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"Don't hinder us!" curtly radioed back the mutineers. For hours the bombing planes wheeled like vultures around the De Zeven Provincien, but the nerves of her brown-skinned mutineers did not crack. They ignored a bomb dropped ahead of their prow, another dropped alongside. Finally bombing began in earnest. At 9:15 a. m. the De Zeven Provincien, which had fired neither shot nor shell, was caught amidships by a direct bomb hit. Her deck blazed up. Panic stricken at last, some mutineers took to the ship's boats, others leaped overboard with wild, defiant yells. At the moment they abandoned ship, Dutch Naval censorship clamped down tight.
"The fire was not serious," declared a terse communique. "The former officers of the De Zeven Provincien have taken command and will head for Java with a naval escort."
Not a word about the fate of the mutineers. At The Hague stiff-necked Premier Ruys de Beerenbrouck faced and overawed protests in the Lower House against his Government's method of recovering the De Zeven Provincien. Voted down 51 to 38 on a measure having to do with judicial & penal economies, the Premier tartly stated that he refused to recognize this setback as a vote of "no confidence." He would, he promised, inform Queen Wilhelmina by telegraph of what the Lower House had done. Abashed, the Lower House hastily adjourned over the week end.
Perturbed by her Premier's wire, Queen Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria stopped sleighriding in Switzerland and hurried back to the problems of state at The Hague. Thousands of her pink-cheeked, well-scrubbed subjects swarmed to the railway station to greet her. Refusing to let the royal automobile whisk her away until they had demonstrated their loyalty, the throng sang patriotic songs, roared time & again the old, old Dutch cheer, not "Long live the Queen!" but "Hold the Sea! Hold the Sea! Hold the Sea!"
As the De Zeven Provincien approached Batavia, Java, it became impossible to keep secret that the bomb had killed 22 of Her Majesty's subjects, including three Dutch seamen, wounded 25, ripped a great hole in the ship's deck armour, wrecked her signal station, blown her funnels to bits and mortally wounded the chief mutineer, one Bosschart, who died in agony two hours later.
Slightly wounded was Baron de Vos Van Steenwijk, one of the officers aboard the De Zeven Provincien when she was seized. For Hearstpapers the Baron described his adventure, which turned out to have been fairly cozy: "While I and some other officers and non-commissioned officers were in our quarters aboard the De Zeven Provincien, we suddenly became aware the engines had started and the ship was leaving Oleleh Harbor. We were informed by telephone in our quarters that mutineers had taken over the ship. . . . On Sunday, life was normal aboard ship, except that we officers were prisoners and the De Zeven Provincien was directed by her native crew. . . .
"Just as the bomb hit, four Dutch sailors jumped overboard. They were rescued by tugs. . . . The cries of the wounded were horrible. ... All the dead will be buried on the Island of Onrust."