Chapter 3: First Winter – 1702–1705
The first winter—though there was no winter in this tropical heat—brought the fever. Men and women who had survived the voyage collapsed in their huts, shaking with chills. Within six months, forty of the three hundred settlers lay in graves marked with rough crosses.
Dr. Weber worked from dawn to dusk, his hands stained with herbs, his voice hoarse from comforting the dying. The bark he had brought from Europe did nothing. The bloodletting only weakened them. He tried quinine, but it was scarce and expensive.
One evening, after losing another patient—a young carpenter from Hamburg who had been his friend—Weber sat on a stump outside the infirmary, his head in his hands. Johan found him there.
"How many more?" Johan asked.
"Too many." Weber looked up, his eyes red. "I have tried everything—quinine, bleeding, prayer. Nothing stops the marsh fever."
From the shadows of the forest, a figure emerged. It was an old man of the Orang Laut, the sea people who inhabited the coast. His skin was dark, his hair white, and his eyes held the calm of someone who had seen centuries. In halting Malay, he spoke.
"The fever comes from the swamps. This bark, boiled in water, will break it." He held out a bundle of leaves and bark, tied with vine. "We call it kinakina. It is our medicine."
Weber hesitated. "I have seen native remedies. Many are poison."
"And many are life," the old man replied. "Your people are dying. What have you to lose?"
Johan nodded. "Try it."
Weber boiled the bark, brewed a bitter tea, and gave it to the sick. The next morning, the fevers had begun to subside. The trembling stopped. Men who had been delirious sat up and asked for food.
Weber found the old man again, this time with a jug of rum and a question. "What else do you know? What other plants can heal?"
The Orang Laut smiled. "The island has many secrets. You have only begun to learn them."
That night, Weber wrote in his journal: I have witnessed what European medicine cannot yet explain. The people of this island understand the earth in ways we have forgotten. We must learn from them, or we will perish.
By 1705, the colony had stabilised. The survivors were tougher, leaner, and more determined. They had cleared enough land to plant grain and vegetables. The first coffee seedlings, smuggled from Yemen, were already taking root in the volcanic soil of the highlands.
Hendrik Van der Berg, the first child born on the island, was already walking and speaking a mixture of Dutch and the local tongue. When Johan presented him to the settlers, he lifted the boy onto a barrel and said, "This is our future. He will be king of a nation we are building."
Dr. Weber raised his cup. "To the king who is yet a child."
"To Hendrik!" they shouted.
From the forest edge, the old Orang Laut watched. Then he disappeared into the shadows, leaving behind a bundle of kinakina bark and a whispered blessing.