You may guess the rest, if you know your history of Java. I didn't then, and didn't even know Batavia,—had been ashore often, but only for a toelatingskaart and some good Dutch chow. Well, one afternoon, I was loafing down a street, and suddenly noticed that the sign-board said, "Jacatra-weg." The word made me jump, and brought the whole affair on Celebes back like a shot,—and not as a dream. It became a live question; I determined to treat it as one, and settle it.
I stopped a fat Dutchman who was paddling down the middle of the street in his pyjamas, smoking a cigar.
"Pardon, Mynheer," I said. "Does a man live here in Jacatra-weg named Erberveld?"
"Nej," he shook his big shaved head. "Nej, Mynheer, I do not know."
"Pieter Erberveld," I suggested.
The man broke into a horse-laugh.
"Ja, ja," he said, and laughed still. "I did not think of him. Ja, on this way, opposite the timber yard, you will find his house." And he went off, bowing and grinning hugely.
The nature of the joke appeared later, but I wasn't inclined to laugh. You've seen the place. No? Right opposite a timber yard in a cocoanut grove: it was a heavy, whitewashed wall, as high as a man, and perhaps two perches long. Where the gate should have been, a big tablet was set in, and over that, on a spike, a skull, grinning through a coat of cement. The tablet ran in eighteenth-century Dutch, about like this:—
By Reason of the Detestable Memory of the Convicted Traitor, Pieter Erberveld, No One Shall Be Permitted to Build in Wood or Stone or to Plant Anything upon This Ground, from Now till Judgment Day. Batavia, April 14, Anno 1772.
You'll find the story in any book: the chap was a half-caste Guy Fawkes who conspired to deliver Batavia to the King of Bantam, was caught, tried, and torn asunder by horses. I nosed about and went through a hole in a side wall: nothing in the compound but green mould, dried stalks, dead leaves, and blighted banana trees. The inside of the gate was blocked with five to eight feet of cement. The Dutch hate solidly.