In the sweltering nights there were things even worse than mosquitoes to be dreaded. On the third night they slept in an abandoned Indian clearing at the water’s edge, under the crude shelter of the boat’s sails spread to protect them from the rain storms, and Rich found himself awakened at dawn by Osorio shaking his shoulder. Rich was stupid with sleep — it was not until the early morning that he had been able to lose consciousness in the heavy heat — and it was with bleared eyes that he followed the line of Osorio’s pointing forefinger. From under the shelter of the mainsail two yards away projected the naked leg and foot of one of the seamen, thrust out, Rich presumed, in search of coolness during the night. And resting on the foot was a greyish lump, which moved a little as Rich looked. There was hardly light to see, for the faint dawn could as yet barely penetrate the forest around them, and the thing was too vague to be seen clearly, but it was ugly, menacing, obscene.
Bernardo de Tarpia had shared the shelter of the mizensail with Rich and Osorio, and he, too, was awake and staring at the thing, crossing himself and breathing hard. Then the leg moved and the thing dropped off the foot to the ground with a flutter of wings; it made towards them. There was something vile about it and they all three flinched back. The wings fluttered again in the short undergrowth; it was trying to fly and yet was unable to rise, and its course brought it close to Rich. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, which he had grasped instinctively at the first alarm, and he whirled the sheathed weapon and struck at the thing, shuddering. Again and again he struck, but Tarpia had his sword out by now, and with a cry, half prayer and half blasphemy, he slashed at the thing and the flutterings ended abruptly.
It was a bat, a furry thing, brownish above and greyish below, with wide-spread leathery wings, dead with its open mouth revealing a gleam of sharp white teeth. The revolting ugliness of the face made Rich shudder again, and the spreading pool of blood in which the creature lay disclosed the work it had been at; it had gorged itself until it was unable to rise in the air. The occupants of the other tent had awakened, and were on their feet and out now; one of them was bare-legged and pale under his tan. At Rich’s order he showed his foot. A patch of skin the size of a finger nail had been shaved from off it at the root of the great toe, and a broad stream of blood still flowed from the wound, even though the seaman was ignorant of its existence until his attention was called to it. He paled still further when he learned what had happened, and during that day they waited for him to die of the poison they thought the bat had injected into the wound. But he did not die, and the flow from the wound ceased after it had soaked the cloth in which they bound it. On their return to the ships the surgeon bled him from the right elbow, as was of course necessary after a wound in the left foot; and he recovered some days later, with the help of purges. But they did not foresee his recovery at the time. During the exploration of that day Rich was thinking of the wretched man with pity, and watching him as he lay in the bottom of the boat with the oars, creaking over him.
A shallow exit from a lagoon brought them out into open water again; there lay Trinidad to the eastward, well up over the horizon, while to the westward and the southward was the land they had been exploring. There was only a narrow gap between the two — the Serpent’s Mouth. The Admiral’s Isle of Grace, as he had named the land across the Serpent’s Mouth from Trinidad, was something more than an island, then. It was a part of the big island whose innumerable river mouths they had been examining.
“That settles it, sir, I should think,” said Osorio, peering round under his hand. “If the Admiral wants to find a passage to the westward he’ll have to come back through here first. And I don’t expect he’ll want to do that — not with that current running.”
“Perhaps not,” said Rich, looking at the green slopes of Trinidad and of what he had thought of so far as the Isle of Grace. But now they had circumnavigated the whole of this sea of Paria and there were only the two exits — the Serpent’s Mouth to the south and the Dragon’s Mouths, which they had hardly examined, to the north; if the Admiral would not use the one, he would have to use the other. Yet Rich was reluctant to give up the search for another way round. He had a strange feeling that this land of Paria held the secret of the Indies. He wanted to know how far it extended, and what ocean lay beyond it. He felt a little thrill of pleasure — at which he was inclined to smile — at the thought that his foot had been the first from Europe to be set upon it. Trinidad was a mere small island, but Paria — no one knew the limits of Paria yet.
“Take the boat in again,” he said, hoarsely, and Osorio swung the tiller over and they headed in towards the flat delta once more.
There was a bigger river mouth even than usual here; Osorio tasted the water which he lifted in his hand from overside.
“Fresh,” he said, laconically — it meant that the volume of water coming down the river was considerable, if here at the edge of the sea there was no taste of salt.
But save in the matter of size this channel was like the others they had explored: mud and jungle, mosquitoes and aigrettes. Rich wondered whether he would be able to persuade the Admiral to bring the squadron back here and to push a strong expedition, equipped for weeks of exploration, up this river. He felt a sudden yearning to head such an expedition — he felt in his bones, ridiculous though he knew such an idea to be, that this river drained no mere island, but a new unguessed-at continent. A mad theory, contrary to all the ideas held by the Admiral, a dangerous, almost an heretical, theory. If only there were some means of ascertaining how far round this revolving globe they had sailed, whether it was one third the way round, as the Admiral’s theories demanded, or one eighth the way, as Rich saw would have to be the case if his own mad guesses were correct! If only some miracle would let them know, even just for once, what time of day it was at that moment in Cadiz!
Sand-glasses, turned half-hourly for a ten weeks’ voyage, could be as much as a week out in their record at the end of that time, he knew. Ingenious mechanics were constructing engines in Germany which could tell the time with an error of not more than an hour a day. If some remarkable man could devise one accurate to a second a day, and able to withstand the shocks of a sea voyage, the problem would be solved; but no such miraculous workmanship could ever be hoped for. Wilder and more chimerical ideas flowed through Rich’s brain. Supposing a string were to be laid by a ship on the bottom of the ocean from Cadiz to the Indies, so that a twitch from one end would announce the hour of noon to the other end! Supposing some vast explosion, some flash of light, could be contrived at Cadiz at noon which could be observed in the Indies! That was plain madness, said Rich to himself, terminating his meditations with a jerk. Three thousand miles of ocean sundered Spain from the Indies. It was a gap which no wild theories could bridge and no one — at least no one without the help of magical powers — would ever be able to tell at one place what was the time at another; neither the Greek philosophers nor the Fathers of the Church held out any hope of the contrary.
“Another Indian boat, sir,” announced a seaman in the bow. “See! He’s gone up that creek over there to starboard.”
They turned the longboat and headed across the river to the creek, and sharp eyes detected the canoe hiding among the trees whose feet stood in the water. The two young Indian men who were in her had no concrete fears for their personal safety, just like all the other Indians they had encountered. They had merely taken flight before the unknown, and their confidence had only to be won for them to begin to smile broadly, with white teeth showing in contrast with their pale copper skins. The technique of handling them so as to reassure them was being acquired rapidly. Jingling hawk’s-bells, bright red caps — the young men were soon enraptured by the acquisition of treasures whose very possibility had been unguessed at by them an hour ago. But they had no treasures to give in exchange: the canoe contained nothing save a few-fibre fishing lines with fishbone hooks attached.
“Guanin?” said Tarpia to them; as they showed no unders
tanding; a dozen voices repeated the word in a dozen different intonations. One of them understood at last, saying the word over again. It was the initial sound which troubled these Castilians and Andalusians, noted Rich. The gu- pronunciation which they used did not exactly reproduce the real sound, because the latter had no place in their language. It was more like the beginning of a good many Arabic words — Wadi, for instance — which was reminiscent of the way in which he himself, speaking Catalan, or the Provencals speaking their native tongue, pronounced an initial v.
“Guanin?” repeated everybody eagerly.
The Indian spread his hands deprecatingly. He had no gold.
“Where can we find guanin?” asked Acevedo; he went through the motions of someone seeking something, steadily repeating the word meanwhile.
The Indian grinned and pointed south. It was always to some other quarter that these Indians pointed, south or north or west; they knew no mines of gold close to them.
Rich was trying to question the other Indian about the geography of the neighborhood — a heartbreaking task in dumb show, but; the Indian paid courteous attention to his strained gesticulations. He partly understood at last and replied in a long speech, pointing round about him. Twice in the rapid sentences Rich caught the name “Paria,” and he knew already that was the name of this country. He pointed to the river, and peered along it under his hand, pointed back to the sea, and then inland again, in a desperate effort to inquire about the existence of a westward passage. The Indian grasped some of his meaning. He smiled and nodded his head; he spread his arms wide, striving with all his body to convey the impression of something big — big — big. Did that mean there was a big sea beyond? wondered Rich. The other Indian joined in. He, too, pointed to the river and spread his arms.
“Orinoco,” he said, and the other eagerly echoed the word, “Orinoco.”
“Orinoco?” asked Rich.
The Indians were delighted, and gesticulated more vehemently than ever. This Orinoco, whatever it was, was something very big, and was somehow connected with the river by which they were. One of the Indians hissed and shushed, swinging his arms horizontally with twittering fingers — the Orinoco must be a rushing river, and, judging by the way the other Indian pointed and spread his arms, far wider somewhere in the interior than this arm of it. The Indians chattered together and then one of them turned back to Rich; he was clearly faced with a difficult explanation but that could not account for the reverent solemnity of their expressions. He was about to try to describe something which they considered very important, perhaps connected with some god of theirs. He held his hands high, the fingers dancing, and moved slowly along — this was the steady course of a wavelet-capped river.
“Whoosh!” he said, and his hands dropped suddenly to the level of his knees. “Whoosh!”
His hands indicated a turmoil in the water at a lower level.
“A waterfall!” said Osorio.
“Of course,” said Rich. “How far?”
He made a gesture of walking towards this Orinoco waterfall, and the Indian dissented emphatically. The Indian closed his eyes and inclined his head sideways against his folded hands in a gesture of sleep. Then he held up his finger. He slept again, and held up his finger again, and then again. After that repetition he gave up the effort of trying to convey the exact number, and spread all his fingers, over and over again. A man would have to sleep many nights before he penetrated as far as this waterfall. Two more vivid gestures disclosed the fact that he had himself seen this marvelous phenomenon, while his companion had not.
“Are there people to be found on the way?” asked Rich. “Many people?”
The Indians presumably grasped the meaning of his signs, and dissented doubtfully. There were some people, a few people, apparently, along the river — but apparently these Indians had no notion of an uneven distribution of population.
“Guanin?” asked Rich.
The Indians were puzzled. There might be gold there, a little, but clearly they were not interested in gold, and could not understand this persistent questioning about the existence of gold. Rich tried to work by analogy in his effort to understand their mentality. Supposing a Negro of unknown tongue landed in Catalonia, and was not interested in the service of God or in money, and yet persistently asked about the existence of, say, sandstone — or even birds’ nests — something of no special appeal — his questions might be received with the same blank look of sympathy.
One of the Indians was examining Pedro’s crossbow with more interest. Pedro was always glad of the opportunity of demonstrating the effectiveness of his weapon. He wound the thing up, making great play of the amount of strength necessary to turn the windlass, while the Indians looked on, deeply interested but entirely without understanding. When the cord clicked over the catch and the windlass spun free they actually thought the demonstration was complete, and smiled politely.
“No,” said Pedro; he was one of the school which believed that people who did not understand good Spanish might understand bad Spanish. ‘’Big shooting. Look. See.”
He laid a heavy bolt into the groove against the string and looked round for a target. A few score yards away, out on the broad surface of the river, a sea bird drifted with the current. Pedro called their attention to it, raised his heavy weapon, took careful aim, and shot. The bolt splashed into the water not more than a couple of yards from the bird, which squawked with surprise. Such an amazing result naturally impressed the Indians as much as did the clatter of the released bow. They looked with reverence upon the man who could do such extraordinary things, and these Spaniards who manned the longboat took a childish delight in displaying their powers — the sharpness of their heavy swords, and the impenetrability of their armor, and the way their clothes fastened with brooches and buttons. Rich allowed them plenty of time for it before he suggested a move.
They would have to turn back and seek the ships now, and it was with a curious sinking of heart that he directed the longboat’s course away from the mouth of the Orinoco, and northward, with the easterly wind just fair enough to enable them to proceed under sail. As they coasted along, leaving on their left the flat delta which they had explored, Rich looked across at the land with this persistent feeling of unhappiness. He might never return here, to this land of the laughing Indians, he might never explore the vast Orinoco, and he felt that it was this that he wanted to do, despite the heat, and the rain, and the insect pests, and the vampire bats. Whatever might be the wonders awaiting him in Española, he felt as if this vast new land where he had been the first Spaniard to set foot were peculiarly his own. He hardly paid attention when Osorio announced, after cautious experiments, that even out here the water was hardly brackish.
Chapter 11
The Admiral listened courteously to Rich’s report. His eyes brightened at the sight of the gold and the pearls which Rich handed over, and he seemed pleased at the news that the longboat was full of fresh food. The Admiral had no interest in food himself — his bad teeth alone would have limited it — and with him it was an article of faith, not of knowledge, that weaker men found benefit in a varied diet. He laughed at Rich’s account of how they had attacked a caiman under the impression that it was an iguana.
“It is a pity you had no men with you with experience of the Indies,” he said, and then his face hardened as he realized what he said. When the squadron sailed from Spain no inducement offered had been great enough to tempt a single one of those survivors of the previous expedition who had returned to Spain to sail again for the Indies.
Rich noticed the Admiral’s hurt expression, and went on hastily with his report so as to smooth over the difficulty.
“It is a vast land, Your Excellency,” he said, and the Admiral nodded doubtfully. “The rivers are huge.”
“You mean the channels between the islands?”
“Rivers, Your Excellency. Vast rivers of fresh water. So vast that they freshen the water far out in this inland sea.”
/> “That freshness is interesting — we have noticed it here, near the ships, while you have been away. I have decided on the cause.”
“It is caused by these big rivers, Your Excellency.”
“Oh no. There is no land near which could support a river of that size. It is far more likely that — ”
“We found a river the Indians called Orinoco, Your Excellency,” said Rich. He was desperate enough to interrupt in his anxiety not to hear the theory. “They said one could ascend it for many days’ journey, as far as a great waterfall.”
“There is nothing so easy to misunderstand as the signs these Indians make,” said the Admiral, kindly. “Believe me on that point; I have had sufficient experience to know.”
Rich remembered the Admiral’s early reports and their frequent mentions of the consequences of such misunderstandings, and yet he was sure that on this occasion there had been no misunderstanding.
“Their gestures left me in no doubt,” he said.
To the Indies Page 12