Page 217 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

THE BLACK TRAGEDY OF AMBOINA 217

too small. On which the said Captain Towerson replied
that he had already persuaded the Japanese and others
and they were willing to assist him. lie would not (he
said) have want of people for all of them were willing.
Moreover the said Price confessed he had been used volun­
tarily to persuade the Japanese and others, and that the
Japanese to the number of twelve at the time the plot
would have been acted upon, would first have murdered
the guard and the governor if he was there; and then
Captain Towerson and the merchants and all their people
(whom he would have ordered from the factory for that
purpose) would have come to the rescue. . . . They also
agreed that all Dutchmen who would not agree with them
should be murdered. The money and merchandise of
the Company they would have divided amongst each
other.”
Such was the statement which was extorted from this
poor feckless creature after “ little or no torture.” It
was a preposterous story on the face of it. A score of
English without arms, without ships, without military
organization of any kind, with the aid of a dozen Japanese
were to capture the great Dutch stronghold with its sub­
stantial garrison, subvert the entire Dutch power, and in
the end divide amongst themselves as spoils of war the
property of a strong mercantile organization which at the
time was in intimate alliance with their own Company!
The only possible way in which such a scheme could have
been made feasible was by the association of a wide reach­
ing native rebellion with the conspiracy, and even then
it would have been a most desperate venture.
Dutch fears, however, saw in the concocted nonsense a
full confirmation of their own excited imaginings. Orders

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