To the Edge of the World (17 page)

XXIV

May 29-August 27, 1521

The next day I marched along the beach in full armor. Visor closed. Pike held high. Sword clanking at my side. Crossbow at the ready.

My steps sank deep into the sand.

The sun blazed.

It was my plan to perform a reconnaissance of the island, to map its shape and size and the location of landmarks and to discover if there were any native villages or cannibals. Then when the fleet returned in a few days, I would give a full report.

After several hundred paces, I opened my visor, panting, my armor already an oven.

Birds wheeled above me, cawing. Sand crabs skittered into the surf.

My armor became heavy. Each step was like moving a boulder. My ears filled with the sounds of my breathing and the creak of steel.

I paused to drink from a goatskin I had slung across my shoulder. Sweat ran in streams from my temples. Moisture drenched the clothing beneath my armor and it stuck to me like a second layer of skin. I left my sword and sword belt beneath a palm tree, thinking, I will return for it tomorrow. It is too loud. It warns of my approach.

For the next few hours, I skirted the eastern edge of the island, passing around a small cove, wishing I had brought more water. The island was bigger than I had realized. There was no other fresh water besides the stream back at camp. By now the sun was directly overhead.

On I marched, glancing into the jungle, my finger on the trigger of my crossbow. So far, there were no signs of natives. Usually villages were built close to the shore, close to fresh water. Regardless, I was ready. They would not catch me unawares. They would not cook me in their stew pot.

I stepped over a fallen tree and stumbled, crashing headlong, the sound thunderous in my ears. My crossbow fired into the sand with a twang. I lay there, cursing, thinking, If cannibals attack now, I am dead. When nothing happened, I heaved myself to my feet and continued, step by step, panting.

Several hours later, having finally left my leg armor behind, I reached the northern edge of the island, where the jungle closed with the beach. The trees loomed overhead, dark and eerily quiet. I did not like this side of the island and wished I had kept my sword. It was impossible to have too many weapons.

Suddenly something shrieked. The branches above my head rustled loudly. My heart lurched, and I raised my crossbow and fired as I yelled, knowing at the same time it was only a monkey. With a tumble and a crash, it landed at my feet, an arrow sticking from its throat. For a moment, a horrible moment, I was reminded of Rodrigo.

Now there were shrieks all around me, like demons howling.

“You will not get me,” I screamed, shaking my fist at them. “I am Mateo Macías, warrior, man of courage!”

My words sounded foolish, even to me. I was screaming at monkeys.

I reloaded my crossbow and continued down the beach. One step, then another, finally leaving my helmet behind. I was sick of breathing my own breath and sniffing the stink of my body. Besides, I thought, I must listen alertly for any signs of attack. It is impossible to do that while the sounds of armor clank in my ears.

When finally darkness fell, I was forced to stop for the night. I sat with my back against a fallen tree, listening to my stomach complain, crossbow at the ready, pike at my side. Exhausted as I was, I did not sleep, seeing cannibals in every darkened shape, hearing them in every distant shriek. In the pale light of morning, I marched on, weak from hunger, parched with thirst. By the time I remembered my pike, still lying on the sand beside the fallen tree, I was too tired to return and fetch it.

When the sun finally rose from behind the island’s peaks— twin mountains that rose from its center—I reached the western coast. Smaller hills surrounded the mountains, like piglets around a sow. Pig Island, I decided to call it. I now knew the island was about three leagues long, shaped like a bean, and inhabited by wild boars, monkeys, and a small spotted cat I had glimpsed watching me from its crook in a branch.

It was late afternoon when I finally staggered into camp. I flung off my breastplate. I cast aside my crossbow and devoured a supper of raw turtles’ eggs.

Then, using seashells instead of beads, I prayed the rosary and afterward asked God to hurry the fleet to my rescue.

That night, I did not dream of cannibals.

Each day, each hour almost, I scanned the horizon. But always, always, it remained empty.

Meanwhile, I built a lean-to shelter of palm fronds where I slept the night and spent the hottest part of the day. In another lean-to close by, I stored my supplies. Occasionally crabs scuttled through my shelter. They were easy to catch. Lighting a fire not far away, I boiled the crabs in water from the stream. It was a good arrangement.

My lean-to worked well until one day in early summer when a nasty storm flattened my shelter and scattered my supplies. Standing amid the ruins, drenched to the skin, I realized blankly that I was now sixteen years old. That I had been so for almost one month but had forgotten. It took the next five days to rebuild my shelter, cutting stronger poles and strengthening it with vines found deep in the jungle.

My days were spent gathering fruit and stalking prey, preparing and cooking food, and looking after my shelter and supplies. It was familiar work.

My hair grew long, and I no longer bothered to shave.

At times I talked to myself, a yammering, ceaseless talk because I craved the sound of my own voice. Anxious for company, I would sometimes prepare another meal for Rodrigo or Magallanes. A palm frond for a plate. A pronged stick for a fork. A coconut shell for a bowl. And we would talk, Rodrigo and I, Magallanes and I, talk into the night, until I would fall upon the palm frond, weeping because, again, they had eaten nothing.

At other times, I lapsed into days of silence, my heart aching, my eyes weary from searching, always searching. Was this to be my life? Alone? Forever? Only pretending to have company? I asked myself these questions every day, every hour, every breath, sometimes wishing I had died alongside Rodrigo. Anything but this.

On one of these days of silence, I sank to the sand. “My Lord God,” I prayed, “I can stand it no more. I am as one dead. Do not leave me here alone. Please.” As I uttered the last word, a breeze filtered off the water, a cool breeze that kissed my face. My heart felt suddenly comforted, and for the first time since the death of my parents, peace flooded every fiber of my body. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps this is prayer. And I allowed the peace to wash over me as gently as the sea caresses the shore.

The sapling was about two and a half times my height and strong. I grasped its middle and bent its top down to the ground, let go, and watched it whip upright. “The Virgin Mary couldn’t have picked a better one,” I said aloud.

Several days before, I had eaten the last of the food supplies left me by my shipmates. Now I lived completely off the food of the island, which was proving harder than it at first had seemed—at least if I wanted to eat more than coconuts and crabs. Today I had decided to try something new. I would set a baited snare. I began to hack the branches from the tree with a hatchet. “But you see, my friend,” I told myself, “the Virgin Mary wouldn’t be in the jungle picking out saplings. She is much too busy. Besides, she would get covered with sap and might chop her thumb off. Still, maybe she needs a change of scenery besides the stable. Of course, she doesn’t live in the stable anymore, everyone knows that; she lives in heaven. So why would she want to come here and pick out saplings when she can live in heaven? Ah . . . heaven. The food there must be delicious. I wonder, Rodrigo. Is the food in heaven delicious?”

Finished with stripping the branches off the sapling, I found a mature tree and chopped off a fresh branch as thick around as my wrist. I whittled one of its ends into a point. “Perhaps I will catch a wild boar . . . or a monkey . . . no, probably a lizard.” I chopped off its other end so that it was only as long as my arm. A handsbreadth from the blunt end, I cut a deep notch. Then, two paces from the base of the sapling, I hammered the stake into the ground using a coconut. “Now ask yourself this, Mateo, if you eat all the turtles’ eggs on the island, plus a turtle every once in a while, then someday won’t all the turtles be gone?” I thought about this. It seemed a good question. Meanwhile I chopped a shorter length off the leftover branch, whittling a notch in it as well. “Well, everyone knows turtles live a long time . . . even without food and water, although what that has to do with anything, I don’t know. Anyway, if they live a long time, and I’m only here a short time, then it shouldn’t make any difference, should it? After I am gone, they will make more eggs.”

Again bending the sapling down, I tied a short rope around its top. Keeping the tension, I tied the other end of the rope to the unnotched end of my newly whittled stake. I then slipped the new stake upside down into the grounded stake, notch pulling against notch. If all went well, when I released the sapling, it would stay bent. Slowly, carefully, I released the sapling. There was a momentary quivering. A groan. A creak of green wood. The stake in the ground shifted slightly, being pulled from above with all the sapling’s might. I released my breath when everything held. Now to set my snare. “Well, truthfully, you are devouring an entire generation of turtles. Someday there will be only very, very old turtles. Still, unless you’re here for eighty years—”

Before I could utter my next word, the stake yanked from the ground and the sapling whipped up, catching me full on the underside of my chin, snapping my jaws together and throwing me backward onto the jungle floor. I lay stunned, staring stupidly at the trees high overhead and the patterns they made against the sunlight. Already I could feel a giant welt rising. I tasted blood on my tongue. I blinked tears away.

Eighty years . . . is it truly so?

Eighty years . . .

I dragged myself to my feet, ignoring the sting. “Seems like you didn’t pound in the stake deep enough, my friend.” And I picked up the coconut to start again.

Three tries later, the stake held. Now, though, I was wise enough to move out of the way while testing its holding power. Next I set about making a snare. I made a small loop in one end of a short rope and threaded the other end of the rope through the loop to make a self-tightening noose. But when I went to attach the end of the rope to the upper stake, I realized that I would have to dismantle my setup, for the slightest amount of wiggling or tugging on the upper stake would immediately dislodge it from the grounded stake, causing the sapling to fling upright. I stood with the noose in my hand, dumbfounded at my stupidity. “Well, my friend, it appears you will have to begin again.”

With a sigh, I set to work, undoing the sapling and then tying the end of the snare to the second stake. “On deck, on deck, gentlemen of the starboard watch, hurry up on deck, Mr. Pilot’s watch, right now; get up, get up, get up!” After singing my little cabin-boy ditty, plus a few chanteys, I was finally back to where I’d started—the end of the snare tied securely to the second stake, the sapling taut and bent, the noose ready and waiting. I covered the noose with jungle debris, careful not to move it, scarce daring to breathe. Then I put half a crab in the center of the noose and stood back to survey my work. “A fine job, my friend. A fine day and a fine job.”

Over the next five days I made more traps, getting faster each time. I checked my traps morning and afternoon. Always they were empty. What had I done wrong? I varied my bait—yellow figs, turtles’ eggs, a dead fish I’d found. Then one day I stumbled across a half-grown piglet, dead on the jungle floor. I took it back to camp, cooked and ate some of it, saving the rest for bait and setting aside every drop of grease. Day after day of undisturbed traps made me believe that the animals could smell me. Perhaps pig smell would be better. So every day after, I smeared boar’s grease over my feet and hands before leaving to check my traps.

A week later, I stood beside one of my traps. Fresh animal droppings dotted the area. The bait was gone. The trap unsprung. Whatever it was, it had eaten my bait and escaped unharmed. All that work for nothing. Nothing. Suddenly, something inside of me boiled, and I screamed, “You had no right to eat my bait! No right to escape! Don’t you know I’m hungry? Don’t you know I live here, too?” With a howl of rage, I kicked the empty air, kicked a nearby bush, kicked the stakes, and
. . . thwack!
The sapling whipped up and slapped me again on the underside of my chin.

Again I lay on my back, stunned, staring at trees.

Again tears coursed, hot and wicked.

I lay there a long time—until the light began to fade. Then, slowly, I got to my feet, my toe sore from kicking the stake. Equally as slowly, I reset my trap and then made my way back to camp.

The next day I stood beside one of my traps, staring, my mouth open with surprise. A wild boar hung from the sapling, dead, the noose tight about her neck.

It was a victory as sweet as if won on the battlefield.