Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/339

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

THE tioutman's abroltios. 185

APPENDIX II,

My Hisjh Excellency, together with the Council of the Netherlandish India, I pray of you most urgently to send me help and assistance against these robbers of the money and goods from the wreck Zeeicyk, who have divided the money and goods among themselves. I am stark naked ; they have taken every thing from me. O, my God ! They have behaved like wild beasts to me, and everyone is master. Worse than beasts do they live ; it is impossible that on board a pirate ship things can be worse than here, because every one thinks that he is rich, from the highest to the lowest of my subordinates. They say among themselves, " Let us drink a glass to your health, ye old ducats !" I am ill and prostrate from scurvy.

APPENDIX III.

EXTRACT FROM TUE DELIBERATIO>-S AND RESOLUTIONS IN THE COUNCIL OF INDIA.

Monday, April 26th, 1728.

At five o'clock this afternoon we received a letter by the patchialang De Veer7nan, very unexpectedly and for- tunately, from the former skipper and under-merchant of the ship Zeeivyk, bound for these parts, written in the Straits of Sunda, but undated, reporting the wreck of the ship on the reef lying before the Islands Frederick Hout- man's Abrolhos, near the Southland, at 28° L., on the 9th of June of last year. The crew having afterwards fetched several necessaries from the wreck, made from the timber a sloop or vessel, on board of which eighty-two souls have reached these straits, together with the money taken out by the ship, consisting of three tuns, according to the double invoice received. But, besides that letter, there also came to hand a little card, unsigned, apparently ia the hand-