Read Ebook: Tales from Many Sources Vol. V by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 411 lines and 69112 words, and 9 pages

Chap. Page

Page

CHART SHOWING THE ROUTE TAKEN BY DIEDRICH AND PAUL 10

PAUL DREW HIS SHORT SWORD AND STOOD ON THE DEFENSIVE 72

DIEDRICH RALLIES THE QUADRUCOS AND RECAPTURES THE TOWN 143

MAROONED ON AUSTRALIA

Jerom Cornelis! Even now after all the suffering and danger I have gone through, that man's face, the face of the tempter, comes back to me as vividly as ever.

Jerom Cornelis was the supercargo. He had been an apothecary in Harlem, and as such I had known him for some time. He was a man of ability and education, and I had a boyish admiration for him. Now I know him to have been a man whose talents were marred by an intense, almost childish vanity, and a disposition, cruel and relentless as the tiger's. As a lad of eighteen, I saw nothing but the wonderful fascination he exercised, and listened entranced when he dazzled my imagination with pictures of future greatness in the rich islands of the eastern seas.

We had been nearly two months at sea, when Cornelis confided to me a plan he had formed, in conjunction with the pilot and some other mutinous spirits, to seize the ship and turn pirate. I endeavoured to dissuade him, but without avail; he bound me over to secrecy and assured me that my life was safe whatever happened, as he would not allow me to take an active part in it, which I certainly had no intention of doing. The plot, however, was frustrated by the weather and other causes, and although I am certain it came to the ears of our commander, Captain Pelsart, he did not, unfortunately, hang the mutineers out of hand as one would have expected from a man of his determination.

Now one would have thought that this would have revealed to me the true character of Cornelis, but such an infatuated fool was I, and so beguiled by his specious tongue, that I still remained his friend and admirer.

We had now doubled the great southern cape, and storm after storm burst upon us with relentless fury. One by one we lost sight of our consorts and at last found ourselves alone; driven out of our course into an unknown sea.

To add to our distress, Captain Pelsart was confined to his berth with sickness and the vessel was in charge of the pilot, who apparently lost all reckoning. It was on the morning of the 4th June, 1629, for the date is indelibly engraven on my memory, that our voyage was brought to a fatal termination by the vessel striking on a reef of rocks. When I got on deck there was nothing visible but white surf and foam everywhere, and we had to wait until daylight, the ship bumping heavily meanwhile.

Daybreak showed us to be in the neighbourhood of a group of rocky islands, one of which was close to us. Finding that the ship was irretrievably damaged Captain Pelsart proceeded to land the passengers and crew on the nearest island. Great confusion ensued and many of the sailors broached some casks of wine in the cargo and got drunk. Provisions were landed, but very little water, and as none could be found on the island, our captain, after two days, started with a boat's crew to the mainland, which we could see in the distance and which was supposed to be the mysterious continent known as Terra Australis.

On regaining strength he assumed command, in the absence of the captain, and in spite of all the bloody deeds of that guilty man I will say that he restored some sort of order amongst the demoralized crew and passengers. One of the petty officers named Weberhayes was despatched with some thirty men or more, including some French soldiers in the pay of the Company, to a large island visible to the eastward. If successful in finding water he was to light two fires. The water supply consisting only of rain in the holes in the rock, another smaller party were conveyed to a neighbouring islet.

That night I was awakened by shrieks, groans, and cries for mercy. Cornelis and his myrmidons were butchering in cold blood the helpless people whom they had not admitted to the conspiracy.

I could do nothing during that night of horror, but try and close my ears to the piteous cries of the victims. Nest morning, with their lust for murder still unsated, they went over to the small island and recommenced their fiendish work on the defenceless people. Unfortunately for Cornelis, however, some few escaped and during the night succeeded in making a raft and crossing to the large island, where Weberhayes and his party were. They informed him of the butchery that had taken place and put him on his guard.

The vanity of Cornelis now got the ascendency of him. He had himself proclaimed Governor-general of the barren, rocky islet we were on, which was christened "Batavia's Grave". He had the merchants' chests broken open, and from the stuffs contained therein uniforms were made for a chosen body-guard. This being done, it was determined to exterminate Weberhayes and his men.

Not knowing of the escape of some of the victims, they rowed up confidently, expecting to take the party by surprise, but were surprised themselves. Weberhayes and his followers, armed only with such rude weapons as clubs and stones, fell upon them suddenly, killed some, and forced the others to make a hasty retreat.

Incensed at this repulse, Cornelis led a fresh assault in person and I was ordered into the boat. I had no stomach for the fight, and did not feel particularly sorry when we got more soundly beaten than before.

This was the end of the rebel Governor-general. I never saw Cornelis again until the rope was round his neck.

Now commenced on the island I was on, called "Batavia's Grave", a wild pandemonium. There were still some casks of wine left, and the ruffians drank and quarrelled, and fought with knives over useless pieces of silver. With the capture of Cornelis every semblance of a plan seemed to have vanished. Never shall I forget the horror of that time, although I have seen blood flow like water since. Five wretched women who had been spared from tings in general to feel sure that the diamond was not all the matter.

"What is amiss, sister Kitty?" said she. "Have you hurt yourself? Do you feel ill? Did you know the stone was out?"--"I hope you're not going to be hysterical, sister Kitty," added Miss Betty anxiously; "there never was a hysterical woman in our family yet."

"Oh dear no, sister Betty," sobbed Miss Kitty; "but it's all my fault. I know I was fidgeting with it whilst I was talking; and it's a punishment on my fidgety ways, and for ever presuming to wear it at all, when you're the head of the family, and solely entitled to it. And I shall never forgive myself if it's lost, and if it's found I'll never, never wear it any more." And as she deluged her best company pocket-handkerchief , Church, State, the royal family, the family Bible, her highest principles, her dearest affections, and the diamond brooch, all seemed to swim before her disturbed mind in one sea of desolation.

There was not a kinder heart than the parson's toward women and children in distress. He tucked the little ladies again under his arms, and insisted upon going back to Mrs. Dunmaw's searching the lane as they went. In the pulpit or the drawing room a ready anecdote never failed him, and on this occasion he had several. Tales of lost rings, and even single gems, recovered in the most marvellous manner and the most unexpected places--dug up in gardens, served up to dinner in fishes, and so forth. "Never," said Miss Kitty, afterward, "never, to her dying day, could she forget his kindness."

She clung to the parson as a support under both her sources of trouble, but Miss Betty ran on and back, and hither and thither, looking for the diamond. Miss Kitty and the parson looked too, and how many aggravating little bits of glass and silica, and shining nothings and good-for-nothings there are in the world, no one would believe who has not looked for a lost diamond on a high road.

But another story of found jewels was to be added to the parson's stock. He had bent his long back for about the eighteenth time, when such a shimmer as no glass or silica can give flashed into his eyes, and he caught up the diamond out of the dust, and it fitted exactly into the little black hole.

Miss Kitty uttered a cry, and at the same moment Miss Betty, who was farther down the road, did the same, and these were followed by a third, which sounded like a mocking echo of both. And then the sisters rushed together.

"A most miraculous discovery!" gasped Miss Betty.

"You must have passed the very spot before," cried Miss Kitty.

"Though I'm sure, sister, what to do with it now we have found it I don't know," said Miss Betty, rubbing her nose, as she was wont to do when puzzled.

"It shall be taken better care of for the future, sister Betty," said Miss Kitty penitently. "Though how it got out I can't think now."

"Why, bless my soul! you don't suppose it got there of itself, sister?" snapped Miss Betty. "How it did get there is another matter."

"I felt pretty confident about it, for my own part," smiled the parson as he joined them.

"Do you mean to say, sir, that you knew it was there?" asked Miss Betty, solemnly.

"You didn't see it, sir, I hope?" said Miss Betty.

"Bless me, my dear madam, I found it!" cried the parson.

Miss Betty bridled and bit her lip.

"I never contradict a clergyman, sir," said she, "but I can only say that if you did see it, it was not like your usual humanity to leave it lying there."

I've got it in my hand, ma'am!" "Why He's got it in his hand, sister!"

cried the parson and Miss Kitty in one breath. Miss Betty was too much puzzled to be polite.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

WHAT MISS BETTY FOUND.

It was found under a broom-bush. Miss Betty was poking her nose near the bank that bordered the wood, in her hunt for the diamond, when she caught sight of a mass of yellow of a deeper tint than the mass of broom-blossom above it, and this was the baby.

This vivid color, less opaque than "deep chrome" and a shade more orange, seems to have a peculiar attraction for wandering tribes. Gipsies use it, and it is a favorite color with Indian squaws. To the last dirty rag it is effective, whether it flutters near a tent on Bagshot Heath, or in some wigwam doorway makes a point of brightness against the grey shadows of the pine forest.

A large kerchief of this, wound about its body, was the baby's only robe, but he seemed quite comfortable in it when Miss Betty found him, sleeping on a pillow of deep hair moss, his little brown fists closed as fast as his eyes, and a crimson toadstool grasped in one of them.

When Miss Betty screamed the baby awoke, and his long black lashes tickled his cheeks and made him wink and cry. But by the time she returned with her sister and the parson, he was quite happy again, gazing up with dark eyes full of delight into the glowing broom-brush, and fighting the evening breeze with his feet, which were entangled in the folds of the yellow cloth, and with the battered toadstool which was still in his hand.

"And, indeed, sir," said Miss Betty, who had rubbed her nose till it looked like the twin toadstool to that which the baby was flourishing in her face, "you won't suppose I would have left the poor little thing another moment, to catch its death of cold on a warm evening like this; but having no experience of such cases, and remembering that murder at the inn in the Black Valley, and that the body was not allowed to be moved till the constables had seen it, I didn't feel to know how it might be with foundlings, and--"

But still Miss Betty did not touch the bairn. She was not accustomed to children. But the parson had christened too many babies to be afraid of them, and he picked up the little fellow in a moment, and tucked the yellow rag round him, and then addressing the little ladies precisely as if they were sponsors, he asked in his deep round voice, "Now where on the face of the earth are the vagabonds who have deserted this child?"

The little ladies did not know, the broom bushes were silent, and the question has remained unanswered from that day to this.

There were no railways near Lingborough at this time. The coach ran three times a week, and a walking postman brought the letters from the town to the small hamlets. Telegraph wires were unknown, and yet news travelled quite as fast then as it does now, and in the course of the following morning all the neighbourhood knew that Miss Betty had found a baby under a broom bush, and the lawyer called in the afternoon to inquire how the ladies found themselves after the tea party at Mrs. General Dunmaw's.

Miss Kitty was glad on the whole. She felt nervous, but ready for a renewal of hostilities. Several clinching arguments had occurred to her in bed last night, and after hastily looking up a few lines from her common-place book, which always made her cry when she read them, but which she hoped to be able to hurl at the lawyer with a steady voice, she followed Miss Betty to the drawing-room.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet