Last Crusade, The

by Cliff, Nigel

  Gama ordered the soldiers to the boats, and they rowed off a short distance. The captain-major was anxious, the Chronicler recorded, to avoid killing anyone by mistake, “but to prove that we were able, although unwilling to hurt them, he ordered two bombards to be fired from the poop of the longboat.” The Africans were now sitting quietly, just off the beach in front of the bush. When the guns went off and the balls went whistling overhead they jumped up and fled, dropping their animal skins and weapons in their panic. Two men ran out a minute later to gather up the scattered possessions, and they all disappeared over the brow of the hill, driving their cattle before them. No more was seen of them for days.

  As the work of cannibalizing the storeship for spare parts and wood came to an end, Gama had a fire set in the stripped hull. For several days the burning hulk smoldered and smoked like a somber warning signal. The sailors, though, had quickly forgotten about the troubles onshore—that was the captain-major’s problem—and were more interested in a bit of recreation. One party rowed to the island in the middle of the bay to take a closer look at the colony of seals. The animals were so tightly packed that from a distance the island itself seemed a mass of smooth, shifting stones. Some were as big as bears, roared like lions, and attacked men without fear; spears thrown by the burliest sailors glanced off their skin. Others were much smaller and cried like goats. The Chronicler and his party of sightseers counted three thousand before they gave up, and to amuse themselves they fired their bombards at them. There were strange birds, too, that brayed like asses and were “as big as ducks, but they cannot fly, because they have no feathers on their wings.” They were Cape penguins, and the explorers massacred them, too, until they grew bored.

  By their twelfth day in the bay the three remaining ships were almost ready to leave, and the sailors set out once again to fill the water casks. On one sortie they took with them one of the padrões, the stone pillars bearing the royal coat of arms, that they had carried from Portugal. Gama had had a large cross made out of the mizzenmast of the storeship, and after the pillar was set up, it was fitted to the top.

  The next day, as the little fleet set sail, the Africans finally emerged from the bush. They had been keeping a watch on the uncouth strangers all along, and they seized their chance for revenge. A dozen men ran out and smashed the cross and the pillar to pieces in full view of the departing ships.

  It was now December 7, and there was a palpable mood of nervous excitement on board. Bartolomeu Dias had turned back home just a little farther ahead, and Vasco da Gama’s men were about to trespass on nature’s secret places. Many were convinced they were sailing toward an uncrossable threshold, and their worst fears soon seemed to be confirmed.

  No sooner had the fleet left the bay than the wind dropped, the sails sagged, and the ships lay all day at anchor. The next morning—the day of the Immaculate Conception, the Chronicler piously recorded—they moved off, only to sail into a terrifying storm.

  The waves reared into watery cliffs. The vessels heaved toward the inky clouds and dropped into the abyss. A piercing cold wind battered at the stern, and everything went pitch dark. With the ships under full canvas the prows plunged under the waves, and the captains hastily ordered the foresails struck.

  Freezing seawater crashed on the decks and soaked the sailors’ woolen cloaks. Belowdecks all hands were on the pumps, but water seeped and washed in faster than they could expel it, and the holds flooded. The howling heavens drowned out the pilots’ commands, but even with several men hanging on to the tiller, the ships were almost impossible to control. As the tempest reached its worst Nicolau Coelho’s caravel disappeared from sight, and the most seasoned sailors thought they had seen their last day. They wept and confessed to each other, and struggling to form a file behind a cross, they prayed God to show mercy and preserve them from disaster.

  Finally the skies lightened, and at sunset the lookouts spotted the Berrio on the horizon, fully five leagues away. The two ships hung out their signal lights and lay to. Around midnight, at the end of the first watch, Coelho finally caught up, but only by chance. He had not seen the other ships until he was almost upon them; he had sailed in their direction because the spent wind gave him no choice.

  The fleet had been blown far out to sea, and once more it made for land. Three days later the watchkeepers spotted a chain of low islands. Pêro de Alenquer recognized them at once: five leagues farther, on a headland that jutted out from the coast, was the last pillar erected by Bartolomeu Dias.

  The next day, December 16, the three ships passed the mouth of the river where Dias’s mutinous crew had forced him to turn around. They were now sailing where no European—almost certainly no man—had ever sailed before. That night they lay to, and specters of the dangers ahead filled every half-sleeping mind.

  The next day they sailed briskly on with a following westerly wind, but in the evening the wind sprang around to the east. The ships were forced to stand out to sea again, and for two days they tacked as best they could. When the wind finally switched round to the west they headed back to land to find out where they were. They soon saw a familiar sight: an island where Dias had erected a cross, sixty leagues back from where they had reckoned they should be. A strong offshore current had dragged them halfway toward the bay they had left nearly two weeks before.

  Many of the sailors were sure they had hit an invisible wall that divided East from West. Vasco da Gama, whose steely determination was daily becoming more evident to his men, was having none of it. The fleet resumed its course.

  This time a stiff stern wind blew for three or four days, and the ships inched forward against the current.

  “Henceforth,” noted the Chronicler, who was as relieved as the rest, “it pleased God in His mercy to allow us to make headway! We were not again driven back. May it please Him that it be thus always!”

  They were now sailing past lush woodland, and the farther they went, the higher the trees reached toward the heavens. It seemed like a sign, and sure enough, the coast was now clearly trending to the northeast.

  After decades of questing and centuries of dreaming, the first Europeans had sailed into the Indian Ocean.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE SWAHILI COAST

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1497, passed in prayers before the shipboard shrines. In honor of the date the explorers named the land they were passing Natal, but there was no time to rest. The charts had run out; from now on, blank sheets had to be filled in. Everything needed to be observed and recorded, and there were the usual trials—a cracked mast, a snapped anchor cable, an adverse wind—to slow things down still more. Worst of all, the drinking water was nearly finished and the cooks were reduced to boiling salted meat in salty seawater, with nauseating results. The need to put into land was becoming urgent.

  The new year was eleven days old when the watchkeepers sighted the mouth of a small river. The captain-major gave the order to anchor near the coast, and the following day a landing party set out in the boats. As they approached they saw a large crowd of men and women watching them. All were remarkably tall—much taller than the Portuguese.

  Gama, who was leading from the front as usual, ordered Martim Affonso to land with a companion. The Africans gave them a quietly courteous welcome. Among them was one who appeared to be the chief, and as far as Affonso could make out, he seemed to be saying that the travelers were welcome to take anything they needed from his country.

  In return Gama sent the chief a red jacket, a pair of red pantaloons, a red Moorish cap, and a copper bracelet. As night fell and the boats returned to the ships, Affonso and his companion set off with the Africans to their village. Along the way the chief shrugged on his new clothes. “Look what I have been given!” he announced, either in surprise or pleasure, to anyone who came up. They arrived in the village to general applause, and the chief paraded around the thatched houses. When he retired for the night the visitors were shown to a guesthouse and were fed with millet porridge and chicken. They sle
pt lightly, not least because whenever they opened their eyes they found groups of villagers peering down at them.

  The next morning the chief appeared with two men who were to lead the sailors back to the ships. He gave them some chickens for their commander, and he added that he would show their gifts to a great chief, whom the Portuguese took to be the king of the land. By the time Affonso, his companion, and their two guides had made their way to the landing place, they had attracted a two-hundred-strong following.

  The Portuguese named the country the Land of Good People. It seemed to be densely populated, with many chiefs but twice as many women as men. The warriors, whose constant battles with neighboring tribes no doubt had much to do with that imbalance, went armed with long bows and arrows, spears with iron heads, and daggers with pewter hilts and ivory sheaths. Both men and women wore copper ornaments on their legs and arms and in their braided hair. Near the villages were pools in which seawater was carried in dried, hollowed-out gourds and was evaporated to obtain salt. The travelers eagerly deduced that they were on the verge of more developed lands. Even so, they stayed for five days, their ships riding at anchor on the waves, trading linen shirts for large quantities of copper and replenishing their water supplies. This time the Africans helped them carry the casks to the ships, but before they were finished a favorable wind blew along the coast and beckoned the explorers on.

  After nine days’ sailing the thick woods parted to reveal the mouth of a much larger river, guarded by sandy islets covered with mangrove thickets. Gama decided to risk a little reconnaissance, and on his orders the Berrio entered the waterway. A day later the two larger ships followed.

  On either side were flat, marshy plains dotted with clumps of tall trees that produced strange but edible fruits. The people were dark, strong, and naked except for short cotton loincloths. The Portuguese quickly noticed that the young women were remarkably good-looking, even though their pierced lips were hung with a daunting array of twisted tin ornaments. The Africans, the Chronicler noted, took equal delight in the strange newcomers. Groups rowed up in dugouts to proffer the local produce and climbed on board without hesitation, as if the Europeans were old friends. They left with bells and other trinkets and led the sailors to their village, and they readily offered them as much fresh water as they could take.

  A few days later two men wearing caps of green satin and embroidered silk rowed up to the fleet. They were clearly the local nobility, and they looked over the ships with a connoisseur’s eye. One of their young men, they explained, had traveled from a distant country, and he had seen vessels that were just as big as these.

  “These tokens,” the Chronicler wrote, “gladdened our hearts, for it appeared as if we were really approaching the bourne of our desires.” The Portuguese were less happy when the two men turned up their noses at the gifts they were offered—an alarming snub when they were still far from India. Still, the haughty gentlemen had huts built for them on the riverbank, and for seven days they sent servants to barter reddish dyed cloths for the strangers’ trinkets until they grew bored and paddled back upstream.

  The Portuguese stayed on the river for thirty-two days. Gama had decided his men deserved a rest after their trials, and they evidently enjoyed the company of the attractive and obliging women. At the same time they repaired the mast of the São Rafael and once again careened all three ships.

  So far East Africa had turned out to be some kind of paradise, but danger lurked in the warm, moist air. Many of the crew fell seriously ill. Their feet and hands ballooned, and their legs broke out in hundreds of tiny spots. Their gums puffed up so far over their teeth that they were unable to eat, and their breath stank unbearably. Their eyes bled, and their eyeballs began to protrude from their shrunken faces. Seven months from home, the dreaded scurvy had struck.

  Paulo da Gama, a kindly and solicitous man, visited the sick night and day, consoling them and dispensing remedies from his own stores. There was no doctor among the crew, though since ship’s surgeons—who also acted as barbers—tended to be like the sort encountered by the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle, “a man of such unprepossessing appearance, that even in perfect health I would have sickened if he had felt my pulse,” their effectiveness was anyway limited. The worst afflicted developed suppurating wounds that left them paralyzed, and their teeth dropped out. Perhaps thirty men died while the survivors stood by, baffled and helpless to act.

  Eventually Vasco da Gama gave the order to move on. Before leaving he erected the second of his pillars and made a note of the name his men had given to their anchorage: the River of Good Omens. The signals, though, were decidedly mixed. The fleet had hardly passed the bar of the river when the flagship ran aground on a sandbank. Everyone was about to give it up for lost when the rising tide refloated it just in time.

  THE LITTLE ARMADA regained the open sea on Saturday, February 24. At night the pilots set a course to the northeast to keep clear of the coast, and for the next week they followed the same heading, stopping at night to avoid missing anything but seeing little of note except for a few scattered islands.

  On March 1 a larger group of islands heaved into view, this time close to the shore. It was growing late, and the ships stood out again and lay to, waiting until the morning to survey the scene.

  The dawn light revealed a large flat lozenge of coral, fringed with white sand and spiked with green vegetation, embraced by a broad sweep of the mainland. Two smaller islands guarded the approach from the sea. Gama decided to send in the caravel first, and Nicolau Coelho set his sails and edged forward into the bay. It was soon clear that he had misjudged his approach, and the Berrio headed straight for a sandbank. As he was attempting to put about and dislodge himself, he saw a little flotilla of boats set out from the main island.

  By now the other two ships had come up behind, and the islanders excitedly tried to flag them down. The Gama brothers sailed on regardless to the sheltered roadstead between the mainland and the island, and with the welcoming committee in hot pursuit they cast anchor. Seven or eight of the boats came up to the ships, and a small orchestra struck up a tune. The Portuguese recognized their long, straight trumpets as the same instruments played by the Moors of North Africa.

  The rest of the men in the boats warmly beckoned the newcomers to follow them into the island’s port. Gama invited some of them on board, and they ate and drank their fill with the crew.

  The Portuguese quickly realized the islanders spoke Arabic. This was both promising and puzzling. They were clearly Muslims, but they were much friendlier than any Muslims the explorers had met before.

  Vasco da Gama decided he needed to find out more about where he was and what kind of people were there. Once again he ordered Nicolau Coelho to go ahead into the harbor and take soundings to see if the larger ships could follow. Coelho tried to steer around the island and struck a rocky point that broke his rudder. He managed to extricate himself, and the caravel limped into the deep, clear water of the port.

  The Berrio had barely come to a standstill when the local sultan drew alongside and climbed on board with a large retinue. He cut a distinguished figure in a long linen shirt, a full velvet gown, a multicolored silk cap trimmed with gold, and a pair of silk shoes. His men were dressed in fine linens and cottons, elaborately worked and dyed in vibrant stripes. On their heads they wore caps with silk bands embroidered with gold thread, and Arab swords and daggers were thrust in their belts.

  Coelho received the dignitaries with due deference, though he was only able to present the sultan with a single red hood. In return the sultan gave the captain the black rosary he fingered while praying, signaling that he was to hold it as a pledge of goodwill, and invited some of the sailors to come ashore with him.

  They landed on a rocky belt of shoreline where small ships could dock at high tide. Warehouses lined the waterfront. Several substantial boats were being built nearby, their hull timbers sewn together with coconut fiber and their sails woven from more of t
he same versatile material. Behind was a sizable town, with small mosques, ornate graveyards, and stuccoed houses built of coral rag and blocks. Everywhere coconuts, melons, and cucumbers were piled up for sale, and in the streets women sold small fried fish and meal cakes baked over coals.

  The sultan beckoned the men to his house. He fed them and sent them back with “a jar of bruised dates made into a preserve with cloves and cumin, as a present for Nicolau Coelho.”

  By now the two ships had followed the Berrio into the port. The sultan dispatched more delicacies to them, and Gama hastily prepared himself for a visit. After their arduous voyage, his men were hardly a presentable lot: the best were ragged and unkempt, while the worst were on their last legs. The captain-major ordered the sick and infirm belowdecks and summoned the strongest men from the other ships. They shrugged leather jerkins over their loose shirts, stepped into their boots, and concealed weapons under their clothes. The flags were run up, the canopies were put out, and the show was ready in the nick of time.

  It was just as well. The sultan arrived in full ceremonial splendor, with attendants dressed in rich silks and musicians who played nonstop on ivory trumpets. Gama welcomed him on board, seated him under an awning, offered him his best meats and wines, and presented him with more hats, together with some tunics, coral beads, and other baubles from his chests. The sultan cast his eyes over the proffered gifts, dismissed them contemptuously, and asked if the foreigners had any scarlet cloth. Gama, through his Arabic translator Fernão Martins, was forced to reply that they did not. The visitors soon left, though the sultan was intrigued enough to come back several times, and the Portuguese carried on giving him what they had.