ADVENTURES ON A DESERT ISLAND
The Story of Some Castaways—and a Scoundrel
IN October, 1628, there sailed from the Texel a Dutch ship, the Batavia, under the command of Captain Francis Pelsart. Now Pelsart wasn’t the best of navigators, and after having been at sea for nine months he lost his way on a trackless ocean, and, though he did not know it, he was close to the islands known as Houtman’s Abrohos, or Houtman’s Rocks, off the west coast of Australia—the seas in that quarter of the globe not being, as every schoolboy knows, the best known in those far-off days. As a matter of fact, Captain Pelsart was having a run of hard luck—lost, sick, and with a coming wreck in front of him, and not far off, either. While Pelsart lay in his cabin, without warning of any kind except the booming of the breakers, the Batavia went pounding on a shoal off Houtman’s Rocks, where she stuck fast.
Jumping out of his cabin, Pelsart rushed on deck, and, seeing the position of things, soundly rated the master for his neglect; whereupon that worthy pointed out, quite convincingly, that he wasn’t to blame, seeing that as the place where they were had not been visited by anyone else before—so far as he knew—how was he to know the reefs and shoals? This argument, of course, commended itself to Pelsart, who, realising that the best must be made of a bad job, bethought himself of getting the Batavia off the shoal. He had the cannon with which the ship was armed pitched overboard, in the hope that this would lighten her sufficiently to float her. But the Batavia refused to be floated, and when a sudden and heavy squall came down on her Pelsart really thought everything was over; but the Batavia weathered it all right, and, taking a last desperate chance, the captain ordered the mainmast to be cut away. This was done, but in such a way that, instead of going clear over, it fell on the deck.
Convinced finally that there was no chance of getting his ship off, Pelsart wondered what was to be done for the safety of his passengers and crew. Just a little distance away, in the bright moonlight, he could see two small islands, while some three leagues off lay a larger island. He resolved to have the islands inspected to see what they were like, and therefore sent the master of the ship on that errand. Meanwhile, on board the Batavia reigned a miniature pandemonium; women were shrieking, children crying, grown men were raving; and the ship was beginning to break up, so that altogether poor Pelsart had his hands full, and was relieved when the master returned and reported favourably on the islands. There were, all told, 230 people on board, and, women and children going first, 120 were landed on the large island and forty on the smaller one near at hand, leaving seventy still to be landed. These also would have been rescued but for the fact that the crew behaved as no sailors ever should; they began to drink heavily, and got out of hand, for which reason only a very few barrels of water were landed, and twenty barrels of bread. Now, one would imagine that a castaway crowd’s first thought would be to conserve the food they had got, but this particular crowd did quite the other thing, and began to waste both food and water, with the result that one of the crew went back to the ship, by which Pelsart was still standing, telling him not to send any more provisions for a while. Pelsart therefore went ashore, leaving an officer and seventy men on the ship.
Arrived on shore, the captain discovered that the tale brought to him was quite correct; scarcely any water was left. Resolved to make this good, he tried to return to the ship to supervise the sending of further barrels; but the weather had become too rough for him to venture, and he had to hold back. Meanwhile, the ship’s carpenter, taking his life in his hands, swam ashore with the news that the ship’s crew on board were in a pretty bad way, and that unless something were done they would be all flung headlong into the sea when the ship broke up. Pelsart, unable to go himself, prevailed upon the carpenter to go back and tell the crew to hold on a while, and busy themselves with making rafts on which to float to shore. But the crew, although they did all they could, were unable to get to shore because the sea was now running heavier than ever, and to trust oneself on the pounding waves was to court disaster. Therefore they had to remain on the wreck, while Pelsart fumed and fretted at the thought of not being able to do anything for them.
Neither the larger island nor the smaller one, on which Pelsart himself was stranded, had any water besides that which had been brought; and this was little enough, in all conscience. The people who had been so prodigal of it at the beginning now came to see that without water they would surely perish. What was to be done? Water they must have; and they urged Pelsart to go to some of the neighbouring islands in quest of it.
With a captain’s loyalty to his ship’s company, Pelsart refused to go without the consent of all. Why should he take the main chance of being able to get away to safety while all the others remained stranded, cast away without means of sustenance? No, if he went at all, everyone must agree to his going. The folk on the small island argued with him, but argued in vain.
“I’ll go over there,” he said, pointing to the larger island, with its 120 poor souls, “and get their consent; or else I’ll go back to the ship and perish with her.”
There was no gainsaying that, anyway; and so they let him push off the boat, taking in her a crew sufficient to work her. They were a wily clique, that crew! When the captain got well away from the island they refused to take him to the other island. They feared, no doubt, that the people there would not agree to Pelsart’s going, and they knew that out at sea Pelsart was helpless against them. The captain raved, threatened; but raved and threatened in vain. They would not let him go, and when he jumped up and made as though he would fling himself overboard and swim back, they none too gently grabbed at him and held him down by force.