To the Indies (18 page)
Authors: C. S. Forester
Tags: #Inquisition, #treasure, #Caribbean, #Indian islands, #Indians, #aristocrats, #Conquistadors, #Orinoco, #Haiti, #Spain, #natives
The Admiral had left his side while he had been allowing his thoughts to digress in this fashion; the coast of Paria was still unfolding itself as the
Holy Name
ran along it before the wind. It was a coast of steep green hills, and every hour that the ship progressed demonstrated it to be five or six miles longer; a big island, therefore, if it were not the coast of Asia, or — the continent Rich dared not think about. At nightfall the coast was still close to the south of them, and at dawn next morning, after a dozen miles of drifting while lying-to, it was still there. The first break they saw was at noon, and when they came up to it they found that it was only a channel between the Parian coast and an island lying off it. A nearer approach revealed two islands instead of one, but Paria still continued beyond them.
And in these islands there were Indians — Indians who fled as the vast ships came sailing in, and who soon lost their shyness when they were approached with gifts. And they were Indians who wore pearls, great strings of them, which they were glad to give to the bearded white men who seemed to want them. Rich watched the bartering going on; the squadron, as it lay at anchor in the lagoon, was surrounded by canoes and the decks were thick with Indians, while treasures which could have ransomed a prince were being handed over in exchange for broken fragments of painted earthenware.
The Admiral was trying to discover by means of signs whence came all these pearls, and the Indians, when they understood him, pointed overside, to the lagoon whereon the
Holy Name
floated. The Admiral pressed for details, and two of the Indians swung themselves overside into their canoe and pushed off to a short distance away. The younger Indian crept forward into the bows and rose cautiously to his feet. He was young and tall and slender — a handsome figure of a man. He poised himself with a foot on either gunwale, the twisted stem-piece of the canoe rising to his waist, and then dived with a sideways wrench of his body which took him clear of the stem-piece and yet, miraculously, did not capsize the canoe. He went straight down — for several feet they could watch his progress through the clear water — and it seemed a long time before he rose again, shaking the water from his eyes, and with his hands full of grey objects which he dropped into the bottom of the canoe without troubling to climb in. He swam back to the
Holy Name
as quickly as his companion could paddle, and, running up on deck again, he laid the oysters at the Admiral’s feet. An upward gesture showed that he expected to wait until the sun caused them to open, but Osorio’s dagger did it at once, to the chattered amazement of the Indians. There were no pearls in the half-dozen oysters he had brought up, but it was clear enough to everybody that they were to be found, and the Indians pointed here and there over most of the lagoon to indicate the presence of oyster beds.
“God!” said García. “If we could set a thousand men diving here — there must be a thousand men to be caught. We should have pearls by the bushel. Don Narciso, can’t you suggest it to the Admiral?”
“We have pearls by the quart, at least,” commented Acevedo. The Admiral was measuring the takings into a leathern cup.
Rich had not heard García’s suggestion, for his thoughts were digressing again. Those vast flat oysters were far different from the little ones which grew on the trees above low water in Paria, and they lived always under the sea. They would never have a chance of catching a falling dewdrop and converting it into a pearl, and yet they produced pearls — pearls by the quart, as Acevedo said. So Pliny was wrong — was more ignorant than a naked Indian.
That was an appalling discovery, shaking Rich’s faith to its foundations. With Pliny proved incorrect, where was the thing to end? Rich stood stock still, while the pearls poured in a milky cascade from the leathern measure into a canvas bag before his unseeing eyes. The structure of his world was rocking unstably.
There was a loud squawk in his ear as the red parrot launched itself, with a fluttering of almost ineffectual wings, from the rigging beside him and just managed to reach his shoulder, retaining its balance there with a vigorous use of beak and claws.
“Lish,” it said. “Lish.”
It nibbled at his ear with a gentle beak, and maundered off, like an old man, into unintelligible Indian speech. Rich smoothed the ruffled feathers and felt in his pocket for the bit of weevilly ship’s biscuit which he had already begun to carry there for the parrot’s benefit — to the parrot this new kind of food appeared to be a supreme delicacy. Rodrigo Acevedo came along; he carried the jesses and the swivel and leash of the unhappy hawk which had died on the voyage out, and with long busy fingers he quickly looped the jesses round the parrot’s legs and attached the leash.
“There will be no need to cut his wing feathers now,” he remarked; he rubbed the parrot under the beak, and the parrot dug his claws into Rich’s shoulder in an ecstasy.
“It is very generous of you, sir,” said Rich.
“Oh, a mere nothing, Don Narciso,” answered Acevedo.
“And I am in your debt for more than that,” went on Rich.
It was to Acevedo that he owed his baseless reputation as a swordsman, perhaps life itself as well, and certainly the satisfactory settlement of an incident which might have caused the gravest possible trouble. There had never yet been an opportunity, in the crowded ship, for Rich to express his gratitude, and Rich had never attempted to make an opportunity even though he had repeatedly told himself that he ought to. Shyness had held him back — he was blushing now as he spoke.
“That also was a mere nothing, sir,” said Acevedo. His handsome face wore a smile, but he was as much embarrassed as Rich was.
“Nothing to you, perhaps,” said Rich.
“I think it is going to rain,” said Acevedo; García had drifted within earshot from the crowd round the pearls. Acevedo petted the parrot, which squawked and flapped and dug its claws with delight. García came and joined in. The fantastic blue and red — a color combination so bold as to be on the verge of the unpleasing — played under his hands.
They had left behind them the Pearl Islands and the coast of Paria, and had turned boldly to the north-west towards Española. The wind blew steadily from the east — sometimes backing towards the north so that the ships could hardly hold their course, sometimes veering southerly so that, with the wind over her quarter, the
Holy Name
put on her best speed, the spray flying from her bluff bows in gorgeous rainbows. Dolphins accompanied them, leaping in the waves of the wake like children playing a game. At the mastheads the lookouts kept keen watch over these seas which no ship had ever sailed before, but they saw no shoals, no land, only the blue clear water with the white wave crests in dazzling contrast. At noon the sun passed over their heads, so that a man’s shadow lay round his feet; at evening it sank into the sea, leaving the eastward sky already dark with night even while the glows of sunset still colored the west.
Every hour they measured the speed of the ship through the water, chalking the figure on the board; at noontime the Admiral, balanced stiffly on the heaving deck, took the altitude of the sun as best he could with his astrolabe, and at night that of the Pole Star as it peeped over the horizon, while the ship, hove-to, pitched steadily over the regular swell. In his great cabin the Admiral had a grubby parchment, cracked along its folds, on which some German philosopher had inscribed, with colored pigments, the signs of the zodiac and the corresponding heights of the sun — the sun was in Leo now, and it should have been easy to calculate their distance from the equator. But Rich, observing the pendulum of the astrolabe, swinging uncontrollably with the heave of the ship, was not so sure; and even in those clear, vivid nights the vagueness of the horizon — as he discovered when he timidly handled the quadrant — made the altitude of the Pole Star an equally vague figure.
He mentioned his doubts in conversation with the Admiral; in his opinion they could not be certain of their latitude within five or six degrees, a hundred leagues or so. As for the other coordinate which would help them to fix their position — the longitude, about which the Greek philosophers discussed so glibly — he already knew the difficulty regarding that. With a compass of unknown variation, and with unknown currents deflecting them from their course, it seemed to Rich quite unlikely that they would ever see Española — they might miss even San Juan Bautista and Cuba, and arrive in China or some new undiscovered land. But so diplomatically did he express his doubts that the Admiral hardly guessed at them.
“In five days,” he said, “if the wind holds and no undiscovered land lies on our course, we shall sight Española.”
He looked up from the chart, in the dim light of the lanterns, and Rich could see the calm certainty of his expression. The Admiral had no doubt at all regarding his own ability in the practice of his art. But it was the same certainty which he had displayed regarding the proximity of the Earthly Paradise, or regarding the transmutation of dewdrops into pearls. Rich did not know what to believe; but one thing only was certain and that was that nothing he could do would make any difference. At sea one was never one’s own master unless in command. He tried to compose himself to wait in patience.
And five days later at noon the lookout, hailing from the masthead, announced land. The Admiral was summoned, and came limping on deck; right ahead lay the land like a chalk mark of a different blue on the horizon where the blue of the sky met the blue of the sea.
“You see, we have sighted land within five days, as I foretold, Don Narciso,” said the Admiral.
“And it is Española, Your Excellency?” ventured Rich. The question brought the Admiral’s brows together.
“Naturally!” he said, but there was more surprise than anger in his voice. He had not thought Rich such a fool as still to have doubts on that score.
Yet as the squadron drew closer, and the land acquired definition, Rich saw him looking more anxiously towards it under his shaggy white eyebrows. The deep-set blue eyes strained in their effort to make out the details. He consulted with Alonso Perez, his servant and the only other man in the squadron who had sailed these waters before.
“Don Narciso,” said the Admiral at length, “my navigation has been faulty.”
“It gives me pain to hear Your Excellency say that,” said Rich, and waited to hear whether they had sighted Cuba.
“It must be that the currents are stronger than I have allowed for,” said the Admiral. “Or perhaps it is the needle — yet I think it must have been the currents. We are not in sight of San Domingo, as I intended to be. That point there is the island of Beata, five full leagues to leeward.”
“Only five leagues!” exclaimed Rich.
He could only marvel; it was miraculous to him.
“Five leagues to
leeward
!” snapped the Admiral. “Thirty leagues to windward would have caused less delay.”
He stumped about the deck on his rheumaticky legs, in irritation.
“But your Excellency,” protested Rich, “it is seven weeks to the day since we left Cape Verde, and that was the last known land which we sighted. An error of five leagues in a voyage of seven weeks! It is amazing — extraordinary.”
The enthusiasm and astonishment in his voice were so obviously genuine that the Admiral could not help but be touched by them.
“It is kind of you to say so, Don Narciso,” he said, a little flush of pleasure showing in his cheekbones above his white beard. “But I am all impatience. I wish to reach San Domingo. There is my brother, the
Adelantado
— I want to hear an account of his viceroyalty. And the gold mines of Hayna; they should be in full bearing by now. And the three ships we sent on from Ferro — I want to know if they have arrived yet. I am worried, Don Narciso.”
The Admiral had reason to be, as Rich knew, judging by the year-old reports which had reached Spain regarding the conditions in the colony. Rich looked about the crowded deck, at García, fleshy and arrogant, swaggering at Tarpia’s side; at the uncouth soldiers, who were plaguing Alonso Perez for information regarding this new land. It would not be many hours now before this fresh horde would be poured into the island. Now that he had had experience of Trinidad and Paria, Rich could visualize better the conditions prevailing here on the Admiral’s first landing — it had been an Earthly Paradise, too, a pagan paradise of few wants and all of them satisfied, and he could guess what a hell the first settlers had made of it; he had learned much since he had sailed from Spain. It would be his duty to advise the Admiral on how to repair the damage, how to render the island peaceful and productive again, and the instruments for the work would be this undisciplined mob. Rich felt a sinking at heart.
The hidalgos were grouped near him now, all talking together, the fresh wind ruffling their beards, for the squadron was now close-hauled, trying to claw up to windward towards Sail Domingo. They drew him into their conversation, and he stood among them a little awkwardly, for he never felt at ease among these men of war, with their hundred and twenty-eight quarterings of nobility apiece.
“What is the delay?” fumed Bernardo de Tarpia. “We are coming no nearer to the land.”
“Look, by God?” said Avila. “We are turning away from the land now!”
“We are going on the other tack,” explained Rich. “San Domingo lies to windward.”
They looked at him without understanding. Despite the length of the voyage none of them had acquired any knowledge of how a ship is worked. Horses and hawks and hounds, they understood — because they had been taught about them from boyhood; but none of them was possessed with the lively curiosity that urged Rich to learn about everything that came under his notice.
“How far is this San Domingo?” asked García.
“Five leagues.”
“And we shall not reach there tonight?”