Sailing along the coast of New Guinea, they at last reached the port of Ternate on the seventeenth of September. Here they found a large Dutch fleet which had just reached the Indies by way of the Strait of Magellan. This fleet was under command of Admiral van Spilbergen, who was much surprised to hear that the Eendracht had reached the Pacific through a new strait. He showed that he did not believe the story which Schouten told of his new discoveries. If there were such a strait, then why had it taken the Eendracht such a long time to reach Ternate? etc. The admiral suspected that this ship was a mere interloper sent by Le Maire to trade in a region where, according to the instructions of the East Indian Company, no other ships than those of the company were allowed to engage in commerce.
This suspicion was very unpleasant for the brave Schouten, but there were other things to worry him. Before the expedition started old Le Maire, a shrewd trader, had thought of the possibility that his ships might not be able to find this unknown continent. In that case he did not want them to come home without some profit to himself, and he had invented a scheme by which he might perhaps beat the company at her own game. The governor-general of the Dutch colonies at that time was a certain Gerard Reynst, who was known to be an avaricious and dishonest official. Le Maire counted upon this, and to his eldest son he had given secret instructions which told him what to do in such circumstances. The idea was very simple. Young Le Maire must bribe Reynst with an offer of money or whatever would be most acceptable to the governor. In return for this Reynst would not be too particular if the Eendracht went to some out-of-the-way island and bought a few hundred thousand pounds worth of spices.
It was a very happy idea, and it undoubtedly would have worked. Unfortunately Reynst had just died. His successor was no one less than Jan Pietersz Coen, the man of iron who was to hammer the few isolated settlements into one strong colonial empire. Coen could not be bribed. To him the law was the law. The Eendracht did not belong to the East India Company; therefore, it had no right to be in India according to Coen's positive instructions. The ship was confiscated. The men were allowed to return to Holland. And the owners were told that they could start a lawsuit in the Dutch courts to decide whether the governor-general had acted within his rights or not.
Young Le Maire sailed for Holland very much dejected. He had lost his father's ship, and nobody would believe him when he told of his great discovery of the new and short connection between the Pacific and the Atlantic. He died on the way home, died of disappointment. His hopes had been so great. He had done his task faithfully, and he and Schouten had found a large number of new islands and had added many thousands of miles of geographical information to that part of the map which was still covered with the ominous letters of terra incognita. Yet through an ordinance which many people did not recognize as just he was deprived of the glory which ought to have come to him. His younger brother reached Holland on the second of July of the year 1617, and a week later he appeared in the meeting of the Estates General. This time the story which he told was believed by his hearers. The idea of an old man being the chief mover in equipping such a wonderful enterprise with the help of his sons and only a small capital against all sorts of odds assured Le Maire the sympathy of the man in the street. For a while Governor-General Coen was highly unpopular.
Old Le Maire started a suit for the recovery of his ship and its contents. After two years of pleading he won his case. The East India Company was ordered to pay back the value of the ship and the goods confiscated. All his official papers were returned to Le Maire. His name and that of the little town of Hoorn, given to the most southern point of the American continent and to the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, tell of this great voyage of the year 1618.
[CHAPTER X]
TASMAN EXPLORES AUSTRALIA
It often happened that ships of the Dutch East India Company on their way to the Indies were blown out of their course or were carried by the currents in a southern direction. Then they were driven into a part of the map which was as yet unknown, and they had to find their way about very much as a stranger might do who has left the well-known track of the desert. Sometimes these ships were lost. More often they reached a low, flat coast which seemed to extend both east and west as far as the eye could reach, which offered very little food and very little water, and appeared to be the shore-line of a vast continent which was remarkably poor in both plants and animals. Indeed, so unattractive was this big island, as it was then supposed to be, to the captains of the company that not a single one of them had ever taken the trouble to explore it. They had followed the coast-line until once more they reached the well-known regions of their map, and then they had hastened northward to the comfortable waters of their own Indian Ocean. But of course people talked about this mysterious big island, and they wondered. They wondered whether, perhaps, the stories of the Old Testament, the stories of the golden land of Ophir, which had never yet been found, might not yet be proved true in that large part of the map which showed a blank space and was covered with the letters of terra incognita.