxes of Japanese coats decorated in gold and silver.' And when this arduous work was completed the English captains offered to carry forty of the Haerlem's crew to St. Helena, where they could join the main Dutch fleet on its way to Amsterdam.
But before these good Samaritans sailed, Willem was given a task which he would often recall. 'Fetch all letters from the post-office stones,' he was told, and when he started to ask what a post-office stone was, an officer shouted, 'Get on with it.'
Ashore, he asked some older hands what he must do, and they explained the system and designated two young sailors to protect him as he roamed the beach, even to the foot of Table Mountain, looking for any large stones which might have been engraved by passing crews. Some covered nothing, but most had under them small packets of letters, wrapped in various ways for protection, and when he held these frail documents in his hands he tried to visualize the cities to which the letters were directed: Delft, Lisbon, Bristol, Nagasaki. The names were like echoes of all he had heard on the voyage so far, the sacred names of sailors' memories. One letter, addressed to a woman in Madrid, had lain beneath its rock for seven years, and as he stared at it he wondered if she would still be living when it now arrived, or if she would remember the man who had posted it.
He brought nineteen letters back to the English ships, but six were addressed to Java and other islands to the east. Gravely, as part of the ritual of the sea, the English mate accepted responsibility for seeing that the thirteen European letters were forwarded, after which Willem took the others ashore for reposting under a conspicuous rock.
When the English ships departed, the Dutch had time to survey their situation, and it was forbidding. It was impossible in this remote spot to make the gear that would have been required to refloat the Haerlem. It had to be abandoned. But its lower holds still contained such enormous wealth that neither the Olifant, nor the Schiedam if it put into Table Bay, could possibly convey it all back to Holland. A temporary fortress of some kind must be built ashore; the remaining cargo must then be taken to it; and a cadre of men must remain behind to protect the treasure while the bulk of the crew sailed home in the Olifant.
Almost immediately the work began, and the foundations for the fort had scarcely been outlined when the work party heard cannon fire, and into the roadstead came the Schiedam. Though marred by the disastrous grounding of the Haerlem, it was a joyous reunion of the three crews, and soon so many sailors were working to construct the fort that the captain had to say, 'Clear most