THE weather plagued us. The rains were cataracts, the lightning
blinding, the thunder loud enough to wake the dead. Day after day,
until this weather grew to seem a veritable Will, a Demon with a grudge
against us.
The _Margarita_ sailed no better; she sailed worse. The Admiral
considered abandoning her, taking the Adelantado upon the _Consolacion_
and dividing his crew among the three ships. But the Adelantado’s pride
and obstinacy and seamanship were against that. “I’ll sail her, because
San Domingo thinks I can!”
Stormy days and nights, and the Admiral watching. “The _Margarita_! Ho,
look out! Do you see the _Margarita_?”
In the midst of foul weather came foully back the gout that crippled
him. I would have had him stay in his bed. “I cannot! How do you think
I can?” In the end he had us build him some kind of shelter upon deck,
fastening there a bench and laying a pallet upon this. Here, propped
against the wood, covered with cloaks, he still watched the sea and how
went our ship and the other ships.
Day after day and day after day! Creeping eastward along a bad shore, in
the teeth of the demon. The seas, the winds, the enormous rain wore us
out. Men grew large-eyed. If we slept came a shriek and wakened us. We
would put to land, but the wind turned and thrust us out again, or we
found no harbor. We seemed to be fixed in one place while time rushed by
us.
Forecastle began to say, “It is enchantment!” Presently poop echoed
it. The boy Fernando brought it to his father. “Alonso de Zamorra and
Bernardo the Apothecary say that demons and witches are against us.”
“The Prince of the Power of the Air!” said the Admiral. “It may be,
child! Paynimry against Christianity. We had a touch of the same quality
once off Cuba. But is it, or is it not, Christian men shall win! And
send me Bartholomew Fiesco. Such talk is injury. It bores men’s courage
worse than the _teredo_ a ship’s bottom!”
We thought the foul weather would never cease, and our toil would never
cease--then lo! at the point of despair the sky cleared with a great
clap of light, the coast turned sharply, sheerly south--he named the
great cape, Cape Gracias a Dios--and we ran freely, West again.
Coming in three days to a wide river mouth, in we turned. The shore was
grown with reeds that would do for giants’ staffs. On mud banks we saw
the crocodile, “cayman” they call it. Again the sky hung a low, gray
roof; a thin wind whistled, but for all that it was deathly hot. Seeing
no men, we sent two boats with Diego Mendez up the stream. They were not
gone a half league, when, watching from the _Consolacion_ we marked a
strange and horrid thing. There came without wind a swelling of the sea.
Our ships tossed as in tempest, and there entered the river a wall of
sea water. Meeting the outward passing current, there ensued a fury with
whirlpools. It caught the boats. Diego Mendez saved his, but the other
was seized, tossed and engulfed. Eight men drowned.
The thing sank as it had come. The River of Disaster, we named it,
and left this strip of coast that seemed to us gloomy and portentous.
“_Wizardry! It’s not to be lucky, this voyage_.” It was now late
September.
Next day, we anchored, it being most clear and beautiful. We lay beside
a verdurous islet, between it and a green shore. Here were all our
fruits, and we thought we smelled cinnamon and clove. Across, upon
the main, stood a small village. _Cariari_ the Indians there called
themselves. They had some gold, but not to touch that canoe from
Yucatan. Likewise they owned a few cotton mantles, with jars of baked
clay, and we saw a copper hatchet. But they did not themselves make
these things. They had drifted to them, we thought, from a people far
more skilled.
The Admiral cried, “When and when and when shall we come to this
people?”
I answered, “I tell you what is in my mind, and I have got it, I think,
from your inmost mind, out of which you will not let it come forth
because you have had a great theory and think you must stand to it.
But what if this that you have underneath is a greater one? What if the
world truly is larger than Alfraganus or the ancients thought? What if
all this that we have found since the first island and that means only
beginnings of what is to be found; what if it is not Asia at all? What
if it is a land mass, great as Europe or greater, that no one knew
anything of? What if over by the sunset there is Ocean-Sea again, true
ocean and as many leagues to Asia as to Spain? What if they cannot lead
us to Quinsai, Cambaluc or Zaiton, or to the Ganges’ mouth, or Aurea
Chersonesus, because they never heard of them, and they have no ships to
pass again an Ocean-Sea? What if it is all New, and all the maps have to
be redrawn?”
He looked at me as I spoke, steadily and earnestly. What Juan Lepe said
was not the first entry into his mind of something like that. But he
was held by that great mass of him that was bound by the thinking of the
Venerable. He was free far and far beyond most, but to certain things
he clung like a limpet. “The Earthly Paradise!” he said, and he looked
toward that Paria that we thought ran across our south. “When our first
parents left the Earthly Paradise, they and their sons and daughters and
all the peoples to come wandered by foot into Chaldea and Arabia. So
it could not be!” His blue-gray eyes under that great brow and shock of
white hair regarded the south.
This faery island--the Garden he called it--and the Cariari who came to
us from the main. One day they saw one of us take out pen and inkhorn
and write down their answers to our many questions. Behind us lay the
blue sea, before us the deep groves of the islet; between us and the
rich shade stood gathered a score of these Indians. They looked at the
one seated on the sand, industriously making black marks upon a white
sheet. The Indian speaking stopped short and put up an arm in an
attitude of defense; another minute and they had all backed from us into
the wood. We saw only excited, huddled eyes. Then one started forth,
advancing over the sand, and he had a small gourd filled with some
powder which he threw before him. He scattered it ceremonially between
us and himself and his fellows, a slow, measured rite with muttered
words and now and then a sharp, rising note.
Cried Juan Sanchez the pilot, “What’s he doing?”
Juan Lepe answered before he thought, “He thinks the notary yonder is
a magician and the pen his wand. Something is being done to them!
Counter-magic.”
“Then they are enchanters!” cried Alonso de Zamorro.
Our great cluster gave back. “Fix an arrow and shoot him down!” That was
Diego de Porras.
The Adelantado turned sharply. “Do no such thing! There may be spells,
but the worst spell here would be a battle!” We let fly no arrow, but
the belief persisted that here was seen veritably at work the necromancy
that all along they had guessed.
A party crossed to the main with the Adelantado and pushed a league
into as tall and thick and shadowy a forest as ever we met in all our
wanderings. Here we found no village, but came suddenly, right in the
wood, upon a very great thatched hut, and in it, upon a stone, lay
in state a dead cacique. He seemed long dead, but the body had not
corrupted; it was saved by some knowledge such as had the Egyptians.
A crown of feathers rested upon the head and gold was about the neck.
Around the place stood posts and slabs of a dark wood and these were cut
and painted with I do not know what of beast and bird and monstrous idol
forms. We stared. The place was shadowy and very silent. At last with
an oath said Francisco de Porras, “Take the gold!” But the Adelantado
cried, “No!” and going out of the hut that was almost a house we left
the dead cacique and his crown and mantle and golden breastplate. Two
wooden figures at the door grinned upon us. We saw now what seemed a
light brown powder strewed around and across the threshold. One of our
men, stooping, took up a pinch then dropped it hastily. “It is the same
they threw against us!”
“Wizardry! We’ll find harm from them yet!” That song crept in now at
every turn.
We sailed from the Garden south by east along the endless coast that no
strait broke. At first fair weather ran with us. But the _Margarita_
was so lame! And all our other ships wrenched and worm-pierced. And the
Admiral was growing old before our eyes. Not his mind or his soul but
his frame.
He bettered, left his bed and walked the deck. And then we came to the
coast we called the Golden Coast, and his hope spread great wings again,
and if our mariners talked of magic it was for a time glistening white.
Gold, gold! A deep bay, thronged at the mouth with islets so green
and fair, they were marvel to us who were sated with islands great and
small. We entered under overhanging trees, and out at once to us shot
twenty canoes. The Indians within wore gold in amount and purity far
beyond anything in ten years. Oh, our ships could scarce contain their
triumph! The Admiral looked a dreamer who comes to the bliss center in
his dream. Gold was ever to him symbol and mystery. He did not look upon
it as a buyer of strife and envy, idleness and soft luxury; but as a
buyer of crusades, ships and ships, discoveries and discoveries, and
Christ to enter heathendom.
Gold! Discs of great size, half-moons, crescent moons, pierced for a
cotton string. Small golden beasts and birds, poorly carved but golden.
They traded freely; we gathered gold. And there was more and more, they
said, at Veragua, wherever that might be, and south and east it seemed
to be.
Veragua! We would go there. Again we hoisted sail and in our ships,
now all unseaworthy, crept again in a bad wind along the coast of
gold,--Costa Rico. At last we saw many smokes from the land. That would
be a large Indian village. We beat toward it, found a river mouth and
entered. But Veragua must have heard of us from a swift land traveler.
When a boat from each ship would approach the land--it was in the
afternoon, the sun westering fast--a sudden burst of a most melancholy
and awful din came from the forest growing close to water side.
One of our men cried “Wizards!” The Admiral spoke from the stern of
the long boat. “And what if they be wizards? We may answer, ‘We are
Christians!’”
The furious din continued but now we were nearer. “Besides,” he said,
“those are great shells and drums.”
Our rowers held off. Out of the forest on to the narrow beach started
several hundred shell-blowing, drum-beating barbarians, marvelously
feathered and painted and with bows and arrows and wooden swords.
An arrow stuck in the side of our boat, others fell short. The Admiral
rose, tall, broad-shouldered, though lean as winter where there is
winter, with hair as white as milk. He held in his hand a string of
green beads and another of hawk bells which he made to ring, but he did
not depend more upon them than upon what he held within him of powerful
and pacific. He sent his voice, which he could make deep as a drum
and reaching as one of those great shells. “Friends--friends! Bringing
Christ!”
An arrow sang past him. His son would have drawn him down, but,
“No--no!” and “Friends--friends! Bringing Christ!”
And whether they thought that “Christ” was the beads and the bell, or
whether the bowman in him did send over good will and make it to enter
their hearts, or whether it was somewhat of both, they did suddenly grow
friendly. Whereupon we landed.
Gold! We took much gold from this place. One of our men, touched by the
sun, sat and babbled. “Oh, the faithful golden coast! Oh, the gold that
is to come! Great golden ships sailing across blue sea! A hundred--no, a
thousand--what do I say? A million Indians with baskets long and wide on
their backs and the baskets filled with gold! The baskets are so great
and the gold so heavy that the Indians are bowed down till they go on
all fours. Gold,--a mountain of pure gold and every Spaniard in Spain
and a few Italians--golden kings--” When we had all we could get, up
sail and on!
Sail on and on along the golden coast of Veragua! Come to a river and
land, for all that again we heard drums and those great shells strongly
blown. Make peace and trade. And here again was gold, gold, gold. We
were now assured that the main was far richer than any island. Turbulent
hope,--that was the chief lading now of the four ships. Gold! Gold!
Golden moon disks and golden rude figures. We found a lump of gold
wrought like a maize ear.
What was beyond that, by itself under trees, we found an ancient,
broken, true wall, stone and lime. The stones were great ones, set
truly, with care. The wall was old; the remainder of house, if house or
temple there had been, broken from it. Now the forest overran all. We
did not know when or by whom it was built, and we found no more like it.
But here was true masonry. All of us said that the world of the main was
not the world of the islands.
Ciguarre. These Indians declared it was Ciguarre we should seek. Now
that we were in Veragua--seek Ciguarre.
So we sailed beyond Veragua hunting the strait which we must pass
through to Ganges and Ind of old history.