by Scott O'Dell
“With your permission,” I said, being as respectful to him as to any of my elders, as I had been taught to be by a strict father, “I will go.”
I left him mumbling something or other about ingrat itude and went to gather up Esteban. I located him playing tarok, holding in one hand the last of his nuggets, and dragged him off to the companionway.
The verdant isle and its sheltering bay dropped astern. As we reached the hold, a slow, surging wave lifted the caravel and tilted her to starboard. She hung there, then timbers groaned as the old vessel righted herself, swung slowly to port, then little by little moved back to an even keel.
The hold smelled of sadness. The Indians were hud dled together, holding each other, sick. I felt sick myself.
CHAPTER 17
WHEN ESTEBAN AND I LEFT THE HUDDLED INDIANS, IN OUR SHORT time away from the deck, the sky had changed color. The thin, white clouds that seemed driven by a high wind were now gray. While we stood at the head of the ladder, the gray deepened to black, the black be came a greenish blue. Night was close upon us.
Long, surging swells were moving in from south eastward, but the surface of the sea was unruffled and oily, like a vast dark stone. The air was still.
A lookout in the mainmast tower called down that he had raised two large islands. From the sterncastle, Cap tain Roa called back and asked where they lay.
“Off our starboard bow. Three degrees.”
“At what distance?”
“Four leagues, give or take.”
Whereupon Captain Roa instructed the helmsman to head the Santa Margarita south by southeastward. At the command, Don Luis hurried out of his quarters, wanting to know why our course had been changed.
Captain Roa said, “We are within an hour’s sailing of likely islands. In that time we may well be in need of their shelter. The storm lies close at hand. Its portents increase by the moment.”
Don Luis glanced at the overcast sky, the calm, unruffled sea, the dolphin swimming just below the surface of the water—all the signs the captain had spoken of before—but again he stubbornly refused to heed them.
Señor Guzmán came from below, where he had talked to the crew. Speaking in his gentlest voice, which was only a tone less than a shout, he said to Don Luis, “The men are for putting in at the next island.”
“And what,” Don Luis asked, “has the crew to do with how we sail and where we sail?”
“Everything,” said Guzmán. “We are on a ship with a storm fast approaching.”
“Two days ago, the moment you learned that they had mutinied, you were of a mind to kill them all.”
“A mistake, sir.” Señor Guzmán never addressed Don Luis as sir except when he was angry. “A mis take which I regret.”
“It’s also a mistake to allow them to run the ship,” said Don Luis.
The crew, those on watch and those who had been asleep or gambling, had gathered on the main deck, just below the sterncastle, where we stood. The men carried no weapons except their tough fists. At least none that I observed.
Don Luis glanced down at them and made a quick count, mumbling the numbers as he counted. There were nine men, with two missing. A dangerous lot, he must have thought, their appetite for gold only whetted by what he had given them, anxious for anything to happen. Even a shipwreck, so long as they would benefit.
His own small army of soldiers, cannoneers, bowmen, and musketeers were not in sight, but they weren’t in hiding. They were loyal, he knew, and would support him with their weapons and their lives.
A gust of steaming air swept the deck; then came a short lull and in a moment or two a second gust, this one stronger and from a different direction.
Don Luis was silent, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He glanced at Señor Guzmán and Captain Roa, at the crew standing sullenly by the main-deck hatch. He started to speak and stopped, then asked the cabin boy to fetch Juan Pacheco.
Pacheco came running with comb and curling iron, thinking that his master’s beard was in need of atten tion. But Don Luis sent him back for his astrological materials.
“Tell me,” Don Luis said, when Pacheco, barber, sur geon, reader of the heavens, returned with parchment, inkhorn, and quill, “what signs govern our fortune on this day in August in the land and on the seas of New Spain?”
“Be patient, Señor Don Luis,” said the barber, as if he were speaking to a child, in a tone his master would not countenance from anyone else, “and I will cast you a full and all-embracing chart.”
“It need not be all embracing,” Don Luis replied. “We lack time to embrace everything.”
The barber glanced in the direction of the sun, which was hidden behind a bank of clouds. He asked Captain Roa if he knew the day of the Santa Margarita’s launching.
“The 21st of May,” said the captain. “In 1491. There’s a plaque on board that gives that date and year.”
“At what hour?”
Captain Roa thought for a while and said that she had slipped down the ways exactly at noon, a detail he must have made up on the moment.
Pacheco mumbled something to himself, saying, “A happy placement of the planet Mercury.”
My grandfather, God elevate and preserve his soul, was devoted to the art of astrology, even though he was a devout man. In fact, the movements of planets, of the sun, moon, and the stars as they swung through the heavens controlled his earthly life from hour to hour and day to day.
If in the morning, having studied his charts, he found there to be danger connected with fire, he would not light the kitchen stove nor go near it. If the stars said that the day was poor for planting, he would remain in the house, far from the fields. Keen was his disappoint ment that I showed only a small interest in the subject.
Pacheco looked at the sky. A bluish green light sifted down from above, spreading over the sea and the ship and the faces of all the men. He paced back and forth, staring at the surging waves and lowering sky, at the slow rise and fall of the Santa Margarita’s prow.
“Come,” he said. “The crew shows too much curios ity.” The barber, with his quill and inkhorn, started toward the cabin. When I didn’t follow, Don Luis said to me, “You also, Julián.” He motioned Captain Roa and Guzmán away.
I went with the greatest of reluctance. The idea that these two men held in their hands the fate of the ship and of all our lives appalled me. That our fate could rest upon the movement of heavenly bodies and the barber’s readings thereof was against all the teachings of the holy fathers in my seminary.
The cabin was in shadow. Little light came through the window, but that little had the same strange cast as the light that fell upon the sea and the ship.
From somewhere, Don Luis brought forth a small book bound in red leather and handed it over to Pacheco. In Arroyo the barber had a book of his own filled with astrological lore, a tome as big as a loaf of bread, which, when it was not in use, he wisely kept out of sight under a pile of moldy straw in the straw loft.
He now seated himself at the table, removed the stopper from the inkhorn, spread out a soiled square of parchment, and put down several notations, apparently the details that Captain Roa had just given him.
I had the impression as I stood watching Pacheco that he had done this many times during the voyage. It was probable that some or all of Don Luis’s pig-headed deci sions had been based upon information Pacheco had drawn down from the starry skies.
As the barber continued with his writing, Don Luis grew impatient. He brushed me aside, went to the win dow, and glanced out, saying over his shoulder, “What do you find, not about me but about the Santa Margarita?”
“At this time,” said the barber, “you are the Santa Margarita. I am also. We all are. At this hour, ship and man share the same fate.”
“Hombre, this I know,” said Don Luis. “Don’t be fancy with your readings. We lack time for fanciness; for quibbling, likewise.”
I went to the door and looked out. The ship had been moving on a light win
d that came upon us in gusts. Now the wind had faded and the sails hung limp. I heard be neath me the groan of the heavy rudder, the creak of planks and oaken ribs.
Pacheco continued with his writing.
Don Luis left the window and, again brushing me aside, glanced out the door. “¡Venga! ” he shouted. “Tell me what you see and do not put a pretty face on things.”
“I see,” said Juan Pacheco, barber, surgeon, astrolo ger, and soothsayer, “a long voyage for the Santa Margarita into uncharted waters, past many island empires, where gold abundantly exists, a voyage under fair skies and foul.”
“God’s body!” exploded Don Luis. “Tell me what I have not already seen.”
Pacheco apparently did not hear him. He closed the book, glanced at his writings, and with bowed head spoke softly to himself in muffled words that sounded like an incantation. Don Luis stood over him, listening, his face colored by the strange light cast down from the skies.
I had never seen the devil before, in all my sixteen years, but for a moment I saw him then. He was standing there in place of Don Luis, bending over one of his infernal servants, listening to words that should not be spoken in the light of day.
“What do you want?” I cried. “Why am I here?”
Don Luis straightened up and looked at me as if he had forgotten that I was there in the cabin. He thought for a while. “You are here to intercede with God, to whom we shall commend our souls.”
The vision did not fade. The devil himself stood there. Pacheco’s incantations went on. Then Don Luis told him to cease and turned to me with clasped hands and a pious gaze.
I backed away from him. “Pray for yourself!” I cried out. As I opened the door and slammed it shut, muffled sounds mocked me.
On deck Captain Roa gave orders to place all the ani mals in heavy rope slings lest the coming storm pound them to death. He called aloft and asked the lookout how far the islands’ shelter lay. They were near, but in the black night that now descended upon us we some how passed them.
CHAPTER 18
STEALTHILY, LIKE A HIGHWAYMAN IN THE DARK, THE HURRICANE FELL upon us.
In midmorning, as I stood beside the after hatch, with a crash that seemed to come from all directions at once, I was enveloped in a torrent of air. Sails, large and small, blew out with the roar of cannon shot. They in stantly became streaming ribbons that pointed in the direction we now were driven, which was headlong into the west.
On hands and knees I clawed my way across the deck, certain that the next moment I would be swept away.
I reached the railing at the head of the companionway, hung there until I got my breath and my bearings, then, with a lurch of the ship, fell sprawling into the hold. I landed in the midst of the crew and Don Luis’s servants, who were huddled at the foot of the ladder. In the dim light, silent with fear, they looked like statues.
Captain Roa, who had called them down from mast and deck moments before the hurricane struck, helped me to my feet.
“The ship is helpless,” he said calmly. “And we are helpless. Only God, if He mercifully chooses, can save us all.”
His words brought us to life.
Pedro Esquivel, the caulker, tore open his shirt and, placing his hand upon his bare chest, swore that if God did save him he would crawl like a worm to the nearest shrine. Bustamente, a soldier, cried out that he would go naked as the day he was born through the crowded streets of Seville to the great cathedral.
I prayed for all our company. At Captain Roa’s bid ding I quoted the passage in the Bible about the tempest of Capernaum, which ends with “It is I; be not afraid.” I prayed especially for the Indians hidden away in the stalls.
Captain Roa put three men on the pump, since water now sloshed around us, ankle-deep. The animals, held in slings, were pawing their stalls, so he sent men to give them fodder that had been taken from the island. Those at the rudder he relieved and had the oaken tiller lashed down, for it could not be handled. To Señor Guzmán and five of the crew he gave the task of transporting the gold from the deck to the hold, which was done by dropping it down the companionway.
Two of the men were drowned at the task, and the shifting of the gold made no difference in the motion of the ship. She staggered and rolled just the same from beam end to beam end.
Without sails, under bare poles, she drove westward through the afternoon while the wind roared and rain fell and thunderous waves pounded her hull. She seemed, I swear, to move in circles, yet at nightfall we faced a setting sun that eerily and unexpectedly appeared from under the scudding clouds. To a band of silent men I sang the Salve Regina.
Soon after sunset the rudder jumped its gudgeons.
But as if nothing had happened, the ship drove onward into the west.
It was an hour or so later, during a lull in the wind, that I heard an unusual sound. At first I thought it came from the hold, where the animals were stabled. But af ter a moment when the sound was repeated I felt certain that it came from the forecastle and that it was the cry of a child in distress.
Toward midnight the wind no longer roared. It now came upon us in shrieks, pausing, then often on a higher note, shrieking again. Sebastián Lomas of the midnight watch reported that the Indians had left the hold and gone. He had seen them climb the forecastle companionway and, one by one, silently hurl them selves into the sea.
Just before dawn, Guzmán ventured above and re turned with the news that the masts still stood, the wind had lessened and changed direction, and land lay both on our port and starboard. Captain Roa sent men to repair the rudder and chose a watch to set two small sails as soon as dawn broke.
While the crew huddled at the companionway, waiting to go on deck, I led them in prayer. Afterward, I prayed for the Indians, closing my heart and thoughts to the pain they must have endured, to the cries of the child in distress, to the despair that drove them into the sea.
It was soon after that the caravel rose by the bow, as if lifted by a monstrous hand. At the same moment a tu multuous blow knocked us all from our feet, and through a gaping hole amidships, raging water rushed in upon us.
Those who were not drowned by the rushing water escaped to the main deck. There were six of us. The sky was dark, but eastward the first light shone.
I found myself in the sea, gasping for breath, in a trough between two waves. One wave left me and the other lifted me high. There could have been other men around me, but I saw only two—the pinched face of Juan Pacheco and the bushy red hair of Don Luis.
Luis was clinging to a length of timber, which looked to be a piece of the mainmast. It was not big enough to support both men, and as the barber reached out to grasp it, Don Luis pushed his hand away.
From the crest of the wave that bore me upward, I saw in one direction the outline of what seemed to be a rocky, continuous coast. Somewhat to the south was an island fringed by jungle and a palely gleaming beach. The coast was almost a league away; the island not that far, perhaps half the distance.
Out of instinct I set off for the island, lost now in drifting spray. Having been raised by the banks of the Guadalquivir, I was a good swimmer, but a river is not a gale-whipped sea, and I was forced to the limits of my strength.
I had gone no farther than halfway toward the beach when I heard a scream behind me. It came from one of our horses, the black stallion Bravo. He was pawing the air, head reared high and his long mane streaming in the wind.
For a moment, as a wave lifted us heavenward, I thought that he was about to swim back toward the place the ship had gone down, now marked by the top part of her mainmast. I shouted his name, shouted it twice, shouted it a third time. Whether he heard my voice or not, the stallion turned his head away from the wreck.
He swam after me as I struggled toward the island, over towering waves that sped me along, through shal lows, and at last tumbled me upon the shining beach.
CHAPTER 19
BRUISED AND BELABORED, I LAY THERE I KNOW NOT HOW LONG, awakening at last with a
brilliant sun in my eyes.
I got to my feet and searched myself for injuries. Finding none, I climbed to a jutting rock, the shoulder of the reef upon which the Santa Margarita had foun dered, and whose height offered a chance to survey my surroundings.
I reached this flat eminence with difficulty and once there sat for a long time before having the desire to look about me. A blinding glare rose from the sea, so I was unable to make out the wreck or the coast or anything that stood to the east. I turned my back to the rising sun and, feature by feature, took in all that lay immediately around, to the south and north and the west.
The beach was crescent shaped, the far point of the crescent ending in a high, jutting rock similar to the one I stood upon, flat on top and whitened by a myriad of sea fowl, many of whom now sailed above my head. Not protesting my presence, they seemed, on the con trary, bent upon welcoming me to their island home with soft cries.
Southward of the rock I stood upon stretched a blue green jungle, as solid seeming as if carved from stone. In the distance, two or three leagues northward, I made out the shape of a lone mountain. It was heavily wooded for two-thirds of its height, and from this point upward was rust colored and treeless. From its summit issued a plume of gray smoke that trailed away on the wind. I had never seen one before, but judging from what I had read, this mountain that towered into the sky was a live volcano.
Beyond it the jungle stretched, as far as I could see, for several leagues in one unbroken wave of trees and brush. To the west, except for an expanse of meadow, there lay country in no way different from that to the north and south.
The shelving beach below me led to a broad band of marsh grass. This band bordered on the seaward side a meadow that must have been half a league in circum ference, round in shape as if someone had so arranged it, and cut by a stream that meandered out of the jungle and, in a series of shallow loops, reached the shore. Here it fanned out into a broad estuary and the sea.