That was the last time an attempt was made to have anybody pass the winter on the island.
[CHAPTER IV]
THE FIRST VOYAGE TO INDIA—FAILURE
It was no mean expedition which set sail for the Indies on the second of April of the year 1595 with four ships, 284 men, and an investment of more than three hundred thousand guilders. Amsterdam merchants had provided the capital and the ships. The Estates of Holland and a number of cities in the same province had sent cannon. With large cannon and small harquebus, sixty-four in number, they were a fair match for any Spaniard or Portuguese who might wish to defend his ancient rights upon this royal Indian route, which ran down the Atlantic, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and then made a straight line from the southernmost tip of Africa to Cape Comorin on the Indian peninsula in Asia.
A few words should be said about the ships, for each was to experience adventures before reaching the safe harbor of home or disappearing silently in a lonely sea. There were the Hollandia, proudly called after the newly created sovereign republic of the seven united Netherlands; the Mauritius, bearing the name of the eminent general whose scientific strategy was forcing the Spanish intruder from one province after the other; the Amsterdam, the representative of a city which in herself was a mighty commonwealth; and lastly a small and fast ship called the Pigeon.
Also, since there were four ships, there were four captains, and thereby hangs a tale. This new Dutch Republic was a democracy of an unusually jealous variety, which is saying a great deal. Its form of government was organized disorder. The principle of divided power and governmental wheels within wheels at home was maintained in a foreign expedition where a single autocratic head was a most imperative necessity. What happened during the voyage was this: the four captains mutually distrustful, each followed his own obstinate will. They quarreled among themselves, they quarreled with the four civil directors who represented the owners and the capitalists in Holland, and who together with the captains were supposed to form a legislative and executive council for all the daily affairs of the long voyage. Finally they quarreled with the chief representative of the commercial interests, Cornelis de Houtman, a cunning trader and commercial diplomatist who had spent four years in Lisbon trying to discover the secrets of Indian navigation. Indeed, so great had been his zeal to get hold of the information hidden in the heads of Portuguese pilots and the cabalistic meaning of Portuguese charts, that the authorities, distrustful of this too generous foreigner, with his ever-ready purse, had at last clapped him into jail.
Then there had been a busy correspondence with the distant employers of this distinguished foreign gentleman. Amsterdam needed Houtman and his knowledge of the Indian route. The money which in the rotten state of Portugal could open the doors of palaces as well as those of prisons brought the indiscreet pioneer safely back to his fatherland. Now, after another year, he was appointed to be the leading spirit of a powerful small fleet and the honorable chairman of a complicated and unruly council of captains and civilian directors. That is to say, he might have been their real leader if he had possessed the necessary ability; but the task was too much for him. For not only was he obliged to keep the peace between his many subordinate commanders, but he was also obliged to control the collection of most undesirable elements who made up the crews of this memorable expedition. I am sorry that I have to say this, but in the year 1595 people did not venture upon a phantastical voyage to an unknown land along a highly perilous route unless there was some good reason why they should leave their comfortable native shores. The commanders of the ships and their chief officers were first class sailors. The lower grades, too, were filled with a fairly sober crowd of men, but the common sailor almost without exception belonged to a class of worthless youngsters who left their country for their country's good and for the lasting benefit of their family's reputation. There was, however, a saving grace, and we must give the devil his due. Many of these men were desperately brave. When they were well commanded they made admirable sailors and excellent soldiers, but the moment discipline was relaxed, they ran amuck, killed their officers or left them behind on uninhabited islands and lived upon the fat of the commissary department until the last bottle of gin was emptied and the last ham was eaten. In most cases their ship then ran on a hidden cliff, whereupon the democratic sea settled all further troubles with the help of the ever-industrious shark.