Spice and the Devil's Cave
Read Spice and the Devil's Cave Online
Authors: Agnes Danforth Hewes
SPICE
AND THE
DEVIL'S CAVE
“The group in Abel Zakuto's workshop hitched chairs closer to the table spread with a huge map”
SPICE
AND THE
DEVIL'S CAVE
AGNES DANFORTH HEWES
ILLUSTRATED BY LYND WARD
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
MINEOLA, NEW YORK
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2014, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, in 1930.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hewes, Agnes Danforth.
Spice and the Devil's Cave / Agnes Danforth Hewes ; illustrated by Lynd Ward.
p. cm.
“This Dover editionâ¦is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, in 1930”âCopyright page.
Newbery Honor, 1931.
Summary: In 1490s Portugal, Abel Zakuto, a Jewish banker with a keen interest in mapmaking and sea navigation, encourages explorers Magellan, da Gama, and Diaz to find the elusive sea route around the “Devil's Cave”âthe Cape of Good Hopeâto India, which would enable Portugal to dominate the spice trade.
eISBN-13: 978-0-486-78247-8 (pbk.)
1. ExplorersâFiction. 2. Magellan, Ferdinand, d. 1521â Fiction. 3. Gama, Vasco da, 1469â1524âFiction. 4. JewsâPortugalâFiction. 5. PortugalâHistoryâPeriod of discoveries, 1385â1580âFiction.] I. Ward, Lynd, 1905â1985, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.H448Sp 2014
[Fic]âdc23
2013028952
Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
49287701 2014
To the memory of
A
RTHUR
S
TURGES
H
ILDEBRAND
BECAUSE OF HIS BEAUTIFUL
M
AGELLAN
CONTENTS
SPICE
AND THE
DEVIL'S CAVE
CHAPTER 1
Out of the Night
T
HE GROUP
in Abel Zakuto's workshop hitched chairs closer to the table spread with a huge map, eyes intent on Captain Diaz' brown forefinger, as it traced along the bulge of Africa's west coast.
“Cape Verde, Guinea-all that's an old story to Portugal now; and this ⦠and this ⦠as anyone can see by our stone pillars all along the way. Then”â the brown forefinger that had slid rapidly southward stopped short â“then, the big Cape. . . . And the last of our pillars!” he added under his breath.
The circle of eager eyes lifted to the tanned face with something very like reverence, for not one around the table but knew that, if Bartholomew Diaz had had his way, the stone pillars would never have stopped at the Cape.
Into the mind of young Ferdinand Magellan, hunched up over the table, flashed a memory of the first time he had heard of Bartholomew Diaz. Up to the family home, in high, lonely Sabrosa,
1
had come the story of this man who had marked the farthest bound in the search for the sea route to India, which he had named the Cape of Storms. Ferdinand quickened to the picture that the story had called up to his childish fancy: the man gazing from his fragile, tossing ship at the awesome rock, while the great Cape, waiting through the ages, bared its storm-swept head to hail this first white face.
He suddenly leaned over the map and closely inspected it. Then he looked up at Abel Zakuto. “What does this name mean?”
Abel glanced where he pointed. “Why, that's really the big Cape. But Fra Mauro
2
showed it as an island which he called
Diab
â probably from the legends of the Arab sailors that the surrounding sea was the Devil's Cave. You know King John liked to call it The Cape of Good Hope.”
“I like Devil's Cave!” exclaimed Ferdinand. “Sounds exciting.”
Diaz gave him an amused look. “You'd think âtwas exciting,” he told him.” Greatest commotion of wind and water there ever I sawâlike ten thousand devils set loose-just as the Arabs believed.”
He sat back in his chair, his smile gone. He appeared to have forgotten the map as he stared absently before him.
Across the table a man eyed him as if pondering something he wished to say. A black-bearded stocky figure he was, not much past thirty, with a long-nosed, forceful face â Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of King Manoel's court. His father had once been Comptroller of the royal household, and had been intended, in John's reign, to head an expedition to explore a sea route to India. Vasco, himself, had seen service at sea and had soldiered in Spain and Africa. Lately, with all Europe agog over the Way to the Spices, he'd begun to brush up on navigation, and occasionally came to look at Abel Zakuto's maps.
“Have you any doubt, Captain,” he at last ventured, “that the coast east of the Cape makes up to India as Mauro showed it?”
“No, I haven't,” Diaz replied bluntly. “But what use is that if I can't say I
know
it does? No, Gama, all I know is only what I've seen, and that's the coast this side of the Cape â barring some score leagues beyond.”
Young Magellan made an impatient gesture. “Covilham had no doubts about the coast east of the Cape,” he said, pointedly.
His tone made the older men smile. This youngster just missed being a nuisance with his ever ready willingness to challenge one's statements, only that he was always so sure of his facts, and so amazingly well informed! Covilham! â What other lad in Lisbon would have known enough to ask this question? For Pedro de Covilham had started out on his great errand to verify by land what Bartholomew Diaz was sent to verify by sea, when this boy was hardly more than waist highâat least half a dozen years before he had come down from Traz-os-Montes to the palace at Lisbon for his page's training.
“Covilham said it was clear sailing,” Ferdinand persisted, “east of the Cape, now didn't he?”
From under his grizzled brows Bartholomew Diaz studied him with amused pride. After his own heart, this lad, with the great, sombre eyes that seemed to see beyond ordinary vision. That readiness to question, that rebellion against the passive acceptance of the mass â ah,
that
was the stuff of which pioneers were made! His own kinsmen, for instance: suppose they had believed all that nonsense about there being nothing beyond Cape Bojador but a chaos of boiling seas. But now, no one would soon forget that John Diaz was the very first of his race to take the dare of the great promontory and double its forbidding coasts; that Diniz Diaz was first to reach Cape Verde, and Vicente Diaz first at the Cape Verde islands; that he, Bartholomew, had sailed farther than any of them â though he did say it, who shouldn't! And young Magellan, you could depend on ft, would go as far some day; perhaps farther.
“But Covilham didn't come home to tell what he'd found, as Captain Diaz did,” Gama observed. “All we have to go by is that he sent word back from Cairo to Lisbon that he'd got down the east coast of Africa as far as Sofala, and that if our ships would just keep on from Guinea they'd find a clear passage to India and the spices. But, if he didn't get beyond Sofala, how could he be sure of that?”
“Well, even so â” Ferdinand's arm shot out to the map, thumb on the Cape, and little finger on Sofala â“all that's left to prove is the gap between
this
, where you left off, Master Diaz,” tapping with his thumb, “and
this”
tapping with his finger, “where Covilham left off.” Triumphantly he looked around the table to score his point, as he flattened his palm to indicate the reach from thumb to finger tip.
“Yes, anyone can see that's âall,'” Gama drily retorted. “The point is, how much of an âall' is it? If the coast runs north from the Cape to Sofala, well and good; but if, somewhere in between, it should happen to make out to the east, and then down into the frozen south ⦔
Ferdinand heaved a long sigh. “I'd be willing to stake everything I had to settle it!”
Captain Diaz shrugged. “So would any of us, if there were only one's self to consider.” Wouldn't he, he meditated, have “settled” this tantalizing gap, ten years ago and more, only for having to turn back for that doubting, homesick crew of his?
“The one thing to do, King Manoel won't do â go and find out!” Abel Zakuto quietly stated.
Everyone always listened to what Abel had to say. He always struck at the core of a situation; led you back to the main argument when you inclined toward side issues.
“He's too busy trying to manoeuvre his head into the Spanish crown to bother with finding a passage to India!” Ferdinand said, sarcastically.
“He'd have no trouble getting crews,” Diaz grumbled. “Everybody'd want to go! All he has to do is to finish the ships that King John began for an eastern expedition and would have sent out-under your father, Gama â if death hadn't blocked him.”