To the Indies

by Forester, C. S.

  And at that very moment a little wind began to blow. He felt it first on his bare legs, damp with the water that had dripped from his shirt — a tiny coolness, the merest ghost of a breath. At first the coolness was all he noticed, never thinking of the cause. Then the big sail above him flapped a trifle, and then louder. Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, the sailing master, was on his feet now on the poop, looking round at the sea and the sky, and up at the long red-cross pennant which was stirring itself at the masthead. He bellowed orders, and at the sound of his voice the sailors bestirred themselves, rousing themselves up from where they lounged on the decks, moving to halliards and braces with more cheerfulness than they had been accustomed to show during the last few days. The yards were braced round and the sails bellied a little to the wind. Already the motion of the Holy Name had changed, from the indolent indifferent lurching to a more purposeful swoop. Rich heard a sound he had forgotten — the musical bubbling of water under the bows. In itself that was enough to rouse him from his depression. He could feel his spirits rise as he hopped on one leg trying to pull on his breeches and not impede the sailors in their duties.

  There was the Admiral on the poop now, in his blue satin doublet with the gold chain glittering round his neck, his white hair hanging to his shoulders. He, too, was looking round the horizon. Now he was speaking to Carvajal, and Carvajal was bellowing more orders to the crew. The yards were being braced farther round. They were altering course; Rich looked forward as the ship steadied herself. Right ahead the sun hovered close above the horizon in a glory of red and gold. The Holy Name was heading due west — the Admiral must have changed his mind at last about holding to the southwestward. To the westward probably lay the nearest land; Rich felt a little thrill of anticipation.

  Alonso Perez came shambling past him — the Admiral’s servant, major-domo and general factotum, stoop-shouldered and with arms disproportionately long. He stepped to the rail and cleared his throat noisily, standing waiting.

  “Go!” came the Admiral’s high clear voice from the poop, and Perez spat into the indigo sea.

  The Admiral was by the rail on the poop, the fingers of his right hand clasping his left wrist. He was counting the number of times his pulse beat while the white fleck of mucus drifted back to him, which would enable him to estimate the speed of the ship through the water. Rich had helped in the initial tedious calculations by which the table of speeds had been constructed — for example: If the ship travels XCI feet while the pulse beats XLIII times, and the number of times the pulse beats in a minute is LXX, how many leagues does the ship travel in an hour? But there was no need to make those calculations now, because the table was constructed once for all, and a mere knowledge of the number of pulse-beats enabled anyone to read off the speed of the ship; and Carvajal’s pulse, and the pulse of Diego Osorio the boatswain, had been compared with the Admiral’s so that any one of the three could take an observation.

  It was highly ingenious — one of the many highly ingenious devices which Rich had admired since he had come to sea and interested himself in navigation. The astrolabe, which enabled one to guess which point one had reached of the earth’s rotundity from north to south, was another ingenious device. By its aid a ship’s captain could always return to a place he had previously visited, if only he sailed long enough along the line which ran through it parallel to the equinoctial line. If only — Rich was beginning again, as he had often done before, to try to work out a similar method of ascertaining longitude, but he was interrupted by his noticing that the ship’s company was assembling aft.

  He hastened after them, and took his place among the group of gentlemen and priests at the starboard side. The Admiral stood by the tiller, Carvajal at his side, the seamen in line athwartships, and the landsmen to port. Only the lookout and the helmsman took no part in the prayers. Heads were bowed. Horny hands made the sign of the cross. They prayed to the Queen of Heaven, the unlettered among them stumbling through the Latin words following the others. Rich glanced up under his eyelids at the Admiral, who was standing with clasped hands gazing up at the darkening sky. There was a happy exaltation in his face, a fixed and fanatical enthusiasm — everyone was aware of the Admiral’s special devotion to the Blessed Virgin. His blue eyes were still bright in the growing darkness, his white beard ghostlike.

  The prayer ended, and the massed ship’s company began to break up again into groups. Overhead the stars were coming into sight — strange stars, with the Great Bear almost lost on the northern horizon, and new constellations showing in the south, glowing vividly against the velvet of the sky. Like another star appeared the taper borne by a ship’s boy to light the shaded lamp that hung above the compass before the steersman.

  Chapter 2

  The blessed new coolness of the night gave sweet sleep to Narciso Rich — despite the foulness of his sleeping quarters with twenty gentlemen of coat-armor on the berth-deck below the great cabin aft, despite the snores of his companions, despite the lumpiness of his chaff mattress and the activity of its inhabitants. He told himself, as he stepped into the fresh air in the waist, just before dawn, that they must be nearing the fountain of Youth, for he felt none of the weight of his forty years on his shoulders, and his bones had ceased to protest about that chaff mattress. Carvajal had told him of the curious type of bed used by the natives of the Indian islands — a network of interlaced creepers, secured to posts at either end, and called ‘hammock’ in their pagan tongue — and Rich had once suggested that this would be ideal for use on board ship, where space was limited and motion violent; but Carvajal had pursed his lips and shaken his head at such a preposterous notion. Chaff mattresses had always been used at sea, and always would be; and Christian sailors could do better than to adopt ideas from naked unbelievers.

  Rich dipped his bucket and rinsed his face and hands, ran his comb through his hair and beard, and looked about him. The sky was lavender-hued now with the approaching dawn, in such lovely contrast with the blue of the sea as to rouse an ache in his breast, and that blessed breeze was still blowing from the east, driving the Holy Name steadily westward over the rhythmic rise and fall of the sea. He walked over and glanced at the slate hanging beside the helmsman. There was bunch after bunch of little strokes recorded there — they must have made at least twenty leagues during the night. Quite soon they must reach land, and they were a hundred leagues or more farther south than Española — near one of the southern islands which Polo had heard about, Sumatra, perhaps, with its sandalwood and spices.

  A ship’s boy came pattering up, barefooted; the last grains were running out of the hour-glass and he turned it and lifted his voice in a loud cry to Diego Osorio. The ship’s day was begun, and by coincidence just as the first rays of the sun were gleaming over the sea, touching the crests of the waves into gold. Carvajal came up onto the poop, crossed himself before the painted Virgin by the taffrail, and looked keenly at the slate. He nodded curtly to Rich, but he had no words to spare for him at this time in the morning, for it was during this cool hour that the work of the ship must be done. Soon he was bellowing orders at the sleepy men who came crawling out of the forecastle to join those already on deck. Twelve of them were set to work at bailing out the ship — seven of them as a living chain passing up buckets from the bilge to the rail, and five returning the empty buckets again. It was a slow and weary process, which Rich had watched daily for five weeks, and every day the work was harder, because in these seas there lived creatures who bored holes in the bottoms of ships, as clean as an auger.

  Rich had dallied with several ideas bearing on the subject, both to reduce the labor of bailing and to evade the necessity for it. There was the Archimedean screw, about which he had read in an Arabic mathematical treatise. A single man turning a handle might do more with such an apparatus — if it could be set up in a ship — than twelve men with buckets. Or there were pumps about which he had vaguely heard — the Netherlanders and Frisians were using them to drain their drowned fields.
Here, too, they might be worked by the force of the wind and keep the ship dry without any labor at all. And if the marine creatures bored through wood, why not protect the wood from them? A thin coating of lead, say, or of copper. . . . Perhaps the weight would be too great for the ship to bear, and certainly the cost would be enormous, but it might be worth while thinking about.

  It would be no use discussing such innovations with Carvajal, as he was painfully aware. Nor — Rich decided reluctantly — with the Admiral. The latter regarded him with suspicion, as a royal agent sent to try and devise methods of entrenching upon his cherished privileges as ‘Viceroy of the Ocean’, and in that he was not far wrong. Where he was wrong was in seeing traps laid for him in the most innocent suggestions, such as that of copper-bottoming ships. The Admiral was in such a state of mind as to believe every man’s hand against him.

  The ship was fully awake now. Here came the friars in their robes, and after them Rich’s recent cabin mates, the hidalgos, lounging out on deck, their swords at their hips; the two Acevedo brothers, Cristobal García and his followers, Bernardo de Tarpia, still a little unsure of himself from seasickness, and the others. Their lisping Castilian contrasted oddly with the rougher, aspirated Andalusian of the crews and with the sweet Catalan which was music to Rich’s ears. João de Setubal spoke the barbarous Portuguese, which put him on better terms with the Admiral, who spoke Portuguese well, but who, when he spoke Castilian, was liable to lapse with startling unintelligibility into his native Italian. When that happened it was not unusual for him to go on talking for several minutes without realizing what had happened, and for him to be recalled to Spanish only by the look of blank incomprehension on the face of the person addressed.

  Here he came on deck now, wearing scarlet velvet — the fact that he could wear velvet in that heat was clear enough proof of the way in which personal discomfort meant nothing to him — his gold chain and his jeweled sword and dagger. His four pages followed him — it was as if they were carrying a five-yard ermine train — and Perez with his white staff of office, and Antonio Spallanzani, his Italian squire. The hidalgos, Rich among them, fell into line and bowed deeply as he approached, with all the deference due to the Regent of the Indies. He bowed stiffly in return — it was rheumatism which made him so unbending — and then turned, with head bowed and uncovered, to murmur a prayer to the Virgin by the taffrail. Carvajal awaited his attention at his elbow, and the Admiral, when he had finished his devotions, turned to him with a slow dignity. Carvajal made his report on the night’s run, the Admiral’s keen blue eyes running over the slate to confirm it. They had run twenty-one leagues. Two great shooting stars had been seen during the middle watch. At dawn the lookout had seen a flight of pelicans . . .

  “Then land is near,” said the Admiral. “Pelicans never fly far to sea.”

  “Yes, Excellency,” said Carvajal, bowing again. “But the western horizon was clear at daybreak.”

  “No matter. We shall see land today. We are close upon it.”

  The Admiral directed his glance forward, to where the lookout stood gazing ahead. There was a little petulance in the Admiral’s manner, a little impatience, as though he suspected the lookout of not doing his duty. Rich felt a little puzzled, because the Admiral could have no certain knowledge that land was within five hundred miles of them in that direction; the Indies already discovered were far to the northward, and no one could tell exactly where were Java and Sumatra, and the islands of the roc and the island of pearls where Sinbad had traded.

  “It may even be in sight now,” said the Admiral. “Here, Perez, go aloft and see for me.”

  Perez handed his white staff in silence to one of the pages, and shambled forward. He leaped with ungraceful agility up into the shrouds of the mainmast, and climbed like a cat or an ape up the unstable rope ladder. Every eye watched him as he reached the masthead and steadied himself with one arm linked round a rope and shaded his eyes with his other hand. For a long time he stared to the westward over the indigo sea, looked away to relieve his aching eyes, and then stared again. Suddenly he waved his hand.

  “Land!” he shouted. “Land!”

  The ship broke into a bustle of excitement. Everyone began to scramble for a better point of view. Two or three sailors sprang for the shrouds, and were instantly checked by a high-pitched cry from the Admiral. No one except the faithful Perez should set eyes on this new domain of his before its legitimate ruler should. He walked to the shrouds with the dignity that concealed his rheumatic gait, and slowly began the climb. His bulky clothes and his sword impeded him, but he never hesitated until the masthead was reached. They saw Perez make place for him and point forward, and then, clearly dismissed, slide down the halliard to the deck. The Admiral stayed at the masthead, the sun gleaming on his jewelry and his scarlet and gold. It was long before he began the descent again, longer still before he reached the deck.

  “Gentlemen,” he said gravely to the group of hidalgos — gravely, but with a sparkle of happiness in his eyes — “yet one more miracle has been vouchsafed to us by the mercy of God.”

  He crossed himself, and they waited for him to say more, patiently.

  “This voyage, as you know, gentlemen, the third expedition to the Indies which I have commanded, was undertaken in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. The third voyage, gentlemen, and in the name of the Trinity. And now the first land we sight is a triple peak, three mountain tops conjoined at their base, the emblem of the Trinity, Three in One and One in Three. I have named the land in sight Trinidad, in perpetual memory of this stupendous event. Let us give thank to God the Father, and to the Blessed Savior, and to the Holy Spirit.”

  The harsh voice of the Dominican friar began at once to recite the prayer; heads were bared and bowed as they followed the words. And when the prayer was finished the Admiral turned to the ship’s boys behind him.

  “Sing, boys,” he commanded. “Sing the Salve Regina.”

  They sang like angels, their clear high treble soaring up to the cloudless blue sky, the deep bass of the crew blending in harmony with it. It was only after the hymn was finished that the Admiral, with a gesture, dismissed the excited ship’s company so that they could climb the rigging and view the land in sight, but at the same time his eyes met Rich’s and detained him.

  “You see, Don Narciso,” said the Admiral, gravely, “how clearly the hand of God is visible in this enterprise.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” said Rich. He felt the same. The sighting of the triple mountain top as the first incident of a voyage undertaken in the name of the Trinity might — so Rich’s legal mind insisted — have been only a coincidence. But that land should be sighted on the very day the Admiral had predicted it, at a moment when Rich was acutely aware of how insignificant were the data on which to base any calculations — that was also proof of God’s providence. The two facts together made the deduction indisputable.

  “We are no more than ten degrees north of the equinoctial line,” went on the Admiral. “It will be the gold-bearing land whose existence was postulated by my friend Ferrer, the jeweler, as well as by the ancients. Pliny and Aristotle both have passages bearing on the subject. It seems likely enough to me that this will prove to be the land of Ophir of which the Bible tells us.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Rich.

  The possibility of the new land being Ophir seemed to him not too great. It was only a possibility, not a probability. If it were so, they must have progressed at least two thirds of the way round the globe, and their noontime must differ by sixteen hours from that of Cadiz. If only by some fresh miracle they could know what was the time at that moment in Spain! Or if only their hour-glasses could be relied upon to give accurate time over a period of weeks, without a cumulative unknown error of hours! So much that was doubtful would be settled by that.

  “My hope is,” said the Admiral, “that we shall obtain such quantities of gold that there will be no need for dispute between me and the other servants of Their
Highnesses.”

  “We must hope so, sir,” said Rich. He tried to imagine how much gold would have to be imported before King Ferdinand would consider it too much trouble to go into the accounts. He felt there was not that much gold in the whole world, even though Queen Isabella would be more easily satisfied.

  “With Ophir found, and with shiploads of gold returning to Spain,” went on the Admiral, “it will not be long before the Holy Places are free and the unbeliever ceases to defile Jerusalem.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” said Rich, a little bewildered. This was something new to him.

  “Did not Their Highnesses tell you?” asked the Admiral, surprised. “The dearest wish of my heart, in achieving which I will die happy, is to set free the Holy Places. It is to that end that I intend to employ the gold of Ophir. I have visited the ports of the Levant, and I have studied the problem on the spot. With four thousand horse and fifty thousand foot, three campaigns would reconquer the Holy Land for Christendom. I vowed my wealth to that end when I first reached the Indies, and I have no doubt of the assistance of Their Highnesses when the money becomes available.”