To the Indies

by C. S. Forester

  “Not a bit of it,” said Rich.

  “At least it is not your fault that we have arrived the wrong side of San Domingo,” put in Acevedo. Rich rounded on him.

  “You don’t appreciate what a marvelous navigator the Admiral is,” he said. “There is no other sailor living who could have brought the squadron so directly here. That is true, believe me. With ordinary piloting we might have been a hundred leagues away instead of five.”

  “You must never say a word against the Admiral in Don Narciso’s presence,” said García, half bantering and half serious; perhaps he was remembering the occasion when Rich had conscientiously reported the acquisition of treasure.

  “Hullo, we’re chasing our tails again,” said Tarpia.

  The ship was going about again and standing in to the shore, and Rich was for a moment puzzled as to the motive for this maneuver. But he guessed it when he saw the Admiral looking keenly shorewards and followed his gaze.

  “There’s a canoe coming out to us,” he said.

  There it was, a dark spot bobbing on the waves; the sinking sun lit up a white speck in motion on it — somebody was waving to the ships from it:

  “We’ll get news of our friends now!” exclaimed Tarpia, eagerly.

  Everybody rushed to the side of the ship and watched the canoe as it danced over the glittering water towards them. It was an Indian who paddled it, but not a naked one. He wore a shirt of coarse towcloth, as everyone could see when he scrambled up the side, but it was not that which specially caught Rich’s notice — and the Admiral’s notice, too. In his hand he carried a crossbow; it was rusted, and the cord was frayed, and the winding handle was bent lopsided, but it was a crossbow for all that, and in the Indian’s belt of creeper was a single bolt. Before the Indian, blinking round at the ring of Spaniards, had time to collect himself, the Admiral was demanding where he had obtained the weapon. The seriousness of the island natives’ possessing such weapons of precision was apparent to all.

  “Loldan gave it me,” said the Indian; he could speak Spanish after a fashion.

  “Roldan!” exclaimed the Admiral. “The Alcalde Mayor?”

  “Yes. We friends,” said the Indian proudly. “I shoot bad Indians. Christian, I am.”

  He bent his head and made the sign of the cross, and intoned something in a weird sing-song, which was just recognizable as the Pater Noster. Some of the group round him laughed, as they might at the antics of a performing ape.

  “Where is my brother, His Excellency the Adelantado?” asked the Admiral.

  “In the town,” said the Indian, pointing down the coast with an appearance of indifference. “He not Loldan’s friend.”

  “Not Roldan’s friend?” repeated the Admiral, blankly.

  “No. He fight. Loldan fight. Indian fight.”

  The Indian grinned a simpleton’s grin. A gesture more eloquent than his bad Spanish called up a picture of bloody confusion throughout the island. Someone in the background whistled in amazement at his words.

  “But why? Why?” groaned the Admiral. The Indian grinned again, and tried to explain. There was no sense in his words. Spanish quarrels meant nothing to him. Rich suspected him of being mentally subnormal, even when allowance was made for the difficulties of language.

  At least the Admiral was prepared to waste no more time on him.

  “Take that crossbow away from him,” he ordered, curtly; “Put him over the side. Captain, lay the ship on the other tack.”

  This was decision, activity. Only a few seconds were necessary to bundle the protesting Indian back into his canoe and to begin to claw seaward again away from the lee shore. Rich admired the Admiral as he stood on the high poop rapping out his orders. Firmness and decision of this sort would soon stamp out any disloyalty when they reached San Domingo.

  The wind blew briskly past them as the Holy Name ploughed along, lying as close to the wind as she could; it set Rich’s clothes flapping and blew the Admiral’s white hair out in horizontal streamers as he stood staring forward. If intensity of desire could carry the Holy Name, the clumsy ship would fly, thought Rich, watching the Admiral’s face. The Admiral did not take his eyes from the ship’s course as he began to speak.

  “It was bad news that Indian bore, Don Narciso,” he said.

  “We know nothing of the truth of the matter yet, Your Excellency.”

  “No. I find it hard to believe that Roldan would oppose himself to my brother, the Adelantodo whom I myself appointed.”

  “Who is this Roldan, Your Excellency?”

  “The Alcalde Mayor — the Chief Magistrate. He owes that position to me.”

  “Naturally,” said Rich. There was no appointment in the Indies which was not in the Admiral’s direct gift. “But who is he, Your Excellency? I do not know the name. Is he a gentleman? What rank did he hold before this appointment?”

  “He was my servant,” said the Admiral. “But I thought he was honest. I thought he was loyal. I thought — ”

  The Admiral checked himself with a sigh.

  “Perhaps he is,” said Rich, with cheerful optimism. “We cannot condemn him without knowing the facts.”

  “If he has been fighting my brother he must be disloyal,” said the Admiral, conclusively. Rich was not so sure; it may have been mere professional sympathy, but he felt that a Chief Justice might easily find himself at odds with a Columbus and still have right on his side.

  “Is he learned in the law, Your Excellency?” he asked. “As I said, I am not acquainted with his name.”

  “Of course he is not,” said the Admiral, petulantly. “Did I not say he was my servant? He was my body servant, my valet.”

  After that, Rich felt there was nothing more to be said. A Chief Justice who had been a valet would certainly be as great a source of trouble as any Columbus. Rich could only gaze forward as anxiously as the Admiral himself, wondering what would be the situation he would find awaiting him when at last he reached San Domingo.

  Chapter 14

  They entered the river mouth in the late afternoon, after two weary days of beating against head winds. The Spaniards on board were pleased and excited at the thought that at last their voyaging was really at an end, and at the prospect of seeing new white faces. The details grew clearer under their eager gaze as the sea breeze pushed them briskly into the inlet; there was the wooden church with its square tower, and beside it the fort — only the simplest arrangement of ditch, palisade, and parapet, but quite impregnable to the simple unarmed folk who were its only possible assailants. At the Admiral’s order the Holy Name swung round the point of the shoal and headed across to the anchorage where there was deep water up to the foot of the church. Close on their left hand opened up a clearing in the wild tangle of trees that came down to the water’s edge, and there, starkly visible to all the interior, stood a gallows, from which dangled two corpses.

  “Holy Mary!” said Moret, with genuine sincerity. “It is good to be in a Christian country again!”

  He pointed to the gallows.

  “Are they Indians or Spaniards?” asked García, shading his eyes with his hands, but no one could answer that question. Rich read a moral lesson in the fact that death and putrefaction made the European indistinguishable from the Indian.

  Cannon thundered with wreaths of white smoke from the citadel in salute to the Admiral’s flag; the Admiral was standing proudly on the poop looking across at his town; armor winked and glittered in the setting sun over the citadel walls. A small crowd of people were already launching boats and canoes to come out and welcome them.

  The leading boat was distinguished by a flag held up the bows, displaying the Admiral’s arms within a white bordure to indicate the presence of the Admiral’s deputy, the Adelantado. Bartholomew Columbus, when he came on board, looked round him with piercing blue eyes which at first glance him a striking resemblance to his brother, but he was more heavily built — a stoop-shouldered, burly man whose dense beard did not disguise the heavy jaw and th
e thick lips. An Indian woman mounted next after him; there were pearls in her ears, round her neck, and in her long loose hair. She was cloaked in blue velvet, but she made no effort to keep the cloak about her to conceal the slender naked body beneath. She was smiling and chattering excitedly, white teeth flashing, with her hand laid on the Adelantado’s arm. Not even the harsh contrast between the blue velvet and her nudity could mar her beauty.

  The brothers kissed, under the gaze of every eye in the ship; the Admiral had a brief word for the woman before he received the bows of the Adelantado’s escort. Rich watched the little ceremony keenly from a distance, anxious to form his opinion of the Adelantado — the latter’s undoubted influence with the Admiral would count for so much in the future of the New World. He saw Bartholomew pluck at Christopher’s sleeve; he pointed ashore and glanced anxiously at the sun — clearly there was work to be done ashore that demanded the Admiral’s immediate attention. The Admiral nodded distractedly; Carvajal and Osorio and Tarpia were all asking for his attention, and the decks were crowded with people from the shore, so that there was hardly room to stand. The din and bustle were tremendous. Carvajal wanted instructions regarding the ship and crew, Osorio regarding the stores, Tarpia permission to take his soldiers ashore. Each had a brief unsatisfactory word in reply, and continually Bartholomew plucked at the Admiral’s sleeve and begged him to come ashore.

  “Yes,” said the Admiral, “I will come. One moment — ”

  He caught Rich’s eye and beckoned to him.

  “Bartholomew, I want to present the learned Don Narciso Rich. Their Highnesses have lent me his services to help on the legal side of the administration.”

  “A lawyer, eh?” said the Adelantado, turning a coldly belligerent eye upon him.

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  “We need men of action more than men of law.”

  “I expect so, Your Excellency. But I am here at Their Highnesses’ express command.”

  That scored the first point for Rich; he had no intention of being browbeaten, and though his reply was in a humble tone it made a clear statement of the strength of his position. As long as no one knew that his mission was to find a means of curtailing the Admiral’s cherished power, he would have all the prestige of a court favorite and there would be no reason for anyone to dislike him. He was a long way from home, and he wished to see Barcelona again.

  “It is as a man of law that I welcome Don Narciso here,” interposed the Admiral. “What you have told me about what you want to do this afternoon — ”

  “I will have no interference in that,” said Bartholomew, loudly.

  The tall Dominican friar at his shoulder broke into the conversation.

  “Indeed not. The Crown itself — Queen Isabella in person — could not interfere there. The Holy See long ago decided that matter. The secular arm has only to do its duty after the Church has reached its decision.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I do not understand,” said Rich.

  “What is the point at issue?”

  “It is not at issue,” said Bartholomew, loudly. “Brother, please come. Soon night will fall and make an excuse for the Indians to steal away. It has been hard enough assembling them.”

  “Come with me, Don Narciso,” said the Admiral, hastily.

  The boat in which they rowed to shore was loaded to the water’s edge — it had been full enough on its way to the ship, but now it held the Admiral and his squire and Rich in addition. Rich was crowded in the bow, wedged so tight that he could not even turn his head to see the approaching shore as the boat moved sluggishly over the little waves, so different from the big rollers outside. He could make a guess at the point under consideration — some heretic had been detected and was about to make solemn recantation. He would lose his goods and would vanish into the dungeons of the Inquisition. Certainly it was a matter in which he could not interfere, nor would he if he could.

  The boat took the ground with a jerk — it was strange that no pier had as yet been built — and Rich swung himself, with the others, over the side. He might perhaps have stayed and kept his feet dry, as did the Admiral and the Adelantado and the Dominican, but he judged that it might be better if he remained inconspicuous. He splashed ashore — the Indian woman, her cloak held high, beside him. She gabbled something to him, hastily.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

  The queer Spanish which she spoke suddenly took shape as she repeated herself.

  “Save them, sir. Please try to save them.”

  There was a frightful anxiety in her face as she spoke — her features were working with the stress of her emotion.

  “I will try,” said Rich, cautiously, and puzzled.

  “Try. Speak to him. Speak to the Admiral.”

  Next moment her face had resumed its earlier animated interest, and she was smiling at the Adelantado as he stepped out of the boat.

  “This is where the pier will be built,” said the Adelantado to his brother.

  “I expected to find it built already,” said the Admiral in a tone of mild expostulation.

  “It would have been, if the lazy dogs of Indians would only work. But they would sooner die. I have seen them die under my very eyes, in the quarries, sooner than labor. It was all I could do to get in the quotas of gold and cotton and build the church and the citadel. We put a hundred corpses a week into the sea, even before the present troubles began.”

  They were at the summit of the beach now, with the town before them — a hundred or so of brown huts built of timber and leaves.

  “Where are all the people?” asked the Admiral.

  “They are awaiting Your Excellency.”

  Someone in the Adelantado’s following had run on ahead, up one of the straight narrow lanes between the houses. They could see him wave his arm as he reached the farther corner, and they followed him. Pigs and fowls were rooting among the filth underfoot, but no human creature was to be seen. Now they emerged from the lane into a wide open space. The houses were on three sides, on the fourth was the forest. Two trumpets brayed in the heated air; there was a long roll of drums.

  It took the sun-dazzled eye some time to note all the details. The three sides of the square, other than the one in the middle of which they stood, were lined with naked Indians, packed in dense masses; there must have been thousands of them, five or six thousand. At intervals before and behind the crowd stood Spaniards, conspicuous in their armor, all at the salute while the trumpets blew and while the Admiral returned the compliment.

  “There is a pavilion for Your Excellency,” said the Adelantado — close beside where they had emerged was a flat-roofed, open-fronted shed of leaves, in which stood a row of chairs, and beside which the colors of Spain and of the Admiral drooped in the heat. But that was not all which the eye slowly took in. Standing in the square were a whole series of lofty stakes, on which hung chains. And round the foot of every stake was a pile of wood. Rich counted them; there were sixteen stakes, each with its chains and faggots. He felt a little chill, for he had an irrational dislike of burnings — he had witnessed very few. The Indian woman was trembling, he could see. There was appeal in her eyes as they met his.

  “The ceremony will begin now,” said the Adelantado, ushering his brother to the central chair with the utmost formality.”Have I Your Excellency’s permission to sit?”

  “I don’t like this business, Bartholomew,” said the Admiral, “I used to think them very harmless people. Must it go on?”

  “They are relapsed heretics,” said the Dominican, “It is God’s law that they should burn.”

  “I’ve kept five thousand Indians herded here all day,” said the Adelantado, “expressly to see this. What would be the effect if I let them go?”

  “But if it were I who pardoned them . . .” said the Admiral. “What have they done? Is their guilt certain?”

  “They are blasphemers as well as relapsed heretics,” explained the Dominican. “After they had accepted baptism
they not merely relapsed into idolatry. They burned down a chapel, and they broke the holy vessels and images to pieces.”

  “Did they know what they were doing?”

  “Having listened once to our teaching they must have known. But even if they did not, it makes no difference to their guilt.”

  “But why?” asked the Admiral. “Why did they do it?”

  “The devil prompted them,” said the Dominican. “They were in rebellion over the gold quota,” said Bartholomew behind his hand.

  “They are like children,” said the Admiral. “Trying to do the wickedest thing they can think of.”

  “And they succeeded,” said the Dominican. “Children can be guilty of heresy and relapse.”