Encounters Unforeseen- 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

  Bakako laughed. “What’s it about?”

  “It’s just the normal wedding areíto. The bride and groom get married and will have babies on Guanahaní like the birds do. We’ve been practicing it a lot over the last few days.”

  “Let me see your part.”

  The girls giggled. But, after hesitation, Kamana looked to her cousin and nodded. “I will if you will.”

  After some whispering, the girls both slowly rose.

  “We’ll do the last verses, where we get to be human beings,” Kamana said whimsically. Bakako thought nothing of it at the moment, but he would remember the innocence of Kamana’s face when she said these words for the rest of his life.

  The girls began to sing and dance tentatively, but they quickly gained confidence and glanced to see whether their nakedness charmed Bakako. They sang of Yúcahu’s protection and nourishment of Guanahaní and how he and Attabeira would provide for the marriage’s fertility.

  Bakako watched Kamana dance and felt a compulsion to have her he had never experienced. She was more than fun and clever. She was sexual and enticing. Her spirit brimmed with lust.

  Bakako clapped when the girls finished. They sat down again, Kamana very close to him. After a few moments, he shifted his position so their shoulders touched, and she did not move away. They spoke of their mothers and fathers and growing up, who they were, who they both knew, who won and lost at batey, and so on. The wind kept rising and, after some time, Kamana called the boys in from the water’s edge, so all sat huddled in a circle. She asked, “When were you last at a ceremony?”

  Bakako gazed at her and guessed she was asking because she already knew. When a fisherman didn’t return from the sea, there was a ceremony, a funeral of sorts, although there was no body.

  Kamana saw his hesitation and did know, and touched his arm. “You don’t need to talk about it.”

  “A cousin, last year.”

  “I heard about it. I’ve also heard you are an expert fisherman. You should be careful.”

  At that moment, muffled in the wind but clearly present, the children heard the low rumble of distant thunder, and Bakako realized the thunderhead was now but a few miles offshore. “So should you. You better leave before the storm hits. It’ll be hard to walk in the rain with all the children. I should be on duty again in a few days, and we can talk again then.” Bakako helped herd the boys from the beach to the knoll, where he said good-bye to all of them.

  For a brief moment, Bakako and Kamana looked into each other’s eyes and stopped breathing, acknowledging their yet-unconsummated bond. With a wave, and with her sister on her hip, she turned into the wind to return with the children to her village.

  Bakako had much farther to go and watched Kamana until she disappeared beyond the ridges to the east. He knew Father and Mother would seek to arrange his marriage to the child of a prosperous family, and perhaps he should want that. Kamana’s father and mother undoubtedly would seek the same for her. But they were both children of ordinary people and, if their parents failed at other marriages, maybe their parents would arrange one between them. Bakako reflected he would be very happy with that and that someday he would be a prosperous Guanahanían fisherman.

  There was an enormous thunderclap, and Bakako gazed east to the vast ocean. Heavy rain fell and soon would engulf him. The sea boiled like a pepper pot, with waves and spray rolling to crash offshore on the barrier and penetrate within. Cousin, and fishermen from the beginning of time, had perished in such fury. He retrieved his spear, shell, gourd, and pouch and started home.

  Bakako realized that Guabancex was present about him, watching and, perhaps, warning. The ocean to the east was for spirits, not men.

  _______________

  1 Francesco Pinelli in Italian.

  2 The Hermandad.

  3 Latitude, categorized by “zones” of habitability, and longitude.

  4 In sum, 1 league equals 4 Roman miles, 1 Roman mile equals about 0.92 modern US statutory miles, and 1 league thereby equals about 3.68 modern US statutory miles.

  5 A Lucayan reference to Haiti (i.e., the Dominican Republic and Haiti).

  VII

  CROSSING THE SEA OF DARKNESS

  PALOS TO SAN SEBASTIÁN, GOMERA, CANARY ISLANDS,

  August 2–September 9, 1492

  After supper, Cristóbal and Diego retired to their cell at La Rábida and lay together on a cot in dim candlelight, holding each other dearly. Cristóbal had arranged for a friar and muleteer to take Diego to Beatriz in Córdoba the next day. He brooded he was leaving his son motherless in a foreign land. Diego was old enough to understand his father might never return, and their eyes misted. When the boy slumbered, Cristóbal kissed him good-bye and quietly left to meet Fray Pérez to walk by the stars to Palos, where the friar administered a final communion in St. George’s church, and Cristóbal joined his officers and crews aboard the ships.

  Before dawn on August 3, the anchors were pulled as the tide began to ebb and the ships floated down the Río Tinto toward the ocean. After sunrise, they passed La Rábida and the murmur of friars chanting prayer stole across the water to envelope them, and the crews honored the Santa María de La Rábida again. Cristóbal waved to Diego and Fray Marchena, who had descended the embankment to say their last good-bye. The ships entered the final tidal channel alongside a cargo boat bearing Jews to exile. By 8:00 a.m., they crossed the sandbar to enter the Ocean Sea and bore southwest in strong breezes for the Canary Islands.

  Cristóbal exulted to be at sea, the home he had lost for over seven years, liberated from the ignominy and impotency of pandering to royal officials and rejuvenated to be in command of what he knew— ships and sailors. His fleet was well provisioned with the necessary staples: hardtack; salted meat and fish; cheeses; rice; chickpeas, lentils, and beans; honey and molasses; raisins and other dried fruit; garlic, oil, and vinegar; almonds and other nuts; and water and wine. He discerned Martín’s Pinta was the fastest sailor, Vicente’s Niña the most nimble and seaworthy, and his Santa María the slowest. He was pleased by the competence of the Santa María’s crew as they worked the ship.

  As captain general of the fleet, Cristóbal quickly established working relationships over the sovereigns’ representatives and the Santa María’s officers. Pedro Gutiérrez, the sovereigns’ observer, had served as a butler preparing the king’s dais and dining table and was a competent and affable gentleman. Pedro let it be known that he played cards with the king and, whether or not that was true, Cristóbal recognized that Pedro served as Fernando’s eyes. Rodrigo Sánchez was the Crown’s comptroller responsible for accounting the gold and goods obtained on the voyage and assuring the sovereigns received them. Rodrigo was from Segovia, where many Crown functionaries resided, and Cristóbal learned that Rodrigo had been dispatched to Ronda for a number of years after its capture to assist in its governance and integration into the realm. Rodrigo de Escobedo also hailed from Segovia, where he had worked as one of the queen’s secretaries for a few years. This Rodrigo—Isabel’s eyes— was responsible for drafting correspondence to the Grand Khan or other princes and administering the formal ceremonies whereby the Castilian crown took possession of lands discovered. While the crews might perceive these men as important at the sovereigns’ court, Cristóbal knew otherwise.

  Juan de la Cosa, the ship’s owner, also served as its master, and Cristóbal had been impressed by his skill and enthusiasm for the voyage when in the duke’s employ at Puerto de Santa María. Pero Alonso Niño, a native of Moguer in his midtwenties, served as the pilot and second-ranking officer, and Cristóbal quickly appreciated that he was a veteran sailor with expertise and judgment. Juan and Pero Alonso would rotate as the officer of the watch every four hours, responsible for directing the sailors and ship’s boys in their daily tasks. Chachu, a Basque, was the boatswain, the lead seaman responsible for the ship’s daily maintenance. Cristóbal’s orders would be communicated to the Pinta and Niña by shouts, hand signals, flags, signal lanter
ns at night, and, infrequently, when the sea was calm, the Pinzóns’ visitation aboard the Santa María.

  Privacy was neither expected nor possible aboard ship, and Cristóbal also quickly became acquainted with every sailor and ship’s boy. The ship’s boys cooked one hot meal a day for everybody before noon, using a firebox middeck, and everyone served himself in a wooden bowl, eating with his hands. A table sometimes was set with a slab of meat or fish from which everyone piked a portion using his own dagger. Breakfast and dinner were served cold, each sailor snatching a biscuit and cheese or honey and some raisins or nuts. Cristóbal’s steward and page prepared and served his meals. Each man enjoyed a rationed mug of wine a day. All peed over the rail, and, to poop, one sat on a board suspended overboard for all to see, using a common rope to wipe—which then dangled to wash in the sea.

  As the ships sailed southwest, Cristóbal retired to his cabin and commenced writing a log on paper sheets to report on the voyage addressed in the name of Christ directly to the king and queen. He had suffered and surmounted years of rejection and scorn, and, with confidence in his destiny, he composed a prologue defining the voyage’s purpose and sequence in history. He proclaimed that, after ending the Grenadan war, subjugating the infidel, and expelling the Jews, the sovereigns—as enemies of Mohammedans, idolatries, and heresies—had commanded that he go to India to deliver the sovereigns’ embassy to the Grand Khan and other princes and investigate their disposition and conversion to Christianity, traveling not east overland but by sea to the west, where it was uncertain anyone had ever gone. He promised to record the entire voyage punctually, including everything he saw and experienced, and prepare a nautical chart and book locating the lands and seas discovered by latitude and longitude and their winds. He reminded the sovereigns of the titles and concessions they had conferred upon his discovery.

  Cristóbal’s voyage soon lost its grandeur. Three days from Palos, the Pinta’s rudder jumped its gudgeons in heavy seas, and the ship began to leak heavily. Martín fixed it, but it dislodged again the next day. The ships then were becalmed and further delayed. When they finally approached the Canaries, Cristóbal sailed the Santa María and Niña to Gomera, where he sought in vain to trade the Pinta for a better vessel, and Martín took the Pinta to Gran Canaria, where he also failed to do the same. Cristóbal had anticipated the assistance of his amour Beatriz de Peraza de Bobadilla, then Gomera’s governess, but she was off the island. While Cristóbal projected cheer and optimism to maintain the crews’ morale, they grew restive and perceived the sprung rudder, the becalmed seas, and the fruitless delays as bad omens, signs that the Lord disfavored the voyage.

  On August 24, an inauspicious three weeks after departing Palos, Cristóbal sailed from Gomera to reunite with the Pinta on Gran Canaria, coursing to the south of the neighboring Tenerife— which remained under control of its native population—and leaving Pedro Gutiérrez and some sailors on Gomera to secure supplies for restocking the ships. That night, Tenerife’s tremendous volcano (Teide) erupted fire and smoke, signaling to the crews of the Santa María and Niña that the Lord outright condemned the voyage. When they arrived Gran Canaria, neither the Pinta’s trade nor fix had been arranged, and the crews of all three ships murmured that the ominous portents were relentless.

  Cristóbal ignored the murmur, started the Pinta’s repair, and refit the Niña with square rigging to run more securely with the easterly wind he expected. While it cost another week, the Pinta finally was fit and the ships departed back to Gomera, and the food, drink, and other provisions arranged by Gutiérrez were loaded. Additional wood was stowed for cooking, repairs, and communicating by firelight and smoke signal, and a few goats and pigs were corralled on the foredecks for fresh meals.

  Beatriz had returned to San Sebastián, Gomera’s tiny port, and hosted Cristóbal at a banquet in her stone tower, and they renewed their acquaintance. He remained eager for her affections and island. But, as to the island, she had sighted Alonso de Lugo as her next marriage, although Alonso was then off preparing the invasion of Palmas.1

  At long last, as dawn broke on September 6, Cristóbal and his crews took confession at the Church of the Assumption in San Sebastián. In spite of the omens, the crews continued to trust their captains. None had deserted. Cristóbal bade Beatriz farewell and boarded the ships with his men.

  Unfortunately, the wind was feeble and they floated aimlessly outside the harbor between Gomera and Tenerife. The volcano continued to erupt and the crews grew anxious again, searching for an answer as to why the Lord repeated this sign. Their angst grew as the calm and the eruption continued through the next day. But, at 3:00 a.m. on September 8, the northeast wind on which Cristóbal had designed his voyage arrived. Slowly, over a month after departing Palos, the three ships began to proceed west, sailing to the north of Hierro.

  Hierro was the last known island in the Sea of Darkness and its southern tip at 28 degrees north delineated the southern boundary of Castile’s possessions agreed with Portugal in the Treaty of Alcáçovas in 1479. The king and queen had advised Cristóbal that the voyage best not deviate south of this parallel in light of the treaty’s uncertain application to points west. The crews watched Hierro and the fire atop Tenerife fall from the horizon on the afternoon of September 9.

  The queen, at Cristóbal’s suggestion, had offered a modest life pension to the sailor who first sighted land—10,000 maravedis per year, equivalent to a sailor’s typical annual earnings—and every sailor was eager to win it. But the crews sang “Salve Regina” with unusual conviction that evening, and a pall befell them as many anguished whether they should have listened to their fathers, mothers, wives, and friends.

  Cristóbal understood his crews expected—as his own promise— that land would be achieved by 750 leagues sail. He feared the actions they might take if that promise were not met and resolved to underreport to them the distance he estimated the ships sailed each day. They would be less frightened if the voyage’s duration was prolonged and comforted that return to Hispania was shorter. He would be able to continue further west if he actually needed to exceed 750 leagues to reach Cipangu. Cristóbal understood that each ship’s pilot would make his own estimate of distance traveled, but Cristóbal’s reported estimate would serve as the estimate by which his promise was judged and he would answer to no other.

  As night descended, sailors placed glowing embers and pine resin in iron lanterns hung at the stern so the ships could sight themselves better at night and remain together. Those on duty worked in moonlight, those off duty lay to sleep, and ship’s boys turned the ampolletas every half hour and called a prayer. The ships ran swiftly and competently due west in strong wind.

  Cristóbal remained on the stern deck late into the night, monitoring the course. The Niña and Pinta ran before him in the sea, their lanterns’ fires glowing in the wind and appearing and vanishing with the rise and fall of the ocean swell. The wind smacked his back and whistled about him, surging the Santa María forward, with the bow plowing waves overtaken with the sound of a deep, melodic swish. The vast starry heavens about him descended in the far distance to meet at the horizon with the Sea of Darkness, which stretched landless, immense, and supreme in every direction. He prayed to the Virgin to watch over Diego, Fernando, and Beatriz in Córdoba and to carry his ships safely through the night.

  Cristóbal understood that he then stood alone in the presence of the Lord. He trembled to recognize that he had led his entire life for this moment. He thanked the Lord for this achievement and, envisioning himself as the Lord’s servant and instrument, prayed that the voyage succeed in finding islands and mainlands and that his noble destiny be fulfilled.

  SEA OF DARKNESS,

  September 10–October 9, 1492

  The fleet sped west in strong winds. By Cristóbal’s private estimation, they achieved 60 leagues on September 10, 40 on September 11, and 33 on September 12, which he reported to the crews as 48, 32, and less than 30.

  Soon, the s
ailors grew silent and downcast, afraid that the conditions were unknown and the portents bad. On September 13, Pero Alonso and the pilots on the Pinta and Niña were surprised to discover at midnight that their compass needles no longer aligned with the polestar, but deviated to its west, and that at dawn the needles deviated to its east. Cristóbal admitted his own bewilderment. After nightfall on the fifteenth, the crews witnessed a marvelous flame of fire fall from the heavens to the sea, apparently but four or five leagues distant. The next day, the ships encountered extensive banks of green and yellow weed floating in the sea,2 and all grew alarmed there were hidden shoals. On the seventeenth, the weed grew thick as stargrass, tangled with long stalks, shoots, and fruit. Some dreaded they were sailing above drowned continents or approaching another world. The compass deviations from the polestar grew worse at night only to vanish by dawn. Some murmured that the vain Genoese had lured them into unknown danger.

  Cristóbal tried to cheer his crews, expounding that the weed was well known to the Portuguese and others—Pedro de Vásquez of their own Palos had seen it before. Martín and Vicente added their reassurances. Cristóbal professed the weed was a good omen, allowing that it probably had drifted from islands close to the west or south from the Azores. He also reflected on the compass deviations and comforted the pilots that they were caused by the polestar itself, not the needles—the polestar wasn’t stationary above the northern pole, but orbited in a small circle above and around it. Cristóbal observed that the breezes were temperate and pleasant—the conditions as agreeable as springtime in Andalusia—and advised the crews to temper their concerns.

  The crews were fortified by these observations, the murmurs quieted, and alarm dissipated to wonder and curiosity. To everyone’s surprise, they discovered tiny crabs living in the weed. Cristóbal asked that one be retrieved, and it was placed on a table for observation. As it crawled about, he warranted that such creatures didn’t live far from land—indicating land was certainly near—and ordered that it be preserved for the queen, who would be interested. He soon observed that the breezes were sweeter and purer the farther west they sailed and that the sea was as calm as the Guadalquivir. Some crewmen deduced that the sea had become less salty by a half. The Pinta’s crew saw a great flock of birds flying west, and Martín shouted to Cristóbal that land was close.