Batavia by Peter FitzSimons

Author:Peter FitzSimons
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781742741468
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2011-12-20T10:00:00+00:00

The three men get onto the raft in the mid-morning with such possessions as they have and wave goodbye to those who farewell them on the shore, waves that continue until the raft disappears around the northern lip of Seals’ Island. And then, once again, the Mutineers suddenly fall upon the three men and they are soon tightly tied, hands and feet. The terrified men are then obliged to lie on the raft, all trussed up, while the Mutineers change course. After just 20 minutes, with one of the assailed now softly weeping, they arrive at another small island, which lies on the other side of Seals’ Island, beyond the sight of Batavia’s Graveyard.

And there is a job of work to be done.

As before, there is no need to go through any pretext of legality, of their execution being by order of the council, etc., for whatever imagined crimes. With no preamble, the Mutineers simply get on with it. First, Hans Radder is carried by the Mutineers into the shallows, just beyond the shore, and dropped in, his face to the sky. Radder’s scream is instantly drowned out as his head goes beneath the waves, and from there it is relatively easy. Though there is a good deal of thrashing and bucking, it is nothing that a grinning David Zevanck – for it is he who has stepped forward to do the honours – cannot handle with relative ease.

Barely interrupting his conversation about how they will have to bury them once they are dead, to prevent any chance of their bodies washing up on Batavia’s Graveyard, he simply places his foot on the man’s side and prevents him coming to the surface. True, with one furious buck Radder manages to briefly break free and even bring his head above the water for one last massive gulp of air before he goes under again, but this only peeves Zevanck. He quickly regains control and this time presses down harder with his foot, grinding the man down. And, sure enough, within a minute, the struggling has ceased. There is merely one last huge and momentarily foul-smelling bubble that comes to the surface . . . and that is it.

Zevanck takes his foot off, and then he signals for the other Mutineers to bring from the shore the weeping Jacop Groenewaldt, who is now pleading for his life. By the time the Mutineers have gripped the second man, the first has floated to the surface, his face purple and bloated. He is dead. With one look at him, all the fight goes out of the second man, and this time the whole drowning takes less than a couple of minutes.

And now it is Andries’s turn.

‘Nee! Nee! Nee!’ Andries de Vries screams. ‘Please! Please spare me! I will do anything! Anything!’

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.