Page 198 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

198 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

who had managed to secrete their terrible krises fell upon
the invaders and cut a number of them to pieces before
they themselves were killed. The English portion of the
crew took no part in this incident on either side, but their
neutrality did not save them from the resentment of the
Dutch who treated them with persistent cruelty during
their subsequent confinement.
Courthopc was intensely mortified at the surrender of
the ship. He declared in a letter describing the fight
that rather than have yielded as Cassarian had done he
“ would have sunken right down in the sea first.” He
spoke no more than the truth; his whole being was ani­
mated with the feeling that to yield would be a disgrace
not to be borne. Yet nothing hardly could have been more
desperate than his position at this juncture. His small
force had been weakened considerably by sickness and his
supplies were so reduced that the garrison were compelled
to exist largely on bread made from the fruit of the sago
tree. On the other hand the Dutch had eight ships and
two galleys fully armed ready to make a descent upon the
island at the first favourable opportunity. For their
advent Courthope, to use his own words, looked “ daily
and hourly,” and he could not disguise from himself that
the issue must go against him, the odds being what they
were; though he consoled himself with the grim reflec­
I tion that “ if they win it, by God’s help I make no doubt
but they shall pay full dearly for it with much effusion of
blood.”
When news reached Courthope as it did later that the
English prisoners were being cruelly illtreated by their
captors he indited a letter of strong denunciation of the
inhumanity of the Hollanders to one of the captives.