Free The Persimmon Tree by Bryce Courtenay

grin while extending his hand to greet one of the white blokes. Still half-smiling to myself, I watched the group of Javanese men as in one accord they reached behind their lap-laps and withdrew their parangs .
    It was as if I was witnessing some ghastly pantomime, since the pounding surf made the cries of the attackers and those of the shipwrecked sailors impossible to hear. The morning sunlight glinted on the vicious blades as they arched high above the white men, who were surrounded too quickly to attempt to escape. The natives encircled them, moving forward and bunching them together. The shipwrecked men fell to their knees, holding their hands wide or above their shoulders, palms turned outwards in the universal gesture of surrender. Their attackers suddenly rushed forward and the hapless sailors brought their arms over their heads to protect themselves from the blows of the vicious blades. The parangs slashed downwards and then raised and slashed, raised and slashed again and again, in what soon became a killing frenzy, all of it coming to me in silence except for the booming background of the surf.
    I heard myself whimpering, then felt myself sobbing and my hands holding the binoculars shook so furiously that I kept losing focus. The attack seemed to go on and on until at last the circle of attackers parted and I could see eight dead men sprawled in the sand in various grotesque attitudes, three face down, one curled into a foetal position while four others lay on their backs and stared up at the sky, their arms and legs flung wide. A lone victim was still seated with his legs tucked under him, his hands resting on the beach on either side, just as a child might do when building a sandcastle. He might have been dead seated like that. I watched as one of the attackers moved forward and, swinging his parang in a wide arc, lopped off his head. While there must have been a great deal of blood and plain enough to focus on through my binoculars, I wasn’t conscious of seeing any of it until the sailor’s head tumbled into the sand and a crimson jet rose into the air from his severed neck, drenching the man who’d performed the beheading. He ran to pick up the severed head and, holding it up by the hair to show the others, he then turned and, swinging it in an arc three times, he hurled it into the surf. I was shaking too violently to hold the glasses and I started to throw up, collapsing against a coconut palm, vomiting, snivelling and weeping like a small child.
    I forced myself to recover, wiping my eyes and returning to watch through the binoculars. The attackers were searching the bodies of the dead men. I focused on one of them who’d recovered a wallet from a bloodied shirtfront. He opened it and appeared to withdraw what I took to be money, then flung the wallet aside. The others did the same, removing the watches from the wrists of the murdered sailors and then the boots, tying the laces together so the boots hung around their necks. They gathered around each other comparing the watches they’d stolen before placing them on their wrists.
    The sudden thought occurred to me that if they continued down the beach to the river they might find the Vleermuis and that would be pretty well the end of me. Stranded and alone, I would have no means of escaping Java. I’d make for the jungle, I thought wildly. I told myself I could survive. In New Guinea I’d often enough gone into hidden valleys, the so-called impenetrable jungle, after butterflies, staying for two or three days at a time. As a kid my native friends had shown me what to eat, how to make a trap for small animals. But I knew in my heart that this was wishful thinking, utter bullshit; I didn’t even have a box of matches in my knapsack.
    I watched as the group removed the bloodied Mae West jackets, some of them cut and torn by the vicious swipes from their parangs . Six men lifted the Carley float above their heads, then started to return the way they’d