Of the other two ships, one, the Gouda, had disappeared when the morning came, and the other, the Middelburg, had suffered much. Her masts were broken, and they had no spare the Atlantic. Finally the Middelburg left part of his spare yards for masts, and then he sailed with all possible haste for Madagascar to repair his own damage. He reached the island inside a week, and cut himself a mast out of a tree. He repaired his ship and spent a month on the island, where he was well received by the natives, who flocked from all over to see how the Hollanders made a new ship out of the wreck which they had saved from the storm. Here Bontekoe waited for the other ships. But the Gouda had sunk, and the other, the Middelburg, reached Madagascar much later, and spent several months in the bay of Antongil. Most of her people were ill and among those who died on the island was the commander of the ship, Willem Schouten, who with Le Maire had discovered the new route between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Finally the Middleburg left Madagascar and sailed to St. Helena. There she got into a fight with two Portuguese vessels, and that is the last word we have ever received of her. As for Bontekoe, he, too, reached St. Helena, where he wanted to take in fresh water. But a Spanish ship had landed troops, and he was not allowed to come on shore. So he went farther on, and at last reached Kinsale in Ireland. This time the joys of life on land almost finished the brave captain who so often had escaped the anger of the waves. His sailors went on shore, and after the long voyage they appreciated the hospitality of the Irish inns so well that they refused to come back on board. They stayed on shore until the mayor of the city, at the request of Bontekoe, forbade the owners of ale-houses to give the Hollanders more than seven shillings' credit apiece. As soon as this was known the men, many of whom had spent much more than that, hastened back to their ship. Crowds of furious innkeepers and their wives, crying aloud for their money, followed them.
Good Captain Bontekoe paid everybody what he or she had a right to ask, and finally, on the twenty-fifth of November of the year 1625, he reached home. Bontekoe went to live quietly in his native city of Hoorn. He had written a short account of his voyage, but he had never printed it because he did not think that he could write well enough. But one of his fellow-townsmen wanted to write a large volume upon the noble deeds of the people of Hoorn, and he asked Bontekoe to write down the main events of his famous voyage, and he promised to edit the little book for the benefit of the reading public.
And behold! this same public, saturated with stories of wild men and wild animals and terrible storms and uninhabited islands and treacherous Portuguese and hairbreadth escapes, took such a fancy to the simple recital of Bontekoe's pious trip toward heaven and the patience with which he had accepted the vicissitudes of life that they read his little book long after the more ponderous volumes had been left to the kind ministrations of the meritorious book-worm.
[CHAPTER IX]
SCHOUTEN AND LE MAIRE DISCOVER A NEW STRAIT
This is the story of a voyage to a country which did not exist. The men who risked their capital in this expedition hoped to reach a territory which we now call Australia. It was not exactly the Australia which we know from our modern geography. It was a mysterious continent of which there had been heard many rumors for more than half a century. What the contemporary traveler really hoped to find we do not know, but we have the details of an expedition to this new land called "Terra Australis incognita" or "the unknown southern land," an expedition which left the harbor of Hoorn on the fifteenth of June of the year 1615.
Hoorn is a little city on the Zuyder Zee, just such a little city as Enkhuizen, from which Linschoten had set out upon his memorable voyage. This voyage had a short preface which has little to do with navigation, but much with provincial politics and commercial rivalry. The original idea of allowing everybody to found his own little Indian trading company after his own wishes had been a bad one from an economic point of view. There was so much competition between the three dozen little companies that all were threatened with bankruptcy. Therefore a financial genius, the eminent leader of the province of Holland, John of Barneveldt, took matters into his own capable hands and combined all the little companies into one large East India Trading Company, a commercial body which existed until the year 1795 and was a great success from start to finish.