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"You are a good chief. When we come to see you, you give us milk to drink. I have just come from Hackensack where they sold me brandy, and then stole my beaver skin coat. I will take a bloody revenge. I will go home for my bow and arrows, and shoot one of those rascally Dutchmen who have stolen my coat." DeVrees endeavored in vain to soothe him.
But the Dutchmen, not less than others, had wild and foolish men amongst them who were easily misled by unprincipled adventurers. Bezuidenhout seems to have been one of these; at all events he was savage enough to treat one of his Hottentot servants so ill that he was cited to appear before the Court of his district, and was foolish enough to resist the summons.
It was found that their assailants came from the lower or more southerly of the two islands, which the Dutchmen, therefore, named Traitors' Island. Not wishing to have anything more to do with such people, Captain Schouten ordered the anchor to be weighed, and the Unity stood towards another island about thirty leagues off, where he hoped to be more fortunate in obtaining refreshments.
In that eager throng of toilers Adam Ward's son saw men of almost every race: Scotchmen greeted Norwegians; men from Ireland exchanged friendly jests with men from Italy; sons of England laughed with the sons of France; Danes touched elbows with Dutchmen; and men from Poland stood shoulder to shoulder with men whose fathers fought with Washington.
On one occasion Sir Francis Vere conspicuous in the throng, in his red mantilla, and supported only by one hundred Englishmen and Dutchmen, under Captain Baskerville held at bay eight companies of the famous Spanish legion called the Terzo Veijo, at push of pike, took many prisoners, and forced the Spaniards from the position in which they were entrenching themselves.
Philip William had come by way of Rome, where he had been allowed to kiss the pope's feet and had received many demonstrations of favour, and it was fondly thought that he would now prove an instrument with which king and pontiff might pipe back the rebellious republic to its ancient allegiance. But the Dutchmen and Frisians were deaf.
"A new war," said one of these orators, "a new war, as long, as bloody, and as costly as the last, would do less mischief than has been done by the introduction of that batch of Dutchmen among the barons of the realm." Another was so absurd as to call on the House to declare that whoever should advise a dissolution would be guilty of high treason.
It did so now, and the shrewd Dutchmen came to perceive that this heathen horde was as a body to which he supplied the brain and soul. They attacked him fiercely in groups, intent at all costs upon cutting him down, convinced almost by instinct that were he felled the victory would easily be theirs. And in the end they succeeded.
This traffic brought so many of the natives on board, that the Dutch could hardly stir about the ship. The boat was now sent to the other island to see for a more convenient place in which to anchor; but she was presently beset by a vast number of canoes filled with a mad sort of people, armed with clubs, who boarded the boat and attacked the Dutchmen.
The physical sanction upon which the Dutch authority rests is an army of thirty thousand men, composed of Dutch, Germans, Swiss, Italians, and natives, but officered exclusively by Dutchmen, and a navy of fifty ships. The head-quarters of the army is fixed at Batavia.
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