Once again, as night fell, armed men rummaged the ship, finding little but causing great resentment so that Lorenzo again attempted to speak to the captain-general. Choosing a moment when both were on deck, Lorenzo turned aft and shouted, ‘A word with you, Excellency, I must speak with you.’
With a sinister rasp Peralta intervened, drawing his sword and crying, ‘I told you to be silent!’
Lorenzo did not falter but drew a dagger from his waist and, surprising Peralta, slashed at the foible of his blade, passing him as he did so and confronting Guillestigui.
‘Excellency, you must heed me. It is my bounden duty to acquaint you of the dangers—’
But Olalde jumped in front of the captain-general. ‘Give me that,’ he snarled, indicating the short weapon Lorenzo still held in his right hand.
With a flick of his wrist Lorenzo threw the dagger over the side. ‘Stand aside! I am the pilot-major. Damn you! Stand aside!’
‘What do you wish to say, Don Juan, eh?’ asked Guillestigui with an affected curiosity. ‘That we must put back, or cast ourselves upon the hospitality of the natives of Cipangu?’
‘Make a landfall, Excellency. That is all I ask, so that we may put the vessel to rights and recruit our strength.’
‘And that is your professional advice?’
‘That is my professional advice, Excellency.’
‘Then, Don Juan,’ Guillestigui replied in a voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘I shall consider it and I shall give you an answer in the morning.’
And with this Lorenzo had to be content.
But next morning it was found that one of the captain-general’s Biscayan soldiers had died in the night. The cause of death was not clear and it was widely rumoured that those aft thought him a victim of witchcraft.
‘What other cause might there be?’ they asked. ‘He was fit and well yesterday.’
Another, a soldier named Diego, who had been sick for several days, demanded that one of the discalced friars hear his confession. Fray Agustin was summoned and upon speaking with the sick man refused to shrive him, saying he was not dying and that a day or two reflecting upon his sins would bring him closer to a state of contrition. Hearing this Olalde was outraged. He ordered Agustin and his brethren to be denied any food for three days, a foolish instruction that revealed those living aft still had access to provisions. As for Agustin, he replied that he had not eaten for several days anyway and he would return when the man had humbled himself.
‘That holy bastard punishes Diego in order to point a finger of accusation at our captain-general,’ opined Olalde to Calcagorta.
‘May they all rot in Hell-fire,’ the gunner responded. ‘Come, let us inform the captain-general.’
Meanwhile Lorenzo, who had kept the morning watch and had handed over to Olivera, remained on deck, awaiting the captain-general’s pleasure. The wind had fallen a little but they moved slowly through a blue sea under a sky clear of all but the frivolous clouds of fair weather. Despite these apparent auguries of improving conditions, Lorenzo remained introspective and gloomy. Resigned to the ritual humiliation inherent in the captain-general’s contempt for the ship’s own officers, he waited, sitting on a box among the remaining cargo lashed forward of the binnacle.
After the days of fog, the dry air seemed invigorating and, he thought, he should be uplifted by the morning. He tried to recall the happiness he had felt when he dreamed of again sleeping with his wife, but he could not recover the mood. Instead, staring out over the starboard beam, he reflected upon the misery the high command of a ship was capable of inflicting upon her company if it resided in the wrong hands. And then his eye was caught by a low bank of cloud gathering to the south-east. They had seen the same thing before and it seemed scarcely possible that yet another baguiosa was working its way towards them. Lorenzo’s heart sank; surely the Lord God Almighty could not inflict . . .
And then something puzzling happened. Lorenzo was tired. He should have been off watch, asleep, and his mind, preparing itself for an interview with Guillestigui, had been distracted by the assembling cloud-bank. He did not therefore understand why, all of a sudden and on an otherwise beautiful morning, the low cloud should disappear as the sea between the Santa Margarita and the horizon seemed to rise in a low and growing hump. By the time his exhausted brain had divined its significance it was too late. All he could do was cry out a warning.
The Santa Margarita seemed to stagger in her forward motion.
Iago felt it below and knew she had slipped into the trough of a big swell. Instinctively he knew something was wrong, that the sudden drop in the deck below his feet bore no relationship with the easy motion that had for hours preceded it.
‘Hold on!’ he commanded Ah Fong and Ximenez as they sat sipping the tea that answered for breakfast in their impoverished state. Even down below they could hear the sudden cry of alarm raised on deck. Iago felt fear uncoil in his belly and the hairs on his neck rose like hackles. A second later the whole starboard side of the Santa Margarita shuddered as though slamming into something solid. Then in a roar an immense body of water poured thundering across the Santa Margarita’s deck, squirting, streaming and cascading below by way of a thousand routes, spraying water overall and instantly covering the deck to a depth of several inches.
The ship rolled to port under the impact and then, as the roaring of the water sluicing across the deck above diminished, she came upright and seemed to lift as though throwing the burden aside. Iago rushed for the upper deck, where he found utter consternation. Residual water still ran back and forth across the rolling deck and, looking out to port, Iago saw the retreating hump of the rogue swell as it caught the sunlight. Then he saw the smashed bulwarks on the port side of the half-deck, and the men craning over the side and crying out: ‘Man overboard!’
‘Who is it?’ he asked, rushing to the ship’s side, aware that the deck was rapidly filling with terrified men and the incident had summoned even the captain-general from his fastness in the great cabin.
‘It is the pilot-major!’ Olivera said, turning to him, his eyes wide and his face white.
‘There is no sign of him!’
‘He and his chest have vanished!’
‘Put up the helm!’
‘God has taken him . . .’
‘Or the Devil,’ roared a voice above them all. ‘Stand fast, belay the helm! Don Juan is dead.’
Guillestigui’s outburst silenced them, drawing their attention from the sparkling wake inboard to the deck just vacated by the unfortunate Lorenzo. ‘What else was that,’ boomed Guillestigui, ‘but an act of God? Eh? Whence came that monstrous wave?’ The captain-general flung his right hand out to starboard. ‘See, there are no more of them, just as there were none before it.’
The thought of such a singular manifestation forced upon them by the captain-general’s explanation struck them all like a blow. Several fell to their knees and all crossed themselves with a hasty fervour. Even Iago felt the power of the argument and of Guillestigui’s almost diabolical presence. The sudden visitation of death sent a cold shiver down his spine and he recalled that cry of alarm that was Lorenzo’s final act in life.
Then a voice broke the silence. ‘Excellency! The starboard galleries have gone!’
As one they all ran across the deck to crowd the rail on the starboard side, gasping their astonished surprise at the prospect before them. All along the side of the high poop, jagged timbers stood horizontally from the ship’s side like the remains of the floor beams in a burned-out keep. A rising murmur ran among them and Iago, recovering from the shock of the event, turned to see Marmolejo, just then coming on deck, disturbed by the shouts of alarm passing below decks.
‘What in the name of God?’
‘Some curious and heavy sea caught us. Lorenzo has been lost overboard. There is no sign of him. The entire starboard stern gallery has been torn off the ship’s side and God knows what other damage has been done. We must sound the wells.’
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��Why do we not put the ship about?’
‘How can we? Look about you. It is as much as we can do to keep her somewhere close to her course.’
‘A boat, then . . .’
‘Boat? What boat is left? Besides, there was no sign of him. That monstrous sea has carried him away. We should never find him. He is gone. Drowned.’
‘Dear God!’ Marmolejo crossed himself and began praying for Lorenzo’s soul.
‘Juan . . . Juan . . .’ Shock still gripped Olivera. The second pilot digested the implication of Lorenzo’s loss. ‘My God, my God . . . we are indeed undone . . .’ He crossed himself and muttered a few words of Latin. ‘But he dreamed only recently that he would lie with his wife again,’ Olivera remarked, puzzled by what had occurred.
‘Aye, my friend,’ Iago said gently, placing a hand on Olivera’s arm, ‘but others dream too. Only the other night Ximenez dreamed this ship would lose her pilot.’
‘¡Dios! How prescient. My poor, poor friend . . .’ Olivera shook his head and looked down, but not before Iago had spotted the tears welling up. Grief for a friend and colleague; desperation at their plight; perhaps that personal rage a man feels when it seems that the fates have so conspired against him that he can muster nothing further. Iago withdrew his hand as Olivera seemed to shake himself free of his burden and recall himself to his duty with an in-draught of breath. Then he raised his head and pointed at the eastern horizon. ‘I do not like the colour of that sky . . .’ he muttered, then he looked at Iago, frowning. ‘Another baguiosa?’
‘Perhaps, Antonio,’ said Iago, a growing anxiety gnawing at him, ‘but for the moment we must sound the well, for the love of Jesus!’
‘Yes . . . yes, of course.’ Olivera shook himself free of his private preoccupations and crossed himself. ‘You are a good man, Iago. For the love of Christ stand by me in the coming hours. I shall have need of you.’
‘Of course.’
Finally pulling himself together, Olivera said, ‘Do you take the deck and I shall go below . . .’ Managing a wan smile he went off, muttering. Then he raised his voice and called for the carpenters. Within five minutes he was back, but Iago already knew the worst. The Santa Margarita had assumed a slight list. It was clear that the great ship was again taking in water.
‘We must man the pumps,’ Olivera cried, his voice cracking with desperation. Iago nodded. ‘And muster a party aft to plug the holes left by that missing gallery. Good God, is there no end to our troubles?
Eleven
Reductio ad Absurdum
They had scarcely nailed the planks from broken packing cases over the gaping holes in the starboard quarter and stuffed the interstices with cotton piece goods before the wind had risen. The onset of the panic of self-preservation had infected the men and they had worked like fury for six hours, but at the end of that period, as the sky clouded over and once again they were beset by a gale, all hands were exhausted. To the lack of food was now added a lack of water, several of the casks in the hold being found breached and contaminated with salt.
By nightfall, despite a rallying of the after-guard by Guillestigui – who seemed at last to understand the true obligations of leadership – even the pumping had been abandoned by the gentlemen and the ship was given up for lost. During the night, as the wind and sea grew increasingly furious, the only stirrings on board were the chants of plaints of the Holy Ones who cried out for Heaven’s mercy, attributing all their woes to the sins of fornication, greed and excess displayed by all on board from the captain-general to the lowliest marinero. Most particularly they called upon God to lift the curse of Ocampo in whose efficacy no one on board except perhaps Iago now had any doubt.
The following morning more of the Negroes were found dead. Some said it was of cold, others claimed shock and fear had killed them.
‘I am told by one of their number,’ said Marmolejo, who had prayed over them, ‘that they abandon life when it is impossible to join the spirits of their ancestors. It is a blasphemy, of course,’ he added, ‘but not one to surprise us among the heathen.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Iago responded curtly. He was hungry and worried for Ah Fong to whom he had relinquished the hammock. She too lay in that passive acceptance of the inevitable that Marmolejo found so shocking but Iago had seen before in China. All about them the ship staggered and rolled, her fabric creaking so loudly at times that they had to shout to make themselves heard. To this cacophony were added the wails and groans of all those now crowded into the shelter under the half-deck, most of whom lay amid the constant swirl of water and a complete disorder of blankets, disintegrating straw palliasses, pots, beakers, plates, knives, clothing and every conceivable personal effect brought aboard in Cavite by passengers and crew alike.
‘Reductio ad absurdum,’ remarked Marmolejo, gesturing about them and running a dry tongue about his lips.
Iago merely nodded and braced himself against the Santa Margarita’s next lurch as the thunder of yet another green sea rolled over the waterlogged and helpless vessel. Water cascaded down through the ever-loosening caulking in the deck above. A corner of the spritsail was all the standing canvas she had set and there was not a man fit or willing to go aloft and salvage the other canvas, which had long since blown itself to ribbons.
‘You have stopped crossing yourself, Fray Marmolejo,’ an emaciated Iago observed wryly.
‘It is sorely testing,’ Marmolejo replied.
And so it was, for death was among the ship’s company. After the wretched black slaves and the soldier Diego – who died unshriven – others began to fail. Already weak and hungry, several succumbed to latent diseases but it was the Santa Margarita herself that killed others, as if the spirit of the saint after whom she had been named claimed vengeance on the sex that had dishonoured her.
As the typhoon raged and swept the helpless ship in its path, she filled slowly. One morning five people were found drowned overnight, having been engulfed in their sleep, their corpses washed back and forth in the foot or so of water that lay upon the deck.
The discovery provoked a bout of energetic pumping which lasted less than half an hour before those who fell exhausted from the handles lay about the upper deck. Then, in one terrible moment, a green sea foamed aboard and swept seventeen over the side and into the boiling ocean. No one heard their shrieks as water stopped their cries and the booming roar of the great wind sounded its vast funerary note above their last sentient minutes.
And then there were the injured; a dozen or so who were swept off their feet and carried along the decks like corks to strike stanchions or gun carriages or the fine heavy carved ornaments that stood at the head of the main companionway. Arms and legs were broken, some snapping like twigs, while others suffered immense contusions which darkened like gangrene. The woman who had lost an eye was one of these, suffering a compound fracture of her left leg. As the days wore on, the pain of unset bones, of fractures and indeed of gangrene itself caused further deaths, so that in between their heartfelt pleas for mercy, the Holy Ones moved among the sick and dying to save them from damnation.
Men retreated to their bed-places, dragging what women were available with them. At first the latter seemed more resilient than the men, more tenacious of life and less convinced that their time had come, but after almost a week of buffeting, when the labouring ship seemed to be falling apart about them, they too relinquished the ghost. Pain either drove them mad, leaving them raving at the tops of their voices, or reduced them to whimpering shadows. The one-eyed woman lasted a week.
Among it all the Holy Ones shone. Hernando, Agustin, Marmolejo and their brethren, along with the handful of nuns, moved with an emaciated dignity. They had no need of flagellation, their bodies were as excoriated by circumstance as they had never been by their whips. They heard the confessions of the dying, administered the last rites and shrove souls with a quiet dedication that defied the hell that the ship had become. Some of those thus assisted gave promises of renewed virtue, bargaining thei
r lives with God. Many guaranteed chastity in return for continuing existence, even aboard the Santa Margarita, but most men and women confronted the inevitable end with the crucifix pressed to their lips, believing themselves close to the martyrs.
Few died well. Most were wracked with agony unless their moment came with a wave and the terror of drowning under tons of water, with perhaps a final glimpse of the Santa Margarita drawing away. These passed unconfessed, only a retrospective blessing falling upon the heaving sea if their disappearance was noticed and one of the friars stood clinging long enough upon the poop, alongside the battered figure of the Virgin, to make the gesture of the cross and to utter the prayer of committal.
What discipline remained rested entirely in two camps. Aft, within the security of the great cabin, Guillestigui and his henchmen maintained themselves on the remains of the salvaged food and their wine. Under the half-deck, led by Marmolejo and the Holy Ones, and by Iago and Olivera, what remained of the passengers and the ship’s company took shelter. They had almost nothing to eat, though every day a party climbed into the hold, finding among the disturbances of the ship’s motion a paucity of indigestible matter: some flour, a handful of mildewing raisins, the remains of a cask of salt beef that had been cast up from the bottom of the hold as the stow above broke up, and a few rats.
Despite a lingering attempt to maintain a watch, the Santa Margarita was not under command. Having been run off before the wind she was confined within the embracing advance of the typhoon. In time this had inevitably moved slowly past her and one morning they again found themselves within the centre of the typhoon’s eye. They lay in a confused and heaving sea which reared up to what appeared to be an immense height from all directions in a weltering confusion of energy, meeting and crashing and falling back so that anything in its way was subjected to vast, unremitting and random blows as tons of water fell.
Having broken down the barriers erected where the lost stern galleries had wounded the ship’s side, such seas began to demolish the after part of the Santa Margarita as she lay at their mercy. Having taken Lorenzo, they now smashed what remained of his cabin on the starboard side of the upper poop, next to that of Olivera. To the anger of the two pilots, Guillestigui had filled some of this space with cases of private cargo and a heavy sea carried away the glazed lights and much of the framing across the stern, lifting and loosening the crates so that a subsequent sea tore them free and thrust them against the forward bulkhead. Pierced as it was by a door, it was not long before, with a rending of timber, the packing cases burst through and on to the half-deck, almost sweeping Olivera and the cadet Silva off their feet as they dodged out of the way. Finally the cases and the timbers they had dislodged crashed out through the weakened bulwarks, smashing open as they went, their brilliantly coloured silk contents torn and streaming behind them like garish stains upon the sea. This incongruity, even among the destruction and horror of the ship’s physical disintegration, caused the young Silva to remark that it seemed that the sea was laughing at them.
The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita Page 20