Without the assistance of Adams, who seems to have been the leader of the remaining sailors on the _Liefde_, it was impossible to accomplish anything with the big ship. Of the twenty-four men who had reached Japan only eighteen were left. The ship, therefore, was deserted, and all the men went on shore. Except for two, the others all disappeared from view. They probably settled down in Japan. But in the year 1605, in the month of December, two Hollanders came to the Dutch settlement of Patani, on the Indian peninsula. They had made the voyage from Japan to India on a Japanese ship, and they brought to the Dutch company trading in that region an official invitation from the Emperor of Japan asking them to come and enter into honorable commerce with the Japanese islands. This invitation was accepted. In the year 1608 one of the two Dutch messengers returned to Japan with letters announcing the arrival of a Dutch fleet for the next summer. He continued to live in Japan until his death in 1634. The other sailor found a chance to go back to Holland on a Dutch ship, but near home he was killed in a quarrel with some Portuguese. The net result of this unfortunate voyage of the _Liefde_ was the establishment of a very useful trade relation with Japan--a relation which became more important after the Portuguese had been expelled, and which lasted for over two centuries. Finally there was the ship called the _Hoop_, which had become separated from the _Liefde_ on the coast of South America in February of the year 1600. It went down to the bottom of the ocean with everybody on board. CHAPTER VIII THE BAD LUCK OF CAPTAIN BONTEKOE Captain Bontekoe was a pious man who sailed the ocean in command of several Dutch ships during the early part of the seventeenth century. He never did anything remarkable as a navigator, he never discovered a new continent or a new strait or even a new species of bird but he was blown up with his ship, flew heavenward, landed in the ocean, and survived this experience to tell a tale of such harrowing bad luck that the compassionate world read his story for over three centuries with tearful eyes. Wherefore we shall copy as much as is desirable from his famous diary, which was published in the year 1647. [Illustration]