300 A COLLISION AT SEA book iii
them, music accompanying the good cheer, and at 6 p.m. all of them returned home.
On
the following day at daybreak we set sail, and were clear of the
Straits sooner than we expected, because generally the wind is
contrary, and besides we were leaving twenty-four days after all the
others, the season for going to sea being nearly over. As soon as we
had left the Straits we saw Prince's Island.1 From thence our direction was to make for the Cocos Islands,2
and when in the latitude of these islands we spent two or three days
scouring the sea, expecting to sight them, but we were unable to do so,
and this caused us to direct our course straight for the Cape of Good
Hope.
On
the forty-fifth day after our departure from Batavia— for I do not wish
to weary the reader with a journal of our voyage—our Vice-Admiral
neglected to order the ship's lantern to be lighted, in the belief that
the whole fleet had already arrived at the Cape of Good Hope. It
happened that a vessel of the same fleet called the ' Maestricht' also
omitted to light its lantern the same night, and as it was very dark
and the sea was high, it came into collision with our vessel; this
threw everyone on both vessels into great consternation. All began to
pray to God, believing that one or other of the vessels would be lost.
Ours, which was called ' Les Provinces', was considered to be the
largest and the best of the vessels which sailed to India ; this was
apparent from this collision, when it received so severe a shock.
Everyone realizing the danger we were in, laboured to disengage
1 Prince's Island is at the western end of the Straits of Sunda (p. 251 above).
2
There are several groups of islands called Cocos : first, there is one
in the Bay of Bengal between the Andamans and the mainland; second, a
group of four coral-girt islands, in Lat. 3° N., near Hog (or Sinalu)
Island on the W. coast of Sumatra; and third, the Cocos or Keeling
Islands, from 700 to 800 miles SW. of Sumatra, in Lat, 12° 10' S. and
Long. 97° E. It was probably the last which Tavernier refers to. They
produce coco-nuts in abundance, and have for many years been in the
possession of an English family, several of whose members and a few
Malays reside there. A recent account of this group will be found in A.
D. Forbes, A Naturalist's Wanderings, and Ency. Brit., xv. 112.
