It was with beating heart that he pored over the first page. In after years Derrick Beekman made a fair translation of that wonderful volume which he had printed upon the finest parchment paper at the most exclusive printery in the land in a limited edition for his friends and his descendants, and he presented some of the copies to the great libraries of the world, where the curious can inspect them and read the story in full. It is sufficient now to say that this was the log of the ship _Good Intent_, which Beekman decided to be the English equivalent of the quaint Dutch name. The _Good Intent_ had belonged to the Dutch East India Company, and early in the seventeenth century had set sail from Holland with a good crew commanded by Captain Adrian Harpertzoon Van Rooy. With him, according to the enumeration, came his brother, Jacobus Van Rooy, and a number of other sailors, with a few soldiers and a supercargo, Hendrick Handen. The soldiers were to garrison a factory in the East Indies, and they were accompanied by their wives; and it further appeared that Captain Van Rooy had brought with him his wife, Gertrude.
The long voyage to the Indian Ocean had been made without untoward events until a storm had dismasted the ship and she had sprung a leak, after tremendous and uncontrolled rolling. They had patched up the leak, rigged a jury mast, and had driven before the wind--their only way of sailing. They had picked up, near one of the islands, a native canoe containing nearly a score of Polynesian men and women. The canoe was in bad shape and about to founder. Captain Van Rooy had charitably received the natives aboard his own almost wrecked ship. It was impossible for him to land them in that storm, and they had wit enough to see that their only chance lay in going with him or sinking.
After sailing many days, the _Good Intent_ was run into the vast cuplike harbor. Evidently there had been an opening through the barrier reef at that time. They had beached her and made their way to the top of the island, which they found uninhabited, but fertile and teeming with plant life. They had stripped the ship of her cargo and equipment, and it had been Captain Van Rooy’s intention to build a boat out of her when his heterogeneous company had recovered from the hardships of the terrible voyage, during the latter part of which they had suffered greatly from the dreadful scourge of scurvy; but some catastrophe had swept the hulk out of the harbor and had blocked up the opening in the reef. Beekman could not gather what it was, an earthquake or a tidal wave. Whatever it was, Captain Van Rooy had been marooned with a dozen surviving Dutch soldiers and sailors and his brother and mate Jacobus; Handen, the supercargo; with eight women, the wives of as many soldiers, and the captain’s own wife, together with half a dozen Polynesian men and twice as many women.[#]