The Islands of Unwisdom

by Robert Graves

  That morning a skiff put out from the galeot and some sailors went ashore to fill their water-jars at a stream on the farther side of Malope’s village. They were going about their task heedless of danger, when a war-cry was raised from the bushes close by, and arrows whistled about them. Two men were wounded in the legs, and one had his arm transfixed by an arrow above the elbow, but all were able to escape to the skiff, where the soldiers who had been guarding it gave fire and thus halted the pursuit. It was feared that the arrows were poisoned, and two of the sailors, who thought their last hour had come, clamoured for extreme unction; but the wounds healed cleanly, and in a fortnight they were none the worse. The natives did indeed smear their arrows with the juice of an herb, but as a charm to guide them to their mark, not as a means of poisoning the quarry; sometimes, however, they dipped them into the putrifying guts of a corpse and this sort of magic, when we learned of it, caused us anxiety.

  Don Alvaro, who had kept to his bed for the last day or two, was informed of the ambush and displayed righteous anger. When the Colonel proposed to take a punitive force to the scene of the incident and do as much damage as possible to the huts in the neighbourhood, he agreed. So the Colonel went ashore in high glee, with thirty men, and surprising the enemy as they came back for the last of our water-jars, fell upon them with lance and sword. He was a soldier of the old school, who preferred the clash of arms to the roar of guns; but the savages stood their ground so manfully and showed themselves so dextrous in the use of their spears that at last, dizzied by a blow on his helmet, he gave the order to open fire. Five natives fell to the ground and lay writhing, the rest fled. He pursued them to a group of huts by the shore, which he set on fire with his own hand, and then ordered his men to cut down a grove of coconut-palms in such a way that they would fall across the canoes drawn up on the beach; and when this had been accomplished and the coconuts gathered at ease, he laid a torch to the shattered canoes, took three pigs from a pen, and marched back in triumph.

  Thus ended the first week of our visit to this island which, in honour of the piece of the True Cross displayed to us at Lima, Don Alvaro had named Santa Cruz. He now regretfully abandoned the notion that it was part of San Cristobal; but why so large an island should lie in the same latitude and yet have remained hidden from view on his first voyage, he could not well make out. We had covered more than eighteen hundred and fifty leagues since we left Callao, and it seemed impossible that San Cristobal should lie even farther to the west. Once more he suspected the Chief Pilot of perfidy and spoke slightingly of him behind his back.

  Chapter 14

  THE ERUPTION

  Don Alvaro complained of weakness and a sensation as if of burning down the right side of his body, but had no fever and ate with an appetite. Doña Mariana spent a deal of time at his bedside, where she showed him more love than did her sister; and though it seemed strange that she should have forgiven him so easily, at first I suspected nothing. Then one day, in the Great Cabin, while chronicling Malope’s visit to the flagship and mine to the village, I happened to set down this observation: that the natives had carefully collected their nail-parings and hair-clippings and thrown them into the sea for fear that we might make magic with them; and that Malope had likewise been at pains to dispose safely of his red spittle and the leavings of his buhio, dropping them into a box at the base of his roof pillar with a muttered prayer to the idol carved above it. At that I laid down my pen, seized by a sudden horror. I recalled that three days before, at the same hour, I had seen Doña Mariana drop her thimble and send it rolling across the floor with a covert motion of her foot, and that when I hurried to retrieve it she told me sharply that I was not her valet. She had let a minute or two pass by, then rose leisurely and groped for it herself, but kept her back turned towards me; though I guessed that she was picking up something else besides, I could not see what it was. It came upon me now that after breakfast on the same day Don Alvaro had been seated on the chest close to where the thimble went, trimming his nails. Had she been gathering what he let fall, before the pages came to sweep the floor?

  I remembered fragments of gossip that had reached me since we left Callao, especially about the pack of Tarot cards that a witch in the ship was said to be using for divination. Elvira, who whispered the story to Jaume, did not give the woman’s name but described the pack as though she had seen and handled it. She told him that when, at the request of a person of importance, two blind cards were drawn for Don Alvaro, the six of Sceptres turned up, which foretells failure of an enterprise in the midst of execution, and with it the Lightning-struck Tower, a card of great misfortune; and that when another two were drawn for Doña Ysabel, they proved to be the Ace of Cups, which marks the beginning of a love affair, and the Chariot, portending its triumphant conclusion. I guessed that the witch must be either Doña Mariana herself or her maid Inez, and that the person of importance could only be Doña Ysabel—who else would have asked for blind cards to be drawn for her and her husband? Also, Miguel Llano had told me in scorn and detestation, not long before his death, that he had surprised Doña Ysabel and her sister at the taffrail, two hours after midnight, courtseying to the full moon. ‘All Galician women are witches,’ he said, ‘and all their menfolk stand in dread of them.’

  Though I had only hearsay and suspicion to go upon, I would have wagered a thousand pesos to ten that Doña Mariana had kneaded the General’s nail-parings, and perhaps also his hair-clippings, into a waxen image of him, to melt and waste over a candle. Her new solicitude was a cruel sham: an attempt to regain his confidence so that she could be the more easily revenged. But even if I were confronted with clear proof of her guilt, would it be my duty to warn Don Alvaro of the plot against his life? Fray Junipero, an authority on these matters, had taught me as a child that no witch has power over a Catholic while he meets his obligations to God and his neighbour—as Don Alvaro claimed to do; and it has always been my principle not to meddle in what does not directly concern me. Admittedly, my decision to do and say nothing was influenced by my secret dread of Doña Ysabel, who seemed to be conniving at the plot, if not actively furthering it; that she sheltered a sorceress who dealt out the seventy-eight cards of fate proved her readiness to ally herself with the powers of evil.

  ***

  The Colonel led a second punitive expedition, this time on his own initiative, to a cluster of huts on a hill overlooking the scene of the previous day’s skirmish. Going ashore in the long-boat just before dawn, he and his party of forty men contrived to surround the hill without alarming the natives and block every path that led to its summit. He then headed a charge, but meeting with no opposition at the approaches to the hamlet, fired the thatch of the huts to make the inhabitants bolt. Out they leaped through the door holes, first the women and children, then the elders, lastly the warriors armed with spears and clubs. A short, sharp fight ensued. The men, who numbered only seven, defended themselves courageously, scorning the great odds, and were cut down one by one until only a youth was left standing, his shield-arm nearly severed, who nevertheless darted through the ring and escaped. The Colonel restrained the troops from ravishing the women, though they regarded this as their right under the rules of war; he told them that soldiers must be chivalrous and take nothing from a woman that she does not yield freely, even if they have first widowed her. Two hours later he returned to the flagship with several wounded men and five dead pigs. ‘Your Excellency,’ he cried, striding into the Great Cabin and displaying the blood on his sword, ‘we have taught these blackamores the folly of making an unprovoked attack. I undertake that they’ll not sing so loud in future.’

  ‘I am sorry, my lord,’ the General complained, ‘that you did not think fit to consult me before you set out.’

  ‘Sage anticipation of orders is the duty of every field-officer,’ returned the Colonel, thrusting out his chin.

  ‘And of every pork-butcher, when Saint Martin’s Day comes round,’ remarked Doña Ysabel with a contemptuo
us glance at his naked sword, ‘though that will not be for many weeks yet.’

  Later we watched the natives lowering the corpses into canoes, each with its knees drawn up to the chin and a stone tied under them as a sinker. Among these were the corpses of three women, the widows of the fallen, who appeared to have been strangled. Their kinsfolk rowed them out a cable’s length from the shore, freed them from the leaves in which they were wrapped, and threw them into the sea, where the sharks gathered for the feast almost at once. The islanders regard these creatures as divine and (though this may sound strange to Christians) if a man happens to fall out of his canoe and be pursued by a shark but climbs back to safety, his friends and kinsfolk will toss him out again to appease its rage.

  In the afternoon Malope came down to the beach and cried across the water to us, his voice shrill with grief. He summoned the General with ‘Malope! Malope!’ and then beat his breast, exclaiming ‘Mendaña! Mendaña!’ He pointed to the smouldering huts, the felled palms and the shallows where the corpses had been sunk, and then, so plainly that not even a child could have mistaken his meaning, he signed that it was not his people who had ambushed our sailors, but enemies from the other side of the Bay. He strung his bow and made as if to shoot an arrow in that direction, inviting us to join him in a war of vengeance on the villains who had disturbed the peace.

  Don Alvaro’s heart was touched: spreading his arms wide, he invited Malope aboard, who however would not listen, for some scruple that he had; nevertheless he came the next day and peace was restored. The General gave him some red cloth in compensation, and this infuriated Don Diego, who regarded the gift as a confession of weakness. But Don Luis reproved him: ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘Don Alvaro is acting prudently. While we have Malope as our ally we can make use of him in the subjugation of the neighbouring tribes. Let us divide and conquer, as the Romans did.’

  Don Lorenzo was not present at the time, having sailed in the frigate with twenty soldiers to search for the Santa Ysabel once more. His instructions were to cruise around the island until he reached the position where she had last been sighted; then to steer W.N.W., which was the direction in which she would have driven had she kept the wind dead astern and allowed it to take her where God willed. When he returned on the afternoon of the 21st of September, which was Saint Matthew’s Day, we were shifting our berth to a more convenient anchorage half a league beyond Malope’s village. He brought no news of the lost ship, but reported that he had circumnavigated Santa Cruz, a matter of a hundred leagues, and discovered another bay due south of ours, equally commodious and with even more canoes on its waters, also various islands of moderate size, all lying within ten leagues of our coast. But W.N.W. of where we had parted from the Admiral, many reefs stretched as far as the eye could see, and he had not cared to hazard his ship among them. If the Santa Ysabel had indeed taken that course on the night we lost her, she must have been cast away; and so might we, too, but for God’s great mercy. This convinced most of us that the ship and our comrades had perished, and the wise ones (but they were few) understood that with the halving of our numbers we must be more studious than ever to conciliate the natives, and that our settlement must be founded on a far more modest plan that Don Alvaro’s letters patent provided. It is true that the great Pizarro when, marching from Tumbes to Cajamarca, he seized the Inca of Peru and levied tribute on his vast realm, had with him no larger forces than ours; but Don Alvaro was no Pizarro, no, not by much.

  The new anchorage was close inshore, the bottom being mud at a depth of from twenty to thirty fathoms. About four hundred paces inland, nearly opposite our berth, a copious stream of good water vanished under some rocks before entering the bay, and about five hundred paces farther to the east a fair-sized river flowed. We had been warned by Malope that he exercized no power in these parts, and so soon as we cast anchor this was brought home to us by signs of open hostility all along the shore. That evening the ring of fires blazed again, and we heard roars as though of a bull-fight or carnival procession from a village which lay within falcon-shot beyond the river. The soldiers stood to their arms all night, and at dawn an army of about five hundred warriors trooped down to the beach, shouting defiance and sending great numbers of arrows, darts and stones in our direction; when these all fell into the sea, they waded in breast-high to shorten the range, but even so they could not reach us. They continued to shout and, with a splashing stroke to keep away the sharks, some swam out to our anchor-buoys, cut them loose and towed them ashore. Their name for us, accompanied by much spitting, holding of noses and turning of bare backsides, was ‘The Amigos.’ We wondered that they did not fight from canoes.

  Don Lorenzo rushed into the Great Cabin to tell the General what was afoot. ‘These docile subjects of yours will be running off with the Royal Standard next,’ he cried indignantly.

  ‘We had better teach them a lesson,’ said Don Alvaro, sighing. ‘They have no excuse to treat us ill, and if any of Malope’s people are among them, that is no fault of ours.’

  ‘May I take fifteen of my company out in the skiff to skirmish with them?’

  ‘By all means; but tell the Colonel that you have my permission.’

  Don Lorenzo reported to the Colonel, who had been on the point of setting out himself and now must needs stay behind. He loved to be in the forefront of battle and was one of those officers of whom it is said that they keep watch-dogs, but bark themselves. ‘Go then, in the Devil’s name, Captain Barreto,’ he said, ‘but look you, Sir, you are to do nothing rash!’

  Among the party in the skiff were seven targeteers who, though arrows were discharged against them in a cloud (some tipped with flints, which was a novelty, and some with bone), protected their comrades so well that only two were wounded, both of them by glancing shots that furrowed their shoulders. Don Lorenzo held his fire and, as soon as he beached the skiff, leaped out against the enemy, sword in hand, followed by the targeteers in close order. The natives fought every man for himself, and the small Spanish phalanx was soon hard pressed. From where I watched at the taffrail, it was lost to sight among a huge crowd of howling savages, who danced in and out like bees at a swarming, while their leaders went forward to the attack, thrusting with their long spears and battering at the targes with their curved clubs.

  The Colonel was wild with resentment. ‘The lightnings of Sinai blast and shrivel that fool!’ he shouted. ‘He’ll have all my best targeteers killed. Why in the name of Pope Joan doesn’t he use fire-arms? For what other purpose were the accursed things invented? Sergeant!’ he hallooed through his cupped hands. ‘Hey, you there by the skiff, Sergeant Gallardo! Give fire at once, man, do you hear?’

  The Sergeant heard and obeyed. Two or three of the savages fell at the first volley, several more were wounded, and the rest fled, leaving Don Lorenzo and his men panting, unhurt and alone on the field, greatly vexed that their sport had been spoiled.

  ‘How dared you give fire without my orders, Sergeant?’ cried Don Lorenzo, pale with rage. ‘I had the fellows already on the run. You might have killed one of us with your volley.’

  ‘Begging your honour’s pardon,’ replied the Sergeant, ‘the Colonel shouted to me from the flagship.’

  ‘This is my battle, not his,’ yelled Don Lorenzo, forgetting in his excitement that he was addressing a mere sergeant, ‘and it was the General, not he, who gave me my orders. The Colonel is no more than a spectator! Come, lads, let’s go after the sons of bitches and cut the livers out of their black sides!’

  The Colonel stamped his foot and ground his teeth. ‘This is too much! It needed only that maravedi’s worth to make up the full peso!’ He bellowed after Don Lorenzo: ‘Come back, you young fool! Come back at once, I say! By the seven boils of Job, if you weren’t the General’s brother-in-law, I’d clap you in the stocks. You’re exceeding your orders and endangering my men!’

  Don Lorenzo either did not hear or did not care to hear; he ran on. The Colonel crammed the long-boat with troops and
leaped in after them. ‘Row like demons, you red-capped scum!’ he shouted at the crew.

  The beach was deserted except for the arquebusiers guarding the skiff, and a little black boy, about three years of age, who sat and sobbed beside a canoe, rubbing his eyes with his fists; it is not known how he came to be on the battle-field. A trail of blood showed where the wounded natives had been carried off in their: comrades’ arms, or supported by their shoulders if they could walk. The Colonel sent his negro in haste after Don Lorenzo with an urgent message of recall, which he had no choice but to obey.

  ‘Did my ears play me false, Don Lorenzo?’ he asked, plucking at his beard, ‘or did you indeed reprimand Sergeant Gallardo for obeying me?’

  ‘I cannot answer for your honour’s ears,’ Don Lorenzo replied sullenly, ‘nor do I recall what I said in the heat of fight, when you saw fit to interfere with my dispositions. The orders for this skirmish came from your superior officer, my brother-in-law, who has complete-confidence in me.’

  ‘Yet I can recall your words very well, and they were not only ill-mannered but damned mutinous. Hark ye, knave, while I am Colonel I will be obeyed, and since you have injured my honour in the hearing of the common soldiery, I need have no tender regard for yours.’

  ‘Before you say anything that cannot be unsaid, Don Pedro Merino,’ returned the other, very coolly, ‘pray remember that I command this company and that any insult shown me will be resented by officers and men alike.’

  ‘Rein in your mare, boy,’ said the Colonel, ‘or, by God’s bones, I’ll give her to another—saddle, bridle, bit and all! One more word, and I’ll degrade you and appoint a less insolent officer in your place. Now get back to your quarters, and stay there!’