Iago nodded, unwilling to be drawn further by the meddling cleric then, thinking that his misgivings were deep enough to demand explanation, he expressed them. ‘It is not only that they discommode the working of the upper deck,’ he said at last, ‘but that they raise weights high in the ship. It is always better to keep such things below hatches.’
Marmolejo seemed concerned with this revelation. ‘Yes, I comprehend your argument,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Much, if not all, is the captain-general’s indulgence, that is to say his own or belonging to men of his faction.’
‘I did not know there were extreme factions aboard the ship,’ Iago said disingenuously.
The friar nodded. ‘Alas, my son, tell me when in the affairs of men they are absent?’ The question was rhetorical. ‘But this is not simply the spiritual against the secular, this is exacerbated by Guillestigui’s Basque following. I pray that nothing on this voyage seeks to separate our common humanity.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Iago with perfect sincerity, lifting his gaze to stare ahead.
Marmolejo sighed. Apparently he had forgotten Iago’s warning. Instead of pursuing the matter he merely crossed himself and said, ‘Well, my son, all will be well. We are all subject to God’s will.’
‘Of course, Father, but I see the Devil, or at least the mustering of some of his angels, to the westward.’ Iago pointed to the distant horizon.
Beyond the looming bulk of Corregidor and the line of the horizon which glowed like a silver bar against the gathering cloud, the sky had darkened and the mass of boiling cloud was now rolling over the rim of the world.
‘I may seem a sobrasaliente, Father, but my seaman’s instincts warn me that, God or the Devil notwithstanding, that brew is going to punish us for all our sins before nightfall.’
The words were hardly out of Iago’s mouth before the sails, which a moment before had been full-bellied and drawing, suddenly fell slack and slatted against the mast as the wind dropped away. The ship’s heel eased and a moment later they filled again and the Santa Margarita, having faltered momentarily in her stride, picked up speed again.
Iago turned. Behind him Juan Lorenzo was staring ahead, an expression of apprehension on his face.
‘Señor Lorenzo!’ Iago called to the pilot-major. ‘The sky ahead . . .’
‘Aye, Don Iago, I see it!’ Lorenzo barked an order which brought Diego de Llerena on deck.
‘¡Velas mayores! ¡Palanquins! Courses! Clew garnets, there! Haul up the courses! Look lively, damn you!’ And the waist of the ship came alive as rattans chivvied the reluctant and unfamiliar sailors to the pin-rails while on the poop above Guillestigui, who had not left the deck but had been in conversation with his sergeant-major, Pedro Ruiz de Olalde, moved forward to the rail and looked down, querying the reduction in sail.
‘The wind, Excellency,’ Lorenzo explained, waving his right arm in the direction of the darkening sky, ‘it is about to change.’
‘¡Diablo!’ Guillestigui swore as the wind died away completely, just as the courses were gathered up to the lower yards in their buntlines.
‘They would be wise to get the topgallants off the ship too,’ Iago said, half to himself and half to Fray Mateo, as a gun was fired to draw the attention of the other vessels to the fact that the captain-general’s ship was shortening down. Already the San Geronimo’s lower sails were being clewed up.
‘That wind,’ the friar said, pointing ahead, ‘I see it coming and that from the contrary direction.’
Iago too could see the line of white caps that spread rapidly across the darkening sea towards them. ‘You have good eyes, Father,’ he said wondering whether to intervene and advise Lorenzo to furl the uppermost sails, the topgallants. But the pilot-major, assisted now by the active Olivera, was ordering the helm over and the yards braced sharp up before the Santa Margarita was caught flat aback. If she was to be struck by a violent wind she risked dismasting at a stroke.
The accompanying ships in the flota were following the captain-general’s example and the squadron lay to, yards braced up on the starboard tack, the courses gathered in their bunts, the upper sails flat, drooping lifelessly. As the braces were coiled down, the ship wallowed and Lorenzo ordered the topgallants struck.
‘Steady . . .’ Iago murmured, as if he were himself at the con and standing close to the men on the whipstaff. He braced himself with such obvious deliberation that instinctively Marmolejo copied him. Iago looked aloft at the topgallants then the topsails. ‘For God’s sake hurry, master pilot, hurry,’ he muttered more to himself than to the nautically ignorant friar beside him. ‘What in God’s name keeps the men from . . . ?’
Then, as the seamen, having mustered about the fore- and mainmasts, began to start halliards and haul upon buntlines and reefing tackles, below them out from under the break of the half-deck, wandering into the sunshine with an air of curiosity engendered by the activity on deck, strolled Don Baldivieso de los Arrocheros and his pregnant wife.
‘Señor,’ Iago called down, ‘go below and secure your person and that of your wife. This is no place for you at the moment.’
Arrocheros looked up. ‘Why . . . ?’
‘Do as Don Iago advises, Don Baldivieso,’ Marmolejo put in authoritatively, ‘we are about to be struck by a squall!’
Making a little cry, Doña Catalina turned away from her husband as the ship was suddenly plunged into the gloom thrown by cloud obscuring the sun. The sea turned dark and then the first breath of contrary wind struck them. It filled the slack sails as they watched the advancing wave-caps and heard the growing noise harping in the rigging. And then it hit them, the wind first, followed by a thin curtain of rain that reduced Corregidor to a purple shadow on the starboard beam as the Santa Margarita heeled sharply to the thrust of the squall. The cry of it in the rigging rose to a harsh scream. Beside Iago, Marmolejo, his habit flapping and flogging at his legs, crossed himself with one hand even as the other clung to the rail.
‘This is, in truth, a fiendish thing,’ the friar called out, choking off the remark and the Santa Margarita’s lee rail drove under and Iago spun to call, ‘¡Juanetes!’
But Lorenzo was already shouting for the topgallant halliards to be let go and Olivera was amidships, wading waist-deep through the sea water cascading over the lee rail while from down below came the noise of breaking crockery, unsecured objects toppling over and the cries of the terrified and uncomprehending passengers among which Iago could hear the squeals of Doña Catalina and the nuns.
‘Dear God!’ Marmolejo enunciated quite distinctly amid the uproar. Even the starting of the topgallant halliards from their pins did not ease the Santa Margarita and she pressed further and further over, driving through the sea with an unimaginable velocity. Looking aloft, Iago could see the problem lay in the angle of heel preventing the topgallant yard parrels sliding easily down their masts. The newness of the gear did not help, but the failure of the sails to drop and lose their energy meant they remained full of wind, exacerbating the peril of their situation.
In the waist Olivera had seen the problem and was shouting to Llerena, and that worthy blew a blast on his whistle to waken the dead, then bellowed for the topmen to get aloft. Still the men in the waist seemed paralysed, stunned into an immobile watching as the ship heeled further and further over. So far over did she lean that water poured over the lee rail into the waist with a roar and the lower yards dipped until the main yardarm touched the surface of the sea. Here it threw up a white plume as it drew along the surface until the ship lifted a little.
‘God damn them for idle swine,’ Iago growled. He could watch no longer and leapt for the half-deck ladder, ran forward and sprang up, into the weather main rigging. He crossed the deck, climbing the steep angle encumbered by the deck-borne cargo; Olivera was behind him and the resolution of these two men seemed to galvanize a few of the stouter-hearted and more experienced seamen on deck.
Iago heard Olivera shout that he would take the foremast, bu
t he paid little heed as he gasped for breath, inhibited from doing so naturally by the strength of the gale. Once he had begun Iago found going aloft both too easy and dangerous. Such was the Santa Margarita’s angle of heel that the slope of the shrouds was so gentle that he could almost run along them despite the fact that it was years since he had been aloft. But he could feel, too, the immense tension in them, for the Santa Margarita was overpressed to the very point of disaster, and the huge maincourse, though clewed up in deep festoons of heavy, new canvas, nevertheless flogged in response to the wind driven into it. Such was the violence that it felt as though it must shake the masts, rigging and even the ship herself into a thousand pieces.
Swinging himself over the maintop, Iago grasped the over-taut shaking topmast shrouds and continued his ascent, the great white concavity of the straining maintopsail bellying to leeward, resistant to the half-hearted tug of the reef tackles, its sheets still holding its clews down to the main yard below. It was as stiff as a board, yet it too seemed to tremble and shake. Why, he thought almost inconsequentially as he struggled upwards, had the men on deck not started the sheets?
He looked down, seeing the ship like a half-tide rock, the waist still swept by the sea, the poop and forecastle prominent islands amid the torrent. But Iago was more interested in what lay above him as he climbed over the upper mast doubling. He sought the topgallant shrouds and heaved himself upwards. The uppermost section of the tall mainmast stood before him, bowed and shuddering. About two-thirds of the way up, the heavily beaded maintopgallant parrel had stuck, allowing the sail to lower a little, sufficiently for its bellying bunt to hold the wind and, like a gigantic hand, press the ship further and further over.
It was clear that the new fittings had failed to run: the mast slushing was inadequate, the mast timber too green or too resinous, so that the parrel beads had not revolved and now the tension in the gear held them immobile. Up he went, hand over hand until the jammed parrel was below him. Realizing he had little time, he considered what he should do if he could not dislodge it at once. It struck him that the only solution lay in tearing the sail with his knife but, extending his right leg, bending it and then driving his heel hard downwards on the parrel, he felt it give. Surely to God the slush, so recently applied, must ease his task after he had started the jammed beads. Only yesterday the sailors had been aloft slopping the mixture of oil and grease on the spar; even now, despite the wind, he could smell the stuff and see its gleam on the mast.
He could hear the shouts of men from below, one of them Guillestigui’s he thought, but he took no notice. What did they know? He knew only that he must conserve his strength and wait his moment, for the ship’s motion, augmented by his height and the vibrating mast, threatened to fling him from his precarious perch.
Carefully he adjusted his position and repeated the downwards kick. The parrel moved a little more; then, with a final thump, he succeeded in spectacular fashion. It ran away, the yard slid downwards and the sail collapsed. Now below him in its folded form it too flapped, adding to the violence that shook the entire mast, but the immense pressure and leverage it had exerted upon the ship was eased. Now, he thought in anticipation, the great ship must relinquish her dangerous angle of heel.
But Iago was still obliged to cling on for dear life until those on deck had hauled on the buntlines and gathered the sail up in bunches. He stared forward, gathering his thoughts and allowing his heart to slow. On the foremast Olivera had had no comparable luck. Followed by a lean and athletic seaman, the two men had, at considerable peril to themselves, laid out on the yard. Olivera was in the position of the greater danger, sliding down to leeward, to where the yardarm dipped towards the rush of the black and silver sea; the seaman was climbing into the sky towards the weather yardarm. At Olivera’s cry both men, each holding on with one hand, plunged their knives into the new, resistant canvas. There was a second’s hiatus and then the foretopgallant tore, first into three wide ribbons and then – as they flogged wildly – into numerous shreds. Horrified, Iago watched the energy transmitted by this disorder whip the foretopgallant yard. Olivera dropped his knife as he clung on, the thin seaman shoved his between his teeth as he too grabbed the yard in fear for his life. Thirty feet away on the maintopgallant shrouds, Iago could now feel the additional tremor of that whipping yard transmitted right through the stays that linked fore and mainmasts.
But while Olivera and his helpmeet had solved their problem by the destruction of the foretopgallant, Iago still had an intact sail to furl. The flogging maintopgallant below him might shake itself to pieces – indeed he half-hoped it would and save him the trouble – but he began to descend and fight his way out along the yard, reaching for the small suspended coil of the outermost gasket. As he leaned over the yard he could see below him the tumblehome of the Santa Margarita’s starboard side and the upswung faces of timorous seamen, their mouths open as they stared up at him. They seemed like strangers, inhabiting another world, even another time.
‘At what do you stare, you dolts?’ he shouted at them. ‘Think me a dead man? You will all be dead, you confounded dogs, if you do nothing, for I cannot furl this damned sail alone! Get aloft, you whoresons!’
But if they could not hear his exact words they were already astir; he had shamed them and, led by the cadet Silva, a score were ascending the shrouds even as others finally let fly the topsail sheets and began to haul up the topsails to reef them. After a little while he was joined by the first men arriving on the jerking footrope to assist him. He swore as he almost lost his grip but a moment later was glad of their presence as they fought to gather in the canvas, to suppress it and lash it along the yard. It had become a very personal struggle now. Iago’s entire world had shrunk to the trembling spar and the juddering footrope, his life concentrated on the single task of taming and lashing the topgallant sail. It was a war – an epic war for the handful of men engaged – and took all the strength and resolution of which they were collectively capable.
And yet, as they finally prevailed, quelling the swollen bundle of harsh canvas amid torn nails, blood and the turns of the gaskets, he could discern little easing in the ship’s angle of heel.
At the point at which Iago and those with him looked up from their completed task, the point at which they managed a grin of congratulation to the man next on the yard, the point at which they rejoined a wider world, released from their private conflict, there was a tremendous explosion and the maintopgallant yard whipped in a spasm that Iago afterwards could only liken to the imagined paroxysm that shattered the body of a hanged man. For a dreadful instant it seemed that all was over, that they had lost their fight, that the ship herself had disappeared and they would all shortly discover what was meant by death and afterlife. Then Iago realized that the maintopsail below them had blown itself out. Relieved of its pressure, the Santa Margarita’s heel eased so rapidly that they were almost all flung into the sea below. For a moment each man took hold to save his own life, then it began to dawn upon them that the ship was, at last, recovering something of her equilibrium.
‘God be praised!’ he heard a man along the yard say, and suppressed an almost hysterical desire to laugh as the fool tried to cross himself before recollecting that it was wiser to hang on to the yard. They began to lay in, sliding down to secure the shredded maintopsail. Half an hour later they were all on deck and, under spritsail, foretopsail, mizzen-topsail and lateen mizzen, the Santa Margarita drove as close to windward as she could on the starboard tack. The island of Corregidor was disappearing into the murk astern but the gale still blew with unmitigated fury.
With curiously shaking legs, Iago returned to the break of the half-deck where Marmolejo seemed transfixed, his eyes glowing with a sort of fanatical regard. ‘My son, my son, that was well done, well done.’
‘It was nothing,’ Iago muttered, irritated by the patronizing tone of the friar and the subordination inherent in the minor noun. He leaned on the forward rail, suddenly weary aft
er his exertions, lest he slither to the deck from the odd weakness in his legs.
Lorenzo crossed the deck and smote his shoulder. ‘Don Iago, we are indebted . . .’ But he was interrupted from the poop.
‘Congratulations, Don Iago.’ Guillestigui leaned over the poop rail. ‘You shall dine with me at the first opportunity.’
Iago straightened up, turning and inclining his head in the captain-general’s direction. ‘Thank you, Excellency.’ The captain-general nodded and addressed Alacanadre; Iago smiled at Lorenzo. ‘Antonio de Olivera was the nimbler of us,’ he jested and was about to say more to the pilot-major when their attention was diverted to the far side of the half-deck. Ascending the larboard ladder, Fray Geronimo de Ocampo swung himself up, his face uplifted towards the captain-general who stood with Olalde and Miguel de Alacanadre above them all on the poop. What drew their attention to Ocampo’s progress were the insubordinate imprecations he uttered against the captain-general and the efforts of Lieutenant Guzman, who sought to restrain the angry cleric.
‘Juan Martinez,’ Ocampo raged at Guillestigui, ‘I warned you of your rapacious greed, a greed I marked long ago in New Spain as your besetting sin. Now you have lost us the ship and destroyed God’s purpose in setting us upon this noble voyage . . .’
At first Guillestigui seemed not to have heard this outburst above the roar of the wind but as Ocampo drew closer it became impossible to ignore. Coming rapidly to the top of the poop ladder the captain-general stared down at Ocampo standing at its foot.
‘Have a care, Father. Curb your tongue for fear you set a treacherous example. The ship is in less danger than you yourself. Recall you were but an hour or two since preaching obedience to God and myself as captain-general of this flota. True we have been through a squall and suffered somewhat, but all is now safe and—’
‘This is God’s judgement, you shall be humbled.’
Beside Iago, Lorenzo stirred. ‘What a time for this,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We shall have to wear ship or run too far towards the shallows under yon point.’
The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita Page 5