Lost Colony by Andrade Tonio

Author:Andrade, Tonio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2011-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

IDEAS FROM BEHIND ENEMY LINES

Once the fleet was safely re-anchored beyond the dunes, swaying in the bright fall sun, the inhabitants of Zeelandia burst into activity. The loading boat sailed in and out, fighting off junks and loading olives and beans.

Coyet considered his next move. The time for a direct assault on the Eastern Capital had passed because Koxinga had had time to reinforce his positions, but there was no shortage of ideas. The best ones were coming from the other side, from Chinese defectors.

In the first months of the war, from Koxinga’s invasion until mid-August, if you were on Koxinga’s side there wasn’t much point in running over to the Dutch because they seemed likely to lose the war. The only defector during that time went the other way, the ass-slapper from Switzerland who fled to Koxinga in July.

The fleet changed the equation. The night after the ships first anchored near Zeelandia, two little bamboo rafts detached themselves from the piers of Zeelandia City and floated through the Channel toward the castle. Three fugitives made it inside: two African slaves and a Chinese boy. These were the first defectors. They were followed by many more. The most important was a Chinese farmer named Sait.

While the Dutch were lowering cows into boats, Sait was in his home village saying goodbye to his wife and children. Koxinga had ordered all the farmers to contribute bamboo to the war effort. So Sait brought his load to the Eastern Capital and piled it near the bayshore as instructed. There was a big stack of the stuff, which was being woven into firerafts to burn up the new Dutch ships.

Afterward, he walked around the Eastern Capital and observed its martial bustle: the soldiers guarding Koxinga’s headquarters, the warjunks anchored in the bay, the watchmen patrolling the old ferry port. He ran into surveyor Philip Meij, and they talked about the lack of food and how people were beginning to starve. Maybe he tarried near the shops, running his finger over the silk robes that Koxinga’s officials were pawning to buy food.

Then, instead of going home to his family, he walked south down the coast, past where the salt pans were drying under the cloudy sky, to the Narrow. He waited until the tide was low and waded across. Then he made his way through dunes overgrown with pandanus trees and abandoned melon patches, mindful of Chinese patrols, until he finally came to the end of the long narrow island where Zeelandia Castle’s huge gray-stone bastions rose up over sea and sand.23

Early the next morning, as he looked out from his hiding place at the walls bristling with cannons, he must have considered the wisdom of what he was about to do. He was Chinese; they were Dutch. You crossed sides at your peril. The Dutch might torture him, or slap him into irons, or kill him. Or Koxinga’s people might find out and harm his family. But he had ideas and advice for how

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