THE island, we learned, was named Jamaica. The Admiral called it
Santiago, but it also rests Jamaica.
Of all these lands, outside of the low, small islands to which we came
first, Cuba seemed to us the peaceable land. Jamaica gave us almost
Carib welcome. Its folk had the largest canoes, the sharpest, toughest
lances. Perhaps they had heard from some bold sea rover that we had
come, but that we were not wholly gods!
Our crossbow men shot amongst them. The arrows failed to halt them,
but when we sent a bloodhound the dog did our work. It was to them what
griffon or fire-breathing dragon might be to a Seville throng. When the
creature sprang among them they uttered a great cry and fled. Jamaica is
most beautiful.
For not a few days we visited, sailing and anchoring, lifting again
and stopping again. Once the people were pacified, they gave us kindly
enough welcome, trading and wondering. We slipped by bold coasts and
headlands which we must double, mountains above us. They ran by inland
paths, saving distance, telling village after village. When we made
harbor, here was the thronged beach. Some of these people wore a slight
dress of woven grass and palm leaves, and they used crowns of bright
feathers. We got from them in some quantity golden ornaments. But south
for gold, south--south, they always pointed south!
The _Cordera_, the _Santa Clara_ and the _San Juan_ set sail out of the
Harbor of Good Weather, in Santiago or Jamaica. A day and a night of
pleasant sailing, then we saw the great Cuba coast rise blue in the
distance. The weather wheeled.
There was first a marvelous green hush, while clouds formed out of
nothing. We heard a moaning sound and we did not know its quarter. The
sea turned dead man’s color. Then burst the wind. It was more than
wind; it seemed the movement of a world upon us. Bare of all sails,
we labored. We were driven, one from the other. The mariners fell to
praying.
A strange light was around us, as though the tempest itself made a
light. By it I marked the Admiral, upright where he could best command
the whole. He had lashed himself there, for the ship tossed excessively.
His great figure stood; his white, blowing hair, in that strange light,
made for him a nimbus. It was strange, how the light seemed to seize
that and his brow and his gray-blue eyes. Below the eyes his lips moved.
He was shouting encouragement, but only the intention could be heard.
The intention was heard. He looked what he was, something more than a
bold man and a brave sea captain, and there streamed from him comfort.
It touched his mariners; it came among them like tongues of flame.
Darkness increased. We were now among lightnings like javelins and loud
thunder. Then fell the rain, in torrents, in drops large as plums. It
was as though another ocean was descending upon us.
It lasted and we endured. After long while came lessening in that weight
of rain, and then cessation. Suddenly the tempest was over. There shone
a star--three stars and on topmast and bowsprit Saint Elmo’s lights.
Our mariners shouted, “Safe--safe! Saint Elmo!”
Suddenly, over all the sky, were stars shining. The Admiral raised his
great voice. “Sing, all of us!
‘Stella Maris--Sancta Maria!’”
With the morning the _Santa Clara_ and the _San Juan_, beaten about,
some injury done, but alive! And the coast of Cuba, nearer, nearer, tall
and blue--and at last very tall and green and gold.
Off Cuba and still off Cuba, the southern coast now, as against the
northern that once we tried for a while. Sail and come to land, stay a
bit, and shake out sails once more!
Wherever we tarried we found peaceable if vastly excited Indians.
But still naked, but still unwise as to gold and spices, traders and
markets. Cambalu, Quinsai and Zaiton of the marble bridges!
“‘Somewhere,’ saith Messer Marco, ‘in part the country is savage, filled
with mountains, and here come few strangers, for the king will not have
them, in order that his treasures and certain matters of his kingdom
come not into the world’s knowledge.’ And again he saith, ‘The folk here
are naked.’--What wonder then,” said the Admiral, “that we find these
things! Yea, I feel surprised at the incessancy, but I check myself and
think, how vast is Asia, and what variousness must needs be!”
But we moved in a cloud of differences, and while on the one hand this
world was growing familiar, on the other the sense increased. “How vast
indeed must be Asia, if all this and yet we come not--and now it is
going on two years--to any clear hint of other than this!”
He himself, the Admiral, began to feel this strangeness. Or rather,
he had long felt it and fought the feeling, but now strongly it came
creeping over.
We were among the hugest number of small islands. Starboard loomed,
until it was lost in the farness, that coast that we were following, but
the three ships were in a half-land, half-water world. We wandered in
this labyrinth, keeping with difficulty our way, so crooked and narrow
the channels, so many the sandbars. From deck it minded me of that sea
of weed we met in the first passage.
Waves of fragrance struck us. “Ha!” cried the Admiral. “Can you not
smell cinnamon, spikenard, nutmeg, cloves and galingal?” His faith was
so strong that we did smell. From one of these islands, the _Cordera_
lying at anchor and a boat going ashore, we took a number of pigeons. So
unafraid were these birds that our men approached them easily and beat
them down with a pike. We had them for supper, and when their crops
were opened, the cook found and brought to the Admiral a number of
brown seeds. The Admiral dropped them into clear water, then smelled and
tasted. “Cloves? Are they not cloves?” He gave to Juan de la Cosa and to
me who also tasted and thought they might be cloves. But we did not find
their tree, and we saw no signs of ever a merchant of Cathay or Mangi or
Ind.
Christopherus Columbus leaned upon the rail of the _Cordera_. In this
islet world we lay at anchor for the night. “Do you know what it is,” he
asked, “to have a word color the whole day long?” He glanced around, but
none was very near. “My Word to-day is _magic_. I’d not give it to any
but you, and I drop my voice in saying it. I’ll sail on through magic
and against magic, for I have Help from Above! But I’ll not lay a
fearsome word among those who are not so accorded! All say India hath
high magic, and the Grand Khan takes from that country his astrologers
and sorcerers. I have read that at Shandu, if there be long raining,
they will mount a tower by the palace and wave it back, so that the
falling rain makes but a pleasant wall around the king’s fair garden
that itself rests in sunshine. Also that without touching them they
cause the golden flagons to fill with red wine and to move through air,
with no hand upon them, to the king’s table. That was long ago. We have
had no news of them of late. They may do now more marvelous, vaster
things.”
“And the moral?”
“I said, ‘They do them there.’ Perhaps this is there.”
“I take you!” I said and half-laughed. “We may be in Cathay all this
while, under the golden roofs, with the bells strung from the eaves.
Yonder line of cranes standing in the shallow water, watching us, may,
God wot, be tall magicians in white linen and scarlet silk!”
He crossed himself. The cranes had lifted themselves and flown away. “If
they heard--”
“Are you in earnest?”
He put his hands over his eyes. “Sometimes I think it may be fact,
sometimes not! Sorcery is a fact, and who knows how far it may go? At
times my brain is like to crack, I have so cudgeled it!”
That he cudgeled it was true, and though his brain never cracked and
to the end was the best brain in a hundred, yet from this time forth I
began to mark in him an unearthliness.
These islands we named the Queen’s Gardens, and escaping from them came
again to clean coast. On we went for two days, and this part of Cuba had
many villages, at sea edge or a little from the water, and all men and
women were friendly and brought us gifts.
I remember a moonlight night. All were aboard the _Cordera_, the _Santa
Clara_ and the _San Juan_, for we meant to sail at dawn. We had left
a village yet dancing and feasting. The night was a miracle of silver.
Again I stood beside Christopherus Columbus; from land streamed their
singing and their thin, drumming and clashing music. At hand it is
rather harsh than sweet, but distance sweetened it.
“What will be here in the future--if there are not already here, after
your notion, great cities and bridges and shipping, and only our eyes
holden and our hands and steps made harmless? Or nearly harmless, for we
have slain some Indians!”
He had made a gesture of deprecation. “Ah, that, I hardly doubt, was my
fancy! But in the future I see them, your cities!”
“Do you see them, from San Salvador onward and everywhere,--Spanish
cities?”
“Necessarily--seeing that the Holy Father hath given the whole of the
land to Spain.” He looked at the moon that was so huge and bright, and
listened to the savage music. “If we go far enough--walking afar--who
knoweth what we shall find?” He stood motionless. “_I_ do not know. It
is in God’s hands!”
“Do you see,” I asked, “a great statue of yourself?”
“Yes, I see that.”
The moon shone so brightly it was marvel. Land breeze brought perfume
from the enormous forest. “It is too fair to sleep!” said the Admiral.
“I will sit here and think.”
He slept little at any time. His days were filled with action. Never
was any who had more business to attend to! Yet he was of those to whom
solitude is as air,--imperiously a necessity. Into it he plunged through
every crack and cranny among events. He knew how to use the space
in which swim events. But beside this he must make for himself wide
holdings, and when he could not get them by day he took from night.
We came again to a multitude of islets like to the Queen’s Gardens. And
these were set in a strange churned and curdled sea, as white as milk.
Making through it as best we might, we passed from that silverness and
broken land into a great bay or gulf, so deep that we might hardly find
bottom, and here we anchored close to a long point of Cuba covered thick
with palms.
We went ashore for water and fruit. Solitary--neither man nor woman! We
found tracks upon the sand that some among us would have it were made
by griffons. One of our men had the thought that he might procure some
large bird for the Admiral’s table. Taking a crossbow he passed alone
through the palms into the deeper wood. He was gone an hour, and when he
returned it was in haste, with a chalk face and great eyes. I was seated
in the boat with the master of the _Cordera_ and heard his tale. He had
found what he thought a natural aisle of the forest and had stolen
down it, looking keenly for pigeon or larger bird. A tree with drooping
branches stood across the aisle, he said. He went around the trunk,
which was a great one, and it was as though he had turned into the nave
of the cathedral. There was space, but trees like pillars on either
side, and at the end three great trees covered to the tops with vine and
purple grapes. And here he saw before him, under the greatest tree,
a man in a long white gown like a White Friar. The sight halted him,
turned him, he averred, to stone. Two more men in white dresses but
shorter than that of the first, came from among the trees and he saw
behind these a number in like clothing. He could not tell, now he
thought of it, if they were carrying lances or palms. We had looked so
long for clothed folk that it was the white clothes he thought of. The
same with their faces--he could not tell about them--he thought they
were fair. Suddenly, it seemed, Pan had fallen upon him and put him
forth in terror. He had turned and raced through the forest, here to the
sea. He did not think the white-clad men had seen him.
We took him to the Admiral who listened, then brought his hands
together. “Hath it not--hath it not, I ask you--sound of Prester John?”
With the dawn he had men ashore, and there he went himself, with
him Juan de la Cosa and Juan Lepe. The crossbowman--it was Felipe
Garcia--showed the way. We found indeed the forest aisle and nave, and
the three trees and the purple grapes, a vast vine with heavy clusters,
but we found no men and no sign of men.
The Admiral was not discouraged. “If he truly saw then, and I believe he
did, then are they somewhere--”
We beat all the neighborhood. Solitary, solitary! He divided the most
determined of us--so many from each ship--into two bands and sent in
two directions. We were to search, if necessary, through ten leagues.
We went, but returned empty of news of clothed men. We found desolate
forest, and behind that a vast, matted, low growth, impenetrable and
extending far away. At last we determined that Felipe Garcia had seen
white cranes. Unless it were magic--
We sailed on and we sailed on. The _Cordera_, the _Santa Clara_ and
the _San Juan_ were in bad case, hurt in that storm between Jamaica and
Cuba, and wayworn since in those sandy seas, among those myriad islets.
Our seamen and our shipmasters now loudly wished return to Isabella.
He pushed us farther on and farther on, and still we did not come to
anything beyond those things we had already reached, nor did we come
either to any end of Cuba. And what was going on in Hispaniola--in
Isabella? We had sailed in April and now it was July.
It became evident to him at last that he must turn. The Viceroy and the
Admiral warred in him, had long warred and would war. Better for him had
he never insisted upon viceroyship! Then, single-minded, he might have
discovered to the end of his days.
We turned, the _Cordera_, the _Santa Clara_ and the _San Juan_, and
still he believed that the long, long coast of Cuba was the coast of the
Asia main. He saw it as a monster cape or prolongation, sprouting into
Ocean-Sea as sprouts Italy into Mediterranean. Back--back--the way
we had come, entering again that white sea, entangled again among a
thousand islets!
At last we came again to that Cape of the Cross to which we had escaped
in the Jamaica tempest. One thing he would yet do in this voyage and
that was to go roundabout homeward by Jamaica and find out further
things of that great and fair island. We left Cuba that still we thought
was the main. Santiago or Jamaica rose before us, dark blue mountains
out of the dark blue sea. For one month we coasted this island, for
always the weather beat us back when we would quit it, setting our sails
for Hispaniola.
We came to Hayti upon the southern side, and because of some
misreckoning failed of knowing that it was Hayti, until an Indian in a
canoe below us, called loudly “El Almirante!” And yet Isabella was the
thickness of the island from us, and the weather becoming foul, we beat
about for long days, struggling eastward and pushed back, and again
parting upon a stormy night one ship from the others. The _Cordera_
anchored by a tall, rocky islet and rode out the storm. Here, when it
was calm, we went ashore, but found no man, only an unreckonable number
of pigeons. The Admiral lay on clean, warm sand and rested with his eyes
shut. I was glad we were nigh to Isabella and his house there, for I did
not think him well. He sat up, embracing his great knees and looking at
the sea and the _Cordera_. “I have been thinking, Doctor.”
“For your health, my Admiral, I wish you could rest a while from
thinking!”
“We were upon the south side of Mangi. I am assured of that! Could I,
this time, have sailed on--Now I see it!”
He dropped his hands from his knees and turned full toward me. I saw
that lying thus for an hour he had gathered strength and now was passed,
as he was wont to pass after quiet, into a high degree of vision,
accompanied by forth-going energy. “Now I see, and as soon as I may,
I will do! Beyond Mangi, Champa. Beyond Champa, the coast trending
southward, India of the Ganges and the Golden Chersonese. Land of
Gold--Land of Gold!--are they not forever pointing southward? But it
is not of gold--or wholly gold--that now I think! _Aurea Chersonesus_
maketh a vast peninsula, greater maybe than Italy, Greece and Spain
taken together. But I will round it, and I will come to the mouth of
Ganges! Then again, I read, we go southward! There is the Kingdom of
Maabar where Saint Thomas is buried, and the Kingdom of Monsul where the
diamonds are found. Then we come to the Island of Zeilan, where is the
Tomb of our Father Adam. Here are sapphires, amethysts, topaz, garnet
and rubies. There is a ruby here beyond price, large as a man’s two
fists and a well of red fire. But what I should think most of would be
to stand where Adam laid him down.--Now from the Island of Zeilan I sail
across the India sea. And I go still south, three hundred leagues, and I
find the great island of Madagascar whose people are Saracens and there
is the rukh-bird that can lift an elephant, and they cut the red sandal
there and find ambergris. Then lifteth Zanzibar whose women are monsters
and where the market is in elephant teeth. And so I come at last to
the extremity of Africa which Bartholomew Diaz found--my brother, Don
Bartholomew being with him--and named Good Hope. So I round Good Hope,
and I come home by Cape Bojador which I myself have seen. I will pass
Fez and Ercilla and the straits and Cadiz. I will enter the River Sagres
at Palos, for there was where I first put forth. The bells of La Rabida
will ring, for a thing is done that was never done before, and that
will not cease to resound! I shall have sailed around the earth.
Christopherus Columbus. Ten ships. Ten chances of there being one in
which I may come home!”
“There have been worse dreams!” said Juan Lepe.
“I warrant you! But I am not dreaming.”
He rose and stood with arms outstretched, crosswise.
“‘Nought is hid,’ saith Scripture, ‘but shall be found!’ Here is Earth.
Do you not think that one day we shall go all about it? Aye, freely,
freely! With zest and joy, discovering that it is a loved home. For
every road some man or men broke the clods!”
They hailed us from the _Cordera_. One had seen from topmast the _Santa
Clara_.
Still we sailed by the south coast of Hispaniola. We knew now that it
was not Cipango. But it was a great island, natheless, and one day might
be as Cipango. Beata, Soana, Mona were the little islands that we found.
We sailed between them and our great island, and at last we came to the
corner and turned northward, and again after days to another corner and
sailed west once more, with hopes now of Isabella. It was the first week
in September.
In a great red dawn, Roderigo, the Admiral’s servant, roused Juan Lepe.
“Come--come--come, Doctor!”
I sprang from my bed and followed him. Christopherus Columbus lay in a
deep swoon. Round he came from that and said, “Roderigo, tell them that
I am perfectly well, but wish to see no one!” From that, he came to
recognize me. “Doctor, I am tired. God and Our Lady only know how tired
I am!”
His eyes shut, his head sank deep into the bed. He said not another
word, that day nor the next nor the next. Roderigo and I forced him to
swallow a little food and wine, and once he rose and made as if to go
on deck. But we laid him down again and he sank into movelessness and a
sleep of all the faculties. Juan de la Cosa took care of the _Cordera_.
So we sighted Isabella and in the harbor four caravels that had not been
there when we had sailed in April.