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Updated: May 10, 2025
My parents, who had stinted themselves to provide my education, placed me when I was eighteen years old in a merchant's office at Amsterdam, where I became acquainted with Dirk Hartog, a famous navigator, who, a year later, invited me to become his secretary and engraver of charts on board the ship "Endraght", being then commissioned for a voyage of discovery to the South, and having obtained a reluctant consent from my master, De Decker, the merchant, to Hartog's proposal I gladly abandoned the office desk for the sea.
The first authentic voyager, however, to our actual shores was Theodoric Hertoge, subsequently known as Dirk Hartog bound from Holland to India. He arrived at the western coast between the years 1610 and 1616. An island on the west coast bears his name: there he left a tin plate nailed to a tree with the date of his visit and the name of his ship, the Endragt, marked upon it.
My share of the treasure found on Cortes' island might enrich me sufficiently to buy a small interest in my master's business, but this was all I could hope for, and the bright dreams which Hartog and I had formed of the Island of Gems seemed about to dissolve, as is the way with phantoms, into thin air. But who can trace the course of Destiny, or fathom the mysteries of Fate?
"Those lubbers for'ard," he said when Hartog, he, and I sat together one evening in the cabin, "will make trouble if they can. They are a pig-headed lot, and a dozen apiece at the gratings would do them no harm. But while they outnumber us, as they do, three to one, we must avoid a quarrel.
In order to convince them of the error of this, however, and to punish them for their treachery of the morning, Hartog ordered our brass bow-chaser to be loaded with grape, and fired amongst them, which caused great consternation, and sent them back to their woods howling in terror, taking their dead and wounded with them.
It was then that I thought it my duty to tell the captain of my suspicions regarding Van Luck, and of how I had seen him looking down upon us through the skylight at the counting of the pearls. Hartog was amazed at such treachery on the part of his first officer. His own nature was so open that he found it hard to credit deception in others.
Hartog released Hugens, and, hurrying to the Queen's house, shortly afterwards returned with his spyglass, with which he anxiously scanned the horizon. "God be thanked, Peter," he said presently, "our ship is coming back to us, convoyed by a frigate."
Hartog and I, together with those who would not join in the mutiny, were to be set adrift with three days' provisions in one of the boats, when Van Luck would navigate the "Endraght" to the nearest port, promising to divide the pearls, the value of which he had greatly exaggerated, equally among all hands, share and share alike.
Hartog himself was so cast down by the loss of our ship that he seemed incapable of diverting his thoughts from the catastrophe which had overtaken us. I thus found our former positions reversed, Hartog being on the brink of the same hopeless despair which had obsessed me when Anna was taken from me, while upon me devolved the task of heartening him. And now a new danger threatened us.
I had forgotten the rubies, but I stipulated that the disposal of them should be left in my hands. "Willingly, Peter," replied Hartog, "for, between ourselves, I doubt not I am more at home on the sea than in making a bargain with land-rogues ashore. Take you command of the ship until she is once more taut and trim."
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