1492

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XLI

  THE weather plagued us. The rains were cataracts, the lightningblinding, the thunder loud enough to wake the dead. Day after day,until this weather grew to seem a veritable Will, a Demon with a grudgeagainst us.

  The _Margarita_ sailed no better; she sailed worse. The Admiralconsidered abandoning her, taking the Adelantado upon the _Consolacion_and dividing his crew among the three ships. But the Adelantado's prideand obstinacy and seamanship were against that. "I'll sail her, becauseSan 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 crippledhim. I would have had him stay in his bed. "I cannot! How do you thinkI 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, proppedagainst the wood, covered with cloaks, he still watched the sea and howwent our ship and the other ships.

  Day after day and day after day! Creeping eastward along a bad shore, inthe teeth of the demon. The seas, the winds, the enormous rain wore usout. Men grew large-eyed. If we slept came a shriek and wakened us. Wewould put to land, but the wind turned and thrust us out again, or wefound no harbor. We seemed to be fixed in one place while time rushed byus.

  Forecastle began to say, "It is enchantment!" Presently poop echoedit. The boy Fernando brought it to his father. "Alonso de Zamorra andBernardo 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 qualityonce off Cuba. But is it, or is it not, Christian men shall win! Andsend me Bartholomew Fiesco. Such talk is injury. It bores men's courageworse than the _teredo_ a ship's bottom!"

  We thought the foul weather would never cease, and our toil would nevercease--then lo! at the point of despair the sky cleared with a greatclap of light, the coast turned sharply, sheerly south--he named thegreat 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 wasgrown with reeds that would do for giants' staffs. On mud banks we sawthe crocodile, "cayman" they call it. Again the sky hung a low, grayroof; a thin wind whistled, but for all that it was deathly hot. Seeingno men, we sent two boats with Diego Mendez up the stream. They were notgone a half league, when, watching from the _Consolacion_ we marked astrange 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 ofsea water. Meeting the outward passing current, there ensued a fury withwhirlpools. It caught the boats. Diego Mendez saved his, but the otherwas 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 lateSeptember.

  Next day, we anchored, it being most clear and beautiful. We lay besidea verdurous islet, between it and a green shore. Here were all ourfruits, and we thought we smelled cinnamon and clove. Across, uponthe main, stood a small village. _Cariari_ the Indians there calledthemselves. They had some gold, but not to touch that canoe fromYucatan. Likewise they owned a few cotton mantles, with jars of bakedclay, and we saw a copper hatchet. But they did not themselves makethese things. They had drifted to them, we thought, from a people farmore skilled.

  The Admiral cried, "When and when and when shall we come to thispeople?"

  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 forthbecause 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 theworld truly is larger than Alfraganus or the ancients thought? What ifall this that we have found since the first island and that means onlybeginnings of what is to be found; what if it is not Asia at all? Whatif it is a land mass, great as Europe or greater, that no one knewanything of? What if over by the sunset there is Ocean-Sea again, trueocean and as many leagues to Asia as to Spain? What if they cannot leadus to Quinsai, Cambaluc or Zaiton, or to the Ganges' mouth, or AureaChersonesus, because they never heard of them, and they have no ships topass again an Ocean-Sea? What if it is all New, and all the maps have tobe redrawn?"

  He looked at me as I spoke, steadily and earnestly. What Juan Lepe saidwas not the first entry into his mind of something like that. But hewas held by that great mass of him that was bound by the thinking of theVenerable. He was free far and far beyond most, but to certain thingshe clung like a limpet. "The Earthly Paradise!" he said, and he lookedtoward that Paria that we thought ran across our south. "When our firstparents left the Earthly Paradise, they and their sons and daughters andall the peoples to come wandered by foot into Chaldea and Arabia. Soit could not be!" His blue-gray eyes under that great brow and shock ofwhite hair regarded the south.

  This faery island--the Garden he called it--and the Cariari who came tous from the main. One day they saw one of us take out pen and inkhornand write down their answers to our many questions. Behind us lay theblue sea, before us the deep groves of the islet; between us and therich shade stood gathered a score of these Indians. They looked at theone seated on the sand, industriously making black marks upon a whitesheet. The Indian speaking stopped short and put up an arm in anattitude of defense; another minute and they had all backed from us intothe wood. We saw only excited, huddled eyes. Then one started forth,advancing over the sand, and he had a small gourd filled with somepowder which he threw before him. He scattered it ceremonially betweenus and himself and his fellows, a slow, measured rite with mutteredwords 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 isa 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 wasDiego 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, butthe belief persisted that here was seen veritably at work the necromancythat all along they had guessed.

  A party crossed to the main with the Adelantado and pushed a leagueinto as tall and thick and shadowy a forest as ever we met in all ourwanderings. Here we found no village, but came suddenly, right in thewood, upon a very great thatched hut, and in it, upon a stone, layin state a dead cacique. He seemed long dead, but the body had notcorrupted; 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 cutand painted with I do not know what of beast and bird and monstrous idolforms. We stared. The place was shadowy and very silent. At last withan oath said Francisco de Porras, "Take the gold!" But the Adelantadocried, "No!" and going out of the hut that was almost a house we leftthe dead cacique and his crown and mantle and golden breastplate. Twowooden figures at the door grinned upon us. We saw now what seemed alight brown powder strewed around and across the threshold. One of ourmen, stooping, took up a pinch then dropped it hastily. "It is the samethey threw against us!"

  "Wizardry! We'll find harm from them yet!" That song crept in now atevery turn.

  We sailed from the Garden south by east along the endless coast that nostrait broke. At first fair weather ran with us. But the _Margarita_was so lame! And all our other ships wrenched and worm-pierced. And theAdmiral was growing old before our eyes. Not his mind or his soul buthis frame.

  He bettered, left his bed and walked the deck. And then we came to thecoast 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.

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p; Gold, gold! A deep bay, thronged at the mouth with islets so greenand fair, they were marvel to us who were sated with islands great andsmall. We entered under overhanging trees, and out at once to us shottwenty canoes. The Indians within wore gold in amount and purity farbeyond anything in ten years. Oh, our ships could scarce contain theirtriumph! The Admiral looked a dreamer who comes to the bliss center inhis dream. Gold was ever to him symbol and mystery. He did not look uponit as a buyer of strife and envy, idleness and soft luxury; but as abuyer of crusades, ships and ships, discoveries and discoveries, andChrist to enter heathendom.

  Gold! Discs of great size, half-moons, crescent moons, pierced for acotton string. Small golden beasts and birds, poorly carved but golden.They traded freely; we gathered gold. And there was more and more, theysaid, at Veragua, wherever that might be, and south and east it seemedto 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 ofgold,--Costa Rico. At last we saw many smokes from the land. That wouldbe a large Indian village. We beat toward it, found a river mouth andentered. 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 theafternoon, the sun westering fast--a sudden burst of a most melancholyand awful din came from the forest growing close to water side.

  One of our men cried "Wizards!" The Admiral spoke from the stern ofthe long boat. "And what if they be wizards? We may answer, 'We areChristians!'"

  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 startedseveral hundred shell-blowing, drum-beating barbarians, marvelouslyfeathered and painted and with bows and arrows and wooden swords.

  An arrow stuck in the side of our boat, others fell short. The Admiralrose, tall, broad-shouldered, though lean as winter where there iswinter, with hair as white as milk. He held in his hand a string ofgreen beads and another of hawk bells which he made to ring, but he didnot depend more upon them than upon what he held within him of powerfuland pacific. He sent his voice, which he could make deep as a drumand reaching as one of those great shells. "Friends--friends! BringingChrist!"

  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, orwhether the bowman in him did send over good will and make it to entertheir hearts, or whether it was somewhat of both, they did suddenly growfriendly. Whereupon we landed.

  Gold! We took much gold from this place. One of our men, touched by thesun, sat and babbled. "Oh, the faithful golden coast! Oh, the gold thatis to come! Great golden ships sailing across blue sea! A hundred--no, athousand--what do I say? A million Indians with baskets long and wide ontheir backs and the baskets filled with gold! The baskets are so greatand the gold so heavy that the Indians are bowed down till they go onall fours. Gold,--a mountain of pure gold and every Spaniard in Spainand a few Italians--golden kings--" When we had all we could get, upsail and on!

  Sail on and on along the golden coast of Veragua! Come to a river andland, for all that again we heard drums and those great shells stronglyblown. Make peace and trade. And here again was gold, gold, gold. Wewere now assured that the main was far richer than any island. Turbulenthope,--that was the chief lading now of the four ships. Gold! Gold!Golden moon disks and golden rude figures. We found a lump of goldwrought 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, settruly, with care. The wall was old; the remainder of house, if house ortemple there had been, broken from it. Now the forest overran all. Wedid 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 wasnot the world of the islands.

  Ciguarre. These Indians declared it was Ciguarre we should seek. Nowthat we were in Veragua--seek Ciguarre.

  So we sailed beyond Veragua hunting the strait which we must passthrough to Ganges and Ind of old history.