The lighthouse at Vlakken Hoek

slender white tower, whose sparkling eye the sailor, who in the dark night from the ocean towards Sumatra, warns hours in advance that he approaches the Vlakken Hoek on the Sunda Strait.

On the black coral banks at its foot, blazing in the fierce sun heat, searching at low tide for thoughtfully walking herons, white and gray, to fish and shrimps. A single sea eagle shows its shadow quietly glides over the water and along the light yellow gleaming beach, between the blue of the sea and the tingling green of the dense beach forests.

Between the pole and South Sumatra no island can withstand the eternal swell against the ocean. It can be completely still on the coast for days on end, while a heavy, bulging swell from the west or south fills the horizon cartelizes and throws the large ships around on their way along the famous “Wild Coast”.

In stormy weather the rollers pound in one roaring thunder, and in the mist of spraying surf foam turns the beachline gray and the forests fade away.

The earth resounds with the pounding blows, the tower trembles and creaks in its loins.

And in wild nights, dead-tired birds fly into the hurricane crushed against the light that shone their sunshine and joyful warmth.

On the land side the flat bottom is covered with forest; here and there are light green squares of dense alang alang grass, where building fields once stood to have been.

Close to the tower is a plantation of coconut palms; but the bears from the forest, the savages with their twenty terrible kris nails, the nice head swaying above the orange-yellow collar on the neck, have the sweet palm tree was picked from the tops of the coconut trees; thus the growth of the trees is destroyed, and it is as if a flash of lightning jumped from peak to peak to kill them all.

There is a small cemetery near those dying palm trees. Some graves of Europeans, with weathered inscriptions, make the bleak desolation even more oppressive. Until a few years ago there were European lighthouse keepers, sometimes with wives and children...


Cornelis Marianus Tarenskeen
born 1885
drowned April 8, 1894


Drowned as a nine-year-old boy, somewhere there in the hissing foam between the black coral banks, where he was sick sister, that in burning fever lay delirious, searching for shells.

Now only native guards live there. They don't feel so being cut off from the world when they are there with their wives.

And above all, they do not hear like this: the silence!

In the silent forest, outside the fence around the tower, every falling leaf life mean, and the faintest sound of cracking wood can be a have a disturbing meaning... that is where the silence lives.

Inside, in the enclosure, along the foot of the tower are the bright white paths stiffly cut; a lonely goat nibbles the half-scorched grass edges with slow movements in the terrible heat vibration from the enclosed courtyard. Semi-conscious cats blinking at the animal that is so busy in such a heat makes in that bright sun; they, who are fed fat by the women of the lighthouse keepers, who are only waiting for their men to be relieved. There, in that space, where man has closed himself off to be safe are for the dangers of the wilderness, there the silence is dead, terrible.

The first native head lighthouse keeper, who was the last European relieved, was Si Tong, by his three lighthouse keepers and their four coolies entitled to the honorific title of “hope” (head).

Each of the lighthouse keepers is called every three months "aploes" (relieved). Once a month the white Government steamer from Batavia, brings new people and "rangsoen": rice, dried fish, salt, etc., and carries relieved and sick people return to their country, to Java.

From the small Blimbing Bay, where the white ship anchors, a narrow road built to the tower, one kilometer long, straight through the glowing plain, grim, desolate and stark. Once a month we walk a few people along that road, until the bay is empty again, and everything quieter than ever.

The flat wilderness is partly swamp forest, where in the rich silt only the crabs understand and the gruesome monitor lizard [17] with its long, licking tongue sticks the spying head far out in front; partially free low forest, where the usual little stuff lives like monkeys, tiger cats, pigs, martens and polecats. In that wilderness also occur larger animals, also the Striped, also the Black Panther and the clouded leopard, which were probably in one nest. They stalk the deer and the roe deer and the dwarf deer with their fine bones and large, frightened eyes; — these are a more delicious morsel for the agile cats than the daily meal of pork, and they provide for the fulpen bodies pose much less danger than the head of an adult boar with the terrible, unwaveringly implanted tusks.

And once a year, when the time has come for all sorts of nice dishes, certain young twigs and leaves and tasty young tree bark, ready for them at the sea, then the Great Ones of the forest with their deep, inner sounds, with their clarion call. They come from far inland, from high mountain slopes. On their They also drag endless rounds into the forests at Vlakken Hoek broad paths that unite and then separate again, a tangle where Only the spherical dung traces left behind convince the layman that it was not a human hand that created these roads. Cozy flapping ears, tearing off the delicious bark in long strips broken young trees, the giants rock forward; until the beach, to the tower, which they fear no more; and they take a bathe in the sea, and rub themselves, blinking the nice eyes, the itchy spots from the convex body to the glass-hard, sharp coral.

The Vlakke Hoek is most famous for its wild buffalos. Buffaloes, one knows not where they came from—perhaps from a settlement, suddenly abandoned by its inhabitants long ago, in wild flight from the worst devil of Sumatra before the Dutch fought: smallpox. First the animals went wild, then they came gradually into a completely wild state. Those who wear horns, which cannot effectively stop the tiger due to the downward position to ward off his attack, are doomed to be caught in the claws of the Bonte perish. But those who rest a well-defended head on the rock-solid neck carry, and who know that the oldest of the animals will sometimes thinks before he risks his thin skin, his soft belly to the sharp pointed horns—which are spared and multiply. And This is how the herds of several hundred wild men came into being, which since within living memory of the Vlakken Hoek.

This is also known in Java, and every now and then hunters from there come with the white ship and pitch their tents; they hunt, often under great hardships, on the wild buffalo and leave again a month later back to Batavia.

Once, when Si Tong was already in charge of the tower, there was also a European woman came along with her husband, a Dutch doctor [18]. Strange souls, those white people, who live in trouble and misery and danger come looking for the wilderness, while they have it so good at home! But yet the Njahi, as the chief on the tower was called, wonderfully struck by the courage of her white sister, who Vlakken Hoek had won the honorary title from Njonjah Brani, the Dareful woman.

She herself—small and delicate as she was—felt quite like herself too well "brani", and above all, she also wanted to look as good as the Daring woman who wore trousers like her husband!

Tong had also once, from a safe spot in a tree, caught a buffalo shot. So he was nothing less than those hunters, and when they a She had put on his pants and taken them off with him, she felt no less brave than the lady. Only, she would not be so foolish dare like those white people; they were always in a hurry and couldn't quietly waiting on a safe tree branch for approaching game.

So Tong and his wife became hunters, and it was not long before they grew bored of waiting for the game; they too were seized by the urge to hunt, which they could not understand at first and considered stupidity. And Njahi crawled after her husband through the tall alang-alang like a deer crept up, though her heart pounded in her throat for fear of him who mood colors in the forests and wildernesses of Sumatra, and that often desires precisely what comes before us with the gun.

So this couple had a good time in solitude, because they enjoyed found in nature, and they lived happily and were supreme on the tower, admired by the comrades.

However, the small garrison was startled one night in March 1919 by a violent earthquake, which tore the tower apart, but an inspector from Batavia found that thorough repairs were everything would soon put things back in order.

When the terrible thing happened on May 31, the workers were left again, and everything went back to normal. That morning, it was barely getting dark when Nata came to tell his "hope" that he had found fresh buffalo tracks on the beach, and that these were to a vast alang alang field led. Here could female courage, even "with the pants on", not helping, Tong had to do this job ensure male support.

“Ajo, Saïn, we are going to shoot a buffalo!” he said with all his might lighthouse keeper.

“Ajo!” said Saïn, “but Bang (abang, elder brother) I have only once gun fired—I have never hunted.”

Well, it wasn't that bad actually, at least it was a buffalo a known beast for Saïn, he would not, on sight alone, to tremble with fear as if before a tiger or an elephant.

That was the opinion of the entire male population, the women were left out held, even the small, brave njahi.

The wild buffalo discovered the two men at the same time when they came to him in the long grass stalked.

The sniffing head—nose, forehead, and horns in one horizontal flat—motionless but menacing, Saïn did not particularly frighten, and as best he could he put his eye to the gun and drew off... but the cartridges of the few government rifles, which lighthouse keepers are made available, are old, Saïn's patron refused. And now he was terrified, because the sound of the bounce made the angry animal immediately attack. But Tong remained calm and a good shot made the buffalo disappear diagonally into a clump of low bushes where he, apparently seriously injured, had to stand for a while think about what to do next.

The two men now agreed to each occupy one of the few higher to climb trees in the woods to get the wounded animal from there to lay down. To lay him down on the flat ground in the dense undergrowth search, they considered an attempt at suicide.

Anyone who has ever experienced how badly the natives often behave adhering to hunting agreements, feels with anxious certainty the end of approaching this adventure.

It was Tong, who, perhaps because he did not see his comrade succeed, granted, the wounded animal still sought out. And Saïn shot, as in such cases always happen, with unfailing certainty a non-refusing pattern towards the slowly moving in the bushes disk... and found not the buffalo, but his hunting companion motionless lie.

The poor fellow, who had so little to blame, did not dare to go to the tower. Hours later he was found crouched against the fence somewhere, staring into the immense silence, with the stiff body of his master against him. And when he was finally able to answer the questions posed to him questions, when he saw the wild sorrow of the little njahi, he made up lies, and stories came in fits and starts about a gun that fired unexpectedly had gone off by itself.

And an investigation took place; but only after the poor njahi brani on the white ship was, to Batavia, Saïn had the courage to say that he had lied.

On the white ship lay a little woman sobbing, on the deck, near the railing.

They had wanted to give her a cabin,—then a mattress, to lie on the deck to be able to sleep peacefully off her great sorrow. But she snuggled up against the railing to be as close as possible to the land where the abandoned cemetery under the dying palms a new grave has appeared was; she wanted to see the Vlakken Hoek with its white as long as possible tower.

So she fell asleep on the hard deck. And those who did not know and the poor saw their souls lying there, couldn't help but smile... because they weren't understood why that little female figure was wearing patched man's trousers wore.