The birth-island massacre is the turning point in Sherzad’s account of the sea people’s history: a place remembered as safe for families becomes the target of a human attack, and the survivors’ capture leads to persecution on the mainland. The event reaches the court not as an impersonal report but through Sherzad’s song, which Marie-Josèphe interprets and documents in sketches. Its movement from a child’s welcome to a galleon’s assault exposes the violence behind the claim that the sea people are devils.

A Birthplace and a Promise of Safety

Sherzad’s account begins before the attack, with sea people gathered on a small sandy island surrounded by open water. They sunbathe and play together, welcoming a new child among their family. The child’s developing webbed hands and changing feet mark her as one of the sea people, while her humming and babbling make her a source of wonder to her relatives. This is a family scene, not an image of an isolated or threatening creature: the child is surrounded by parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

That beginning gives the later violence its particular force. Sherzad explains that the birth islands left the sea people vulnerable, even though they believed themselves safe there. The island’s apparent security is not a guarantee against attack; it is the setting where the community’s ordinary family life is exposed to an armed vessel from beyond the horizon. The massacre therefore breaks both a place of origin and the confidence that the sea people could remain beyond human reach.

The Galleon’s Attack

A galleon appears on the horizon with a cross displayed on its flag. As it approaches, Sherzad’s song shifts into discord. Its cannons point through the gunports, and the ship turns broadside toward the small island before firing. The attack is followed by men storming ashore with pikes and nets. The contrast between the island’s family gathering and the organized violence of the vessel makes the encounter an assault on a community, not a confrontation between equal forces.

The cross on the flag gives the violence a religious frame in the sea people’s memory. Sherzad relates that the attackers called her people devils and killed or captured them in the name of their god. The religious claim does not soften the account: it accompanies the killing and seizure of a population that had been living with its families. In Sherzad’s telling, the language used to condemn the sea people is part of the attack’s meaning, because it casts its victims as enemies of the faith and presents their persecution as justified.

Captivity and Persecution on the Mainland

The massacre does not end when the attackers leave the island. Sherzad describes survivors taken to the mainland, where they are brought to cities, imprisoned, tortured, and killed slowly. Her account thus extends the event from a sudden assault into a continuing system of captivity and persecution. Those seized from the island are not simply removed from their home; they are subjected to further violence under human authority.

Marie-Josèphe’s sketches give this history visible form. One depicts an Inquisitor torturing a sea person, while a human figure is executed in the background. Another shows a woman condemned because she has a dwarf child; the woman and child are killed, and the image makes the child’s fate part of the history Sherzad is communicating. These drawings connect the sea people’s persecution with human institutions that classify, condemn, and punish those deemed to have dealings with the devil. The account also strikes Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien personally: Sherzad’s song recalls the battles of Steenkirk and Neerwinden, while the images of a dwarf child revive memories of the cruelty he endured at court because of his own body.

The Song Made Visible

The massacre is narrated within the larger story through Sherzad’s song, a language Marie-Josèphe cannot translate word for word. She interprets as best she can and sketches rapidly, turning the song’s images into a record that servants display before the court. The drawings cannot reproduce the beauty of the song, but they preserve its sequence and make its claims available for others to see. Storytelling here becomes evidence: family life, attack, capture, and persecution are set before an audience accustomed to viewing the sea people as monsters.

The audience’s response reveals a gap between witnessing and understanding. While listeners applaud the pathos of Marie-Josèphe’s story, a servant carries the sketch toward Lucien. Lucien tries to hurry past, then stops the servant and takes the drawing himself. His intervention gives the image a different weight: the scene has reached beyond courtly spectacle to touch his own remembered experience. The episode’s significance lies not only in the destruction of the birth island, but in the survival of its history through Sherzad’s song and Marie-Josèphe’s drawings, despite the human story that called the sea people devils.