David pointed out a creek to the helmsman. “Turn in there.”
“You think our chances are better in that kill?” Heyndrick asked.
“Yes, the current’s stronger, that will tend to keep it from freezing solid. Unless it gets colder.” The Eikhoorn crept into this uncertain haven.
The Dutchmen needed to conserve food, if possible, so David sent out a hunting party, led by Heyndrick. He was whistling, slightly off-key, when he returned, and all of his followers had something in hand.
David thumped him on the back. “The hunting went well, I see.”
“Very well. We bagged several wild turkeys. Look at this one.” He held up a carcass. “Must be a good thirty-six pounds.
“And that’s not all. There are wild grapevines everywhere, so we did some picking.”
“Hopefully we won’t be here long enough for the grapes to ferment. But let’s call this creek ‘Wyngard Kill.’”
The weather worsened, and great chunks of ice came down the creek and battered their hull. David had the crew cut down some trees and construct a raft upstream of the Eikhoorn, to serve as a bumper.
On the third of February, the weather relented, and the Eikhoorn headed back toward the coast. But the respite was a short one. Ice reappeared, and once again the Eikhoorn took refuge in a swift-running kill. This cold spell was worse than the one before, and even the creek froze over.
They were trapped in the ice. But at least there were no signs of Indians nearby, hostile or otherwise.
Not until a week later. Fifty Indians, carrying their canoes, walked across the frozen river.
David turned to Vogel. “Order them to halt.”
The Indians looked at the leveled arquebuses and the steel breastplates of the sailors, and stopped, lowering the dugouts onto the ice.
One stepped forward. “We mean you no harm.”
“But you are dressed for war,” David declared.
“We are Minquas, and yes, we are at war, but with the Armewamens, not you. Six hundred of us have come, and the Armewamens flee in terror. We have burned their homes, and their women are now ours. We hunt the few braves who escaped into the forest.”
“There are no Armewamens on this ship, so you have no reason to linger here.”
“No reason,” the spokesman acknowledged. However, the Minquas did linger, carefully inspecting the Eikhoorn and its crew, before they finally trudged on to the far bank.
* * *
“Tide’s coming in, sir,” reported a crewman.
“Good,” David said. “Let’s get this ship out in the mouth of the kill, where the water is widest. Preferably before nightfall.”
David divided the men into two parties, and sent one to each bank, with a heavy rope in hand. There, they started hauling the Eikhoorn downriver. They moved it twenty-five painful paces, no farther.
David went out on the ice and studied the lie of the ship. “The creek’s too shallow, we must lighten the Eikhoorn to make more headway. I need four men to go to the ship and toss out the ballast.”
“We can’t do that, Captain,” said the helmsman. “The Eikhoorn is tall-masted, prone to listing.”
“That’s right, sir,” said one of the mates, “we’ll capsize before we reach the Walvis.” There was a general murmur of agreement.
David frowned ferociously. “It’s a risk we must take. Did you see those painted savages, the Minquas, eyeing us? They’d love to take our guns, our gold, our food. And do you know what they’ll do to us? You’ll be lucky if you are just shot with an arrow, or tomahawked, in battle. If they take you prisoner, they’ll torture you for their evening entertainment. You must lighten the ship, and trust to Divine Providence to save you from the river’s embrace.”
The mate was unimpressed. “If we are going to trust to Divine Providence anyway, why not trust it to save us from the Minquas, instead?”
“What do you want me to do, David?” whispered Heyndrick. “Start throwing out ballast myself? Shoot the ringleader of this mutiny?”
David ignored him. “The tide’s going out, men, even as we argue, and soon the Minquas will be coming in, with blood in their eyes. I have three demijohns of rum in my locker, and I’ll share one out tonight if you throw the ballast overboard. But you must act now.”
Sullenly, the crew came aboard, and jettisoned the ballast. The ship slowly rose in the water, and lurched downstream. It reentered the main river, but proved difficult to control. A thousand paces below the kill, it was swept toward the bank, and the bowsprit was wedged in between the horns of a double-crested hillock of ice.
At dusk, the Minquas attacked. Several feet of icy water still separated the exposed part of the ice from the actual bank. Hence, they had to first leap across the water, onto the midget iceberg, then clamber onto the bowsprit, which pointed landward.