alayan peninsula entered into friendly
relations with him, being well pleased, like so many of those petty
rulers, to obtain protection against the Portuguese whom he had so long
hated and feared. He informed Heemskerk of the arrival in the straits of
Malacca of an immense Lisbon carrack, laden with pearls and spices,
brocades and precious-stones, on its way to Europe, and suggested an
attack. It is true that the roving Hollander merely commanded a couple of
the smallest galleots, with about a hundred and thirty men in the two.
But when was Jacob Heemskerk ever known to shrink from an
encounter--whether from single-handed combat with a polar bear, or from
leading a forlorn hope against a Spanish fort, or from assailing a
Portuguese armada. The carrack, more than one thousand tons burthen,
carried seventeen guns, and at least eight times as many men as he
commanded. Nevertheless, after a combat of but brief duration Heemskerk
was master of the carrack: He spared the lives of his seven hundred
prisoners, and set them on shore before they should have time to discover
to what a handful of Dutchmen they had surrendered. Then dividing about a
million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such
cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the
North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no
difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the
friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating. There was soon to
be work in other regions for the hardy Hollander--such as was to make the
name of Heemskerk a word to conjure with down to the latest posterity.
Meantime he returned to his own country to take part in the great
industrial movements which were to make this year an epoch in commercial
history.

The conquerors of Mendoza and deliverers of Bantam had however not paused
in their work. From Java they sailed to Banda; and on those volcanic
islands of nutmegs and cloves made, in the name of their commonwealth, a
treaty with its republican antipodes. For there was no king to be found
in that particular archipelago, and the two republics, the Oriental and
the Germanic, dealt with each other with direct and becoming simplicity.
Their convention was in accordance with the commercial ideas of the day,
which assumed monopoly as the true basis of national prosperity. It was
agreed that none but Dutchmen should ever purchase the nutmegs of Banda,
and th