‘Me?’
‘Yes, you looked as though you were about to faint.’
Olivera frowned, embarrassed. ‘I felt a little odd . . .’
‘I will try and find you some wine. I have told Llerena to rouse out the best cable and bend it to the remaining bower anchor.’
Olivera nodded, grasping at the lifeline of reality Iago had flung him. ‘Yes, yes, that is good, Iago, and then I shall need a lookout forward if we are to bring the ship through whatever reefs lie ahead. Your eyes are better than mine.’
‘As you wish.’ Iago paused, then asked, ‘Do you know where we might be?’
Olivera shook his head. ‘I cannot be certain, but,’ he paused, ‘it is only a hunch. If my latitude is correct and although my last meridian altitude was good, I have fallen behind in my reckoning and am uncertain of the date, I nevertheless think that this is one of the Ladrones . . .’
‘The Thieves’ Islands.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Indians there . . . ?’
‘May not be friendly.’
‘I will get you some wine.’
‘I am obliged to you, Iago.’
But it was soon clear that the unmanageable state of the ship would not allow them to close the island. The men clustered on the forecastle turned aft to stare in despair and disbelief at Olivera. Learning of this turn of events Rodrigo de Peralta remonstrated with Olivera, insisting that they closed the island, that he had no alternative. But the pilot, having fortified himself as Iago had suggested, had found both his charts and a telescope and, having scanned the coastline as it opened on their starboard bow, held one before him.
‘Do you hear me, Antonio de Olivera?’ Peralta asked formally.
‘Aye, I hear you, but I cannot do the impossible.’
‘They are in a blackening mood forward,’ Peralta warned, his voice low.
‘What is that to me? I am not a wizard that I can make the world different. Stand aside.’
Even as the spirits of all on board fell again and Peralta’s hand flew to his sword, Olivera strode forward to the half-deck rail and raising his voice called out to those on the forecastle.
‘My lads,’ he cried, ‘I am confident of our position. That island is Buenavista, which some men call Saipan. I know nothing of it. We can hold a course of south and ahead of us lie two more islands, one of which is Çarpana at which the galleons from Acapulco call. God has granted at last that we may be thrown in the very path of rescue. Where we cannot make an abrupt change of course to fetch the land here,’ and Olivera threw out his left hand, ‘we may the better use it as a mark to land upon Çarpana ahead of us. It is perhaps ten leagues before our prayers will be answered, but I pray you do not despair.’ Turning aside Olivera lowered his voice. ‘Don Rodrigo,’ he addressed Peralta, ‘put up your sword and stand shoulder to shoulder with me.’
‘I shall do better than that, señor,’ and raising his sword Peralta brandished it so that the sunlight caught it. ‘I call upon God’s blessings for our staunch pilot, Antonio de Olivera!’
And as one they all cheered, after which Peralta ordered a liberal dole of the remaining provisions so that all might be as strong as possible for the exertions that were yet to come.
At the end it was simpler than Olivera had anticipated. He had underestimated the distance between Buenavista and Çarpana, for his chart was inaccurate but, on the afternoon of 9th February 1601, believing it to be the 5th March, they sighted another island and, carrying the breeze, Olivera decided to stand on. The third of the trio of stern lanterns having been torn from its bracket during the last gale, they fabricated a torch from a lump of wax and a number of candles all placed in a large glass carboy, lit it and raised it on the forecastle. To the intense joy of all on board it was answered by a fire ashore.
Neither Olivera nor Iago could leave the deck, such was their concern that further disaster might yet strike them all. At midnight Olivera sent word to Peralta, demanding that all the officers be returned their swords, and that the seamen had back their knives. Peralta agreed but Iago was to be disappointed; Guillestigui, he was told, had had his katana thrown overboard, believing it was fabricated by devils and cast spells.
‘I demand a sword,’ he said to Calcagorta, who was rearming them against the possibility of the Indians being unfriendly. The gunner hesitated a moment, then shrugged. ‘Take mine,’ he said, removing sword, scabbard and baldric.
‘And you?’ queried Iago.
‘The captain-general left a fine Toledo rapier.’
Ashore, the first fire was joined by another which quickly blazed into a brilliant, flaring mark.
‘They have lit that deliberately,’ Olivera said excitedly. ‘They mean it for a beacon!’
The drag of the weed upon the ship’s bottom slowed their progress. Frustrated, impatient, but sounding their way inshore, they slowly closed the coast, heading towards the great fire in the light of which they could see silhouettes of figures capering. The leadsman’s calls indicated a steadily shelving bottom, its tallow arming showing this to be sand.
‘I can hear them!’ Iago exclaimed from the rail as he cupped a hand to his ear. ‘They seem to be shouting a welcome.’
‘Let us not forget they are known for their thievery,’ remarked Olivera. ‘Is that anchor ready?’ he called forward.
‘Aye, señor,’ came Llerena’s response.
‘Then we are close enough. Down helm . . .’
With a ponderous reluctance the Santa Margarita began her turn into the wind and Olivera ordered the anchor let go. Five minutes later the great ship snubbed round to her anchor, her cable slackened as she rode up to it and Llerena declared them: ‘Brought up!’
At last they lay still, rolling gently in the low swell that came ashore and maintained a low surf along the white strip of beach that they could see in the starlight. All now came in deck, many leaning upon each other for support and Marmolejo led them in prayers of thanksgiving for their deliverance.
Daylight revealed a dazzling green shoreline lying due south of them. Coconut palms fringed a cool, dense forest that beckoned with a beauty they could scarcely contemplate without tears starting from their eyes. Beyond the beach, with its smouldering remains of the beacon fire, the land rose to several summits in the middle distance.
And with daylight came their visitors, hundreds of the Chamorro people in scores of their swift proas. They brought with them quantities of coconuts, sweet potatoes, fish and even water which they desired to trade for iron. In her wrecked state the Santa Margarita yielded hundreds of bent nails half torn out of the ship by her ordeal and it was a matter of minutes before it was clear to the more perceptive of the mariners that the Chamorros had found they could easily acquire the desired iron without the trouble of trading. Within an hour the battered hulk was surrounded by a crowd of proas, most tied alongside or to each other, empty of their crews who swarmed aboard in quest of booty.
‘Dear Christ, they will tear the ship apart,’ remarked Olivera.
‘They are like the piranha fishes,’ observed Alacanadre, his face disfigured with half-healed scabs.
‘How long do you think she will hang together, Antonio? This is far from being a safe anchorage. We must evacuate the ship as soon as possible.’
‘Peralta and his gang will want us to discharge the cargo, or such of it that remains after these brigands have helped themselves.’
‘I would not press that task upon the people until they have fed and rested. See how that fellow is eating coconuts, why he must have consumed a dozen or more . . .’
‘I am more troubled by the Indians invading us. Hey . . . !’ Olivera spun round, knocking down a Chamorro who had half-drawn the rapier from its scabbard. ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
The Chamorro, scrambling to his feet, retreated muttering to himself and Peralta came on deck, equally indignant. ‘Is this to be our reward,’ he cried, ‘to be robbed of even our weapons?’
‘Don Rodrigo,�
� Olivera said wearily, ‘I have brought you to this anchorage, I am exhausted and must sleep. The mariners are the same, yet they must pump the ship. You and the gentlemen aft are soldiers and it is for you now to play your part in our defence. Tomorrow perhaps we will begin to land . . .’
‘We are not landing, señor, at least we shall land, but only to cut trees for new masts and yards and to obtain fabric for new sails. I am determined to sail this ship back to Manila. You yourself said that this island lies on the route of the eastbound galleons.’
Olivera was incredulous at this speech. It was clear that despite the six months of their ordeal, Peralta had learned nothing.
‘Excellency,’ he began with all the patience and deference he could muster, ‘we must abandon the ship, she is a hulk. By all means land and cut trees, but raise instead of masts a palisade. Make what name you desire from claiming this land for Rey Felipe but do not, I beg you, presume to tell me that this ship is capable of sailing a mile further. If you doubt me take a turn at the pumps and have a look at the fathoms of weed that festoon our wounded hull. As for masts, yards and sails, pooh . . . !’ Olivera ran out of words. He was drooping with fatigue and caught Iago’s eye. ‘Do you talk some sense into these gentlemen, Don Iago,’ he said and, turning his back on Peralta he made his way below.
It was entirely natural that all those left alive aboard the Santa Margarita after such a disastrous ordeal should assume they could enjoy a little respite from any labour. Most understood the continuing need to pump the ship, but she leaked less as she rolled gently in the swell and although this was not attended to as assiduously as it should have been, any ingress of water into the ship was kept at bay. To the Chamorro people of Çarpana, however, the arrival of the wreck seemed a gift from Heaven. They knew well the value of iron and the Santa Margarita was full of it. They knew too the proud and armoured front these dark, bearded and sharp-featured strangers usually maintained with their death-dealing fire-sticks that could mysteriously kill a man at fifty paces and frighten ten others with their noise and flame and smoke. The Chamorros had tasted their cruelty, the lashes they inflicted if they caught one of their people taking what they had need of. And they knew the burning they could administer if a Chamorro who had kissed their curious carved talismans – those little grotesques with a man writhing in agony upon a cross – and who refused to do it again. That was a truly terrible way to die, bound to a tree and burned alive.
It was clear to the Chamorros that these people were very different, though they seemed of the same breed and spoke the same language. And while they wore rusty half-armour and there were a couple in the dull drab of their cruel priests – those who carried the talismans and ordered the burnings – there the similarity ended. These newcomers stank worse than the others. They had few teeth and no flesh; their hair was lank and patchy; their nails bled and they could hardly stand. Indeed, all they seemed to want to do was sleep. They were ravenously hungry too, and they came from the north, but they brought iron, iron for which, it was quite clear, they had little need for, without help, they were all going to die.
Or so the Chamorro people hoped, for although they had swarmed aboard the great ship, which had clearly lost her masts and rigging, and although they had found the taking of iron to be simple, they feared the stink of the ship, and the touch of the Spanish whose flesh was rotting on their very bones. Few of the Chamorro, and fewer of the surviving Spaniards, knew how rapidly a diet of fresh fruit or vegetables would restore them, though a handful would find out soon enough. In the first hours, after that initial, enthusiastic contact, the Chamorro withdrew, leaving the Spanish to sleep. Then next morning a few bold natives paddled their proas alongside the Santa Margarita and again began to trade. At about the same hour and on the prompting of Olalde and Calcagorta, Peralta, having posted armed sentries about the ship which dissuaded the Indians from coming aboard and confined them to trading from their boats, called a council in the great cabin. To Olivera’s despair the new captain-general held to his intention to re-rig the vessel and prepare her for a return to Cavite or Manila. Unfortunately, upon a show of hands, this view prevailed. Olivera groaned audibly and, shaking his head in despair, retired to his quarters in high dudgeon. After his heroic exertions he was, Iago recognized, a broken man.
Fifteen
Rodrigo de Peralta
As captain-general, Rodrigo de Peralta could think of no action other than returning to Manila. Despite her condition, the fact that the Santa Margarita still floated seemed to him to demonstrate an unexpected but welcome durability. Since Olivera himself had said that the hand of God had guided them through the torments of Hell to place them in the very westward path of the Manila-bound nãos, it followed that the sailing conditions were therefore favourable, and while pusillanimous opinion suggested they await rescue at Çarpana, there were a number of factors that dissuaded Peralta from doing so.
He was advised by Llerena and some others among the common marineros that they could re-rig the vessel sufficiently to sail her back to the Philippines. These men also said that, while they lay comfortably at anchor for now, at any moment the wind might rise and they would almost certainly be cast ashore; a speedy decision upon which they could act was therefore essential. To these expert counsels Peralta added cogent reasons of his own. The first was a deep suspicion of the Chamorros, whom he neither trusted, nor liked to have to rely upon for anything. The second was that as captain-general he sought an heroic accomplishment, not a hand-held return in another man’s ship. He did not wish to be remembered as the leader of a disastrous enterprise. Peralta wanted to rescue what the famed Juan Martinez de Guillestigui had lost.
And so upon the following morning, as the Chamorros, moved by curiosity and their lust for iron, paddled their proas out to lie off the battered não and stare at her, Peralta ordered the building of a boat. This was a painful business, for no one had either inclination or energy, but a craft of sorts was improvised from four large, roughly hewn packing cases whose contents – bales of silk – had been ruined by sea water and hungry rats. These were held together by baulks of timber torn from the remains of the stern gallery.
‘It does not seem to occur to anyone,’ remarked Olivera to Iago, ‘that the more they tear the ship apart, the less of her they have to sail anywhere, let alone Manila Bay.’
‘We must stay here, Antonio, on this island until a ship comes,’ Iago said insistently, ignoring Olivera’s conversational remark and staring at the pilot, who, it was clear, had abdicated all responsibility in his exhausted state. For the first time Iago noticed that Olivera’s hair was almost all white, the lines on his face were deeply etched and his eyes were shadowed to the point of giving him a haunted, beaten look. Moreover he stood unsteadily on painfully swollen legs. It was as though, having given of his best, poor Olivera’s over-worked body had ceased to function properly. Iago was in little better condition himself. He had been up half the night pacing the upper deck, determining what he and his little household should do. God, his own God, had seen the three of them safely thus far, but Iago reasoned that he owed no allegiance to Peralta and his God-forsaken crew. On a contractual basis alone the expedition had failed him – they were scarcely a quarter of the way across the Pacific – and he thought he might recruit a party opposed to the folly of attempting another voyage. The two disaffected mariners leaned on the rail and watched as Llerena tempted a proa full of the boldest Chamorros to come on board and for three iron hoops help them hoist the extemporized boat over the side.
This they did, laughing between themselves and pointing at the debilitated state of the Spaniards who stood around in a generally bewildered condition.
‘This is too familiar,’ Olivera muttered anxiously, ‘they will see our impoverished state.’
Behind them Peralta gave orders and more iron mast hoops were passed down to the boats into which, as well as a pair of seamen and two soldiers armed with arquebuses, the two carpenters clambered with their axes.
Then, apparently spontaneously, a Chamorro slid into what passed for the stern and, giggling excitedly, gestured to the shore and called out something to his friends in an adjacent proa.
‘Trading iron for trees,’ Olivera scoffed, ‘and those arquebuses have no powder. Those poor devils are on a fool’s errand.’
The boat of boxes shoved off and the sailors plied their simple board-paddles. Olivera and Iago watched in silence, both thinking the same thoughts. Some little distance off shore the low swell broke on a reef. It was impossible to see whether the reef was of coral or rock, but it was a formidable barrier to so primitive and unwieldy a craft and the surf, though making only a low and intermittent noise, would prove impossible to traverse without a break in the reef.
‘How the Devil can they tow a tree out with that thing?’ Iago asked, presupposing they could discover a gap in the reef. The boat of boxes edged along the surf to the east, surrounded by proas and accompanied by shouts of encouragement and laughter. In the stern of the boat the lone Chamorro seemed to be enjoying himself, engaging in repartee and gesticulations that, to the increasingly distant and utterly helpless observers lining the rails of the Santa Margarita, seemed somehow menacing.
Just as the decks of the ship became suddenly crowded with Peralta and the armed gentlemen on the poop, the passengers amidships and the marineros crowded into the waist, so the beach was infested by the curious Indians. Hundreds of Chamorro men emerged from the trees armed with spears. They were joined by some women bearing babies and children who scampered up and down in the shallows like excited puppies.
A murmur of appreciation at the appearance of the half-naked women ran through the assembled ship’s company like a breeze through dry grass.
Suddenly the Indian in the stern held up his right arm, indicating that the men should paddle the boat to the right and slip through a gap in the reef. Beside Iago, Olivera suddenly straightened, his old body ramrod-stiff with apprehension.
‘There is no passage there!’ he shouted, so that Peralta, from his higher vantage point, suddenly took greater interest in the fate of his hopes rather than regarding the women.
The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita Page 25