The substance thereof was as follows.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE HEER VAN ESTELL.
It was in the month of August, 1670, that the barque De Ruyter, bearing the flag of the Seven United Provinces (then under their High Mightinesses the States General) and named after Michael Adrian de Ruyter, Admiral of Holland—the same valiant mariner who beat the English, burned Chatham, and bombarded Tilbury—left the port of Pernambuco, in Peru, for Rotterdam, tacking carefully to avoid the shoals and rocks which made the Portuguese of old name it the "Mouth of Hell"—Inferno-bocca—hence its present corrupted name.
She was manned by Captain Koningsmarke and sixteen seamen; she carried four brass guns, and had her stern decorated by the lions, spotted sable and gules, which form the arms of Rotterdam. Her mate was an Englishman named Carpinger, a brave and skilful seaman.
As passengers, she had the Heer Van Estell, his wife Gudule, their two little children, Erasmus and Cornelius, with Dame Trüdchen, their faithful old nurse. The Heer was a native of the Low Countries, who, after a long residence in the Dutch colony at Brazil, had amassed a magnificent fortune, and risen to be a Director of the Company of the Great Indies, a dignity which no one could attain unless he vested twelve thousand guilders in the old stock. Now, having amassed all the wealth he deemed desirable, with his wife and children—little curly-haired Erasmus, whom he had named after the great philosopher of Rotterdam (towards whose statue in the Bürger-platz he gave a thousand rix-dollars), and chubby little Cornelius, whom he had named after Cornelius de Witt, who, with his brother, was so barbarously assassinated by William of Orange (and afterwards of England)—he was returning to his native city to spend his days in peace and quiet, with the three beings whom he loved most on earth.
The day was cloudless and clear, the wind was fair, but light, and while the bark, with all her canvas set, from her flying-jib to her spanker, and with the colours of the Seven Provinces flying at her gaff-peak, passed in safety the flat sandbanks of St. Antonio, and that long reef which receives the full force of the sea, and guards the town of Recife, the tall and portly Heer, with his beautiful wife and chubby little ones beside him, sat in a cushioned chair on the warm deck, enjoying a long pipe of tobacco with all the ease and complacency that became a wealthy Hollander and Director of the Great India Company.
Without any emotion, save joy that he was returning, he saw the hill of Olinda, the tall slender spires of the town, and the grim batteries of Cinco Pontas, melt in the distance astern, as the De Ruyter bore away into the Western Ocean.
For more than a month the voyage was delightful and prosperous; but adverse winds came anon, and storms too; and Captain Koningsmarke was blown out of his course; moreover, he lost his reckoning, as the sky remained obscured by clouds, and for weeks both quadrant and sextant were used in vain.
His anxiety and that of the Heer became great, for provisions were becoming scarce—so much so that, ere long, all on board received but a scanty allowance. Then Van Estell and Dame Gudule beheld with secret agony the roses fading from the cheeks of their children, their pretty faces becoming blanched, and their once round forms attenuated.