free-for-all fight, and the most violent backers of De Keyser declared that they would shoot Houtman rather than give in. Thus far the quarrel had been about the theoretical principle whether the actual sailors or the civilian commissioners should be the masters of the fleet. But when the man who had started the whole trouble by opening the sealed letter against orders proposed to desert the fleet with the _Hollandia_ he committed a breach of etiquette which at once made him lose the support of the other regular officers. Discipline was discipline. The mutineer was brought before a court-martial and was ordered to be put in irons until the end of the voyage. He actually made the remainder of the trip as a prisoner. The suit against him was not dropped until after the return to Holland. It was a storm in a tea-kettle, or, rather, it was a quarrel between a few dozen people, most of them ill, who were cooped up in four small and ill-smelling vessels and who had got terribly on one another's nerves. It is needless to say that these official disagreements greatly entertained the rough elements in the forecastle, who witnessed this commotion with hidden glee and decided that they would have some similar fun of their own as soon as possible. [Illustration] Meanwhile the wind had been favorable, and on the fifth of June, after a long, but uneventful voyage, an island was seen. It proved to be a small island off the coast of Sumatra. Sumatra itself was reached two days later, and on the eleventh of the same month the Sunda Archipelago, between Sumatra and Java, was reached. In this part of the Indies the white man had been before. The natives, therefore, knew the power of firearms, and they were accordingly cautious. One of them who was familiar with the straits between the islands offered to act as pilot on their further trip to Bantam. For eight reals in gold he promised to guide them safely to the north shore of Java. The amount was small, but the distance was short. On the twenty-third of June of the year 1596 four Dutch ships appeared for the first time in the roads of Bantam, and were welcomed by the Portuguese with all the civility which the sight of sixty-four cannon demanded. At that time Bantam was an important city, the most important trading center of the western part of the Indian islands. It was the capital of a Mohammedan sultan, and for many years it had been the residence of a large Portuguese colony. Besides Javanese natives and Portuguese settlers there were many Arab traders and Chinese merchants. All of these hastened forth to inspect the ships with the strange flag and have a look at this new delegation of white men who were blond, not dark like the Portuguese, and who spoke an unknown language.