To our relief we found that all was well. The shots had signalled the arrival of Malope, who was waiting for us on the beach, the green gaskins tied round his head like a turban; he had followed us in his war-canoe, which was escorted by one of smaller size under the command of his eldest son. When I went forward to make the Chief Pilot known to him, he recognized me, pointed to the silver buckles tied to his feet and smiled as he said slowly in good Castilian: ‘Friends, let us go to dinner.’ It was a phrase that he had been taught by his son, with a few more of equal usefulness, such as ‘Give me that,’ ‘Halt, enough,’ ‘What do you call this?’ and ‘To the Devil with it!’ He then invited us by signs to follow him to a place where pigs and coconuts abounded, and ordered the small canoe ahead. We were grateful for his leadership, and soon came to another village, hardly distinguishable from the one that we had found deserted. There Pedro Fernandez asked Malope to hail the inhabitants and assure them of our goodwill, which he did very readily, arranging with them that a store of provisions would be gathered together against our return.
On we went, and he performed the same service for us at two more villages. As we came away from these, he signed that the next, which lay behind a small headland, was not well-disposed towards his tribe, and that we should be wise to send an armed party across the neck of land to surprise it and compel it to civility. This was done, but the villagers, seeing that our party consisted of only nine men, ran to arms. The sergeant, following his instructions, fired an arquebus in the air, at the sound of which they yelled and fled away to launch their canoes.
Our boat had now come in view round the headland and fear of a volley prevented them from embarking. Pedro Fernandez, leaping ashore, asked them for pigs. They stood irresolute. After a while they reluctantly fetched one, together with a few bananas and coconuts, but when he asked for more, brandished their arms again and, fitting arrows to their bowstrings, took cover behind trees and huts. Recognizing Malope, they reminded him with shouts of the truce agreed between his tribe and theirs. He stood looking from us to them, as if in doubt where his duty lay, until Pedro Fernandez caught hold of his arm and threatened him with a dagger—not meaning to kill him, but presenting him to the enemy as one who acted under duress. ‘Tell them not to shoot,’ he cried. ‘If they do, pu pu!’ and snatching a lighted match from an arquebusier he made as if to fire.
Malope appreciated the delicacy of the situation, and was not offended. He dropped his weapons and, showing no signs of fear, went alone to the Chieftain’s house. There he conferred for a little while, after which he came back to tell us by signs that before three o’clock—it was now a little past noon—our provisions would be laid outside the assembly-house. Meanwhile, women brought us a quantity of coconuts, ready opened, also ripe bananas and paw-paws, and drew us water from their well, smiling hospitably. As we ate and drank, a troop of small girls came up shyly and, after whispering together, danced naked for our entertainment. They performed such obscene and lecherous antics as would have disgraced a brothel of Panama; but the novelty of the show tickled the men, who laughed and cheered and cried ‘Olé, olé!’ Only Pedro Fernandez was offended and turned away his head.
The Chieftain’s son then emerged from his father’s house and, asking for gifts, was presented with a silken cap and a goat-bell. Overcome with delight, he invited us to go with him on a raid against the islet across the bay, where together we might kill numerous men and pigs; and Malope engaged himself that we should do so before the month was out. At last they found us two more pigs, a dozen bunches of bananas and more than a hundred coconuts, which we piled into the long-boat.
The Chief Pilot and I walked back along the coast with most of the soldiers and three native guides, until we came to the first of the friendly villages where food had been promised us. The long-boat and the canoes went ahead. Gaily-coloured flowers and blossoms grew in profusion beside our path, and the guides constantly pointed to some mean herb, to give it a name and inform us, for the most part unintelligibly, of its singular virtue or bane. Noisy white parrots flew everywhere, and we saw a pair of kingfishers and a flock of canaries; besides very ugly green tree-lizards, poisonous centipedes and a monster rat. A bird with crimson feathers sat perched on a branch thirty yards from the path and one of the guides, coveting its plumes, asked us to shoot it for him; but Pedro Fernandez prudently forbade this, lest a miss should betray that the arquebus is no weapon of precision.
After an hour’s march we came to a stream close to the village where Malope—who always required us to address him as Mendaña—was waiting for us. When we had slaked our thirst he beckoned, and made signs, first snapping viciously with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and then beating upon it with his right fist; from which we understood that some beast had its home near by, and that he wished us to join him in hunting it. Nothing loth, we accompanied him up the stream, until we reached a deep pool, where a crocodile of huge dimensions could be descried at the bottom. He set one of his men with a barbed spear to stir up the reptile, which was twice the length of a man, and it soon showed signs of resentment and swam downstream, belaboured with clubs and thrust at with spears, to take refuge in another pool; whence it was again dislodged and went on, never uttering a sound, though disabled in a foreleg, and somewhat stunned. We harried it from pool to pool and, before it could escape into the bay Malope, who had hitherto been a spectator of the hunt, leaped into the water with a cry and seized firm hold of its horny tail. His sons followed his example, the other men beating the brute about the neck with clubs, until with a yell of triumph it was hauled on the bank, growling and snapping at a stake that they had thrust between its ferocious jaws. The sons kept their hold on its tail, and the father battered its neck with a pointed rock. But since it was so long in dying, Pedro Fernandez thrust an arquebus down its throat and fired. It leaped high in the air, scattering the hunters and, horribly rolling its eyes, expired to their great satisfaction.
Federico Salas was with us, released from the stocks, after a good flogging at the hands of the drummer. He now came forward, took his dagger from his belt, cut out the crocodile’s eyes and wrapped them in a leaf.
Pedro Fernandez innocently asked him why he did so. He smirked as he replied: ‘I shall present them to a person of importance.’
‘May I ask to whom?’
‘To whom other than Doña Ysabel? A crocodile’s eyes, as your honour must know, are the most potent aphrodisiac that God in His wisdom ever bestowed on impotent man. The General’s Lady has but to dress them for his supper, and by midnight he will be a raging satyr, and she a contented woman before dawn.’
His comrades echoed his loud guffaw and added many more crudities, by no means respectful to the General or his Lady.
I had seen Pedro Fernandez angry often enough, even enraged once or twice, but never before had he shown such sudden and uncontrolled fury on so slight a cause. ‘I spit upon you, filth of the gutter!’ he screamed. ‘And upon any others who dare insult our noble protectress.’
The soldiers stood in amazement. To add to the comedy, all the natives but Malope fled terror-stricken into the forest, and he, misreading the cause of the altercation, snatched the crocodile’s eyes from Federico and laid them at the Chief Pilot’s feet.
‘I’ll be even with you one of these days, you long-nosed son of a whore!’ growled Federico at Malope.
‘Back into your ranks!’ shouted Pedro Fernandez, regaining command of himself. He sheathed his dagger and abruptly ordered the advance.
We continued along the path to the village, where bananas, sugar-cane, coconuts, almonds, yam-biscuit and the rest were laid out for us in great heaps; also two more pigs and a pile of palm mats. The natives sat quietly in the assembly-house beside their war-canoes, which they had decked with greenery and white cloth in token of peace. Malope, ascending a little mound to show his importance, received the gifts on our behalf with a short speech of praise, then turned to us, and said: ‘Forward, forward! Frien
ds, let us go to dinner!’ And at a word from him the villagers took up the victuals and carried them to the long-boat; it was a sight worth seeing, how a hundred of them filed along the coast-road, their burdens swinging at the ends of poles balanced on their shoulders. We embarked and rowed on to the next village, and the next, until we had fourteen pigs and more food than could be shipped with ourselves still remaining aboard; so the canoes towed the long-boat and we travelled on foot. At last we reached Malope’s village, where we were taken off in a pair of war-canoes. ‘Embrace my brother Malope,’ said he in parting, and handed Pedro Fernandez a package done up in leaves and tied with native thread. ‘Friends, let us go to dinner!’ he explained.
As we approached the flagship, Federico and Sebastian were muttering together that they had not come all the way from Peru to be sent under command of a sailor on piddling and disgraceful errands.
‘And is this one of them?’ Pedro Fernandez cried, his anger flaring up again. ‘To bring back a boat-load of fine provisions that have cost us no more than a few words of thanks to Malope?’
‘Those painted cannibals!’ Sebastian replied. ‘Only let us get at them with sword and shot; we’ll soon teach them to respect Christians.’
‘May God forgive you for those words!’ said he.
Doña Ysabel praised us when we came aboard, and called Don Alvaro out of bed to admire the day’s spoils and help her divide them among the troops, the crew and the Great Cabin. While Myn was clothing him, Pedro Fernandez handed her the package, saying that Malope had sent it as a gift for his brother to eat; and she laid it by. Before the distribution was made, she offered Pedro Fernandez a whole pig as his perquisite, but he refused to accept more than a sailor’s share, stammering that the pleasure of serving the General and herself was ample recompense for his labours; to which she replied that no lady was ever blessed with a more faithful servant.
That night, when the General had retired, she came to the Chart-room and said, hesitating a little, as though in modesty: ‘Tell me, friend Pedro, how came Malope to send crocodiles’ eyes to my husband? I have not yet told him of the unkind gift; he would be ashamed to learn that even the savages of this island are acquainted with his sad affliction.’
Pedro Fernandez blushed red as brick. ‘I must have mistaken his meaning,’ he blurted out. ‘I did not know what the package contained. No doubt it was intended for me.’
‘Take them then, by all means,’ she answered, keeping a straight face, ‘though I should never have suspected that you, too…’ And not troubling to finish the sentence, she thrust the package into his hand. ‘Now come with me,’ she said.
The Chief Pilot followed her shamefacedly to the Great Cabin, where Don Alvaro beckoned him to sit on his bed, and told him that he had that morning determined forthwith to rid himself of the incubus that had sat so long astride his breast, choking out his life. But, as he went ashore, Myn had rolled up his sleeves, jigging up and down, and foolishly cried: ‘Olé, olé! Now for the black puddings! Myn will bloody his arms to the elbow.’ Some soldiers who stood by had looked up angrily—‘Oho,’ they said, ‘so the General comes with a martingale for the old war-horse, does he? Did you hear his negro’s words?’ He had then chastized Myn before them all and, after a brief visit to the guard-house, returned to the flagship. ‘It had come upon me, my wise counsellor, that I should henceforth do nothing without your approval.’
‘Your Excellency pays me great honour. But what did you propose to do?’
‘I was about to put the Colonel on trial for his life.’
‘Indeed! Upon what charges?’
Don Alvaro counted on his fingers: ‘First, that he has spread disaffection; second, that he has threatened to hang my brothers-in-law; third, that he has disobeyed my orders on more than one occasion. Fourth, and worst…’
‘As your Excellency knows, I have no cause to love the Colonel but, his speech to the troops yesterday being no less loyal than my own, I confess that I praised him for it, and we concluded a truce.’
‘You are easily deceived, my open-hearted friend. No sooner had you gone than he addressed them again, in a very different strain, warning them to be prepared for swift action. Doña Ysabel has been given precise information about his latest plot. He means to lead armed men into the Church while we are at prayer next Sunday, to seize and murder her brothers and herself, and force me at the point of his sword to sign the order for a voyage to the Philippines; but before we arrive, he will secretly poison me and give out that I died of a fever.’
‘Oh, the damnable wickedness!’ cried Pedro Fernandez. ‘To think that I offered the monster my friendship!’
‘You will stand by us?’ Doña Mariana asked, laying a trembling hand on his arm.
‘Upon my life, I will,’ he said breathlessly.
‘Tomorrow,’ continued Don Alvaro in a hoarse whisper, ‘after an early breakfast, I intend to take you and four other trustworthy men ashore with me. My brothers-in-law will be waiting at the gates and, supported by them, I shall seek out the Colonel, and command him to accompany me to the flagship. If he resists, force will be needed. It may well be that Myn’s folly has come to his knowledge and that he will be on his guard.’
‘You can trust me to the death.’ And Don Alvaro feebly gripped his hand.
Yet in the Chart-room that night Pedro Fernandez was low-spirited. Deep in his heart he knew that what awaited the Colonel was far less than justice, but he silenced his conscience with a reminder that the Colonel had shown no mercy to the innocent islanders of the Marquesas, and with a protest that Doña Ysabel was incapable of deceit.
He began to tell me of his childhood in the Rua Nova at Lisbon: how his father, who was a sailor, had once engaged for the Goa voyage and bound him to good behaviour until the ship was home again—‘“And for every evil deed you do in my absence, lad,” he warned me, “your mother will drive a nail in this plank; and for every nail I find on my return, you may expect ten sweeping strokes of the birch.”
‘That summer I fell among bad company, and by Christmas Day five large nails stood to my discredit; but at New Year I was granted a change of heart. My mother, pitying me, and sensible of my reformation, had drawn the last nail out again before the feast of Saint Peter in Chains, when my father came back. Thus I escaped the birching, yet wept bitterly when she showed him the plank with the nail-marks scored in the soft wood.’
‘Why have you told me this, friend Pedro?’
‘As a parable of the soul’s weakness. How often since then have I not fallen into error? Though after confession and penance my sins have been forgiven me, still the nail-marks show in the plank!’
I had an inkling of what was in his mind: no ancient sin confessed and atoned for, but a new sin, which he dared not acknowledge as such even to himself. ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Who is free of fault? A sin committed in the imagination weighs as heavy in God’s scales as though it were committed in fact; did not Our Saviour point to ocular adultery…’
‘No severer words ever left His lips,’ he broke in, as if to prevent me from saying more. ‘Yet did He not pity the adulterous woman and show her mercy?’
Chapter 19
MURDER
Shortly before dawn a clamour was heard from the beach: ‘Ahoy there, Officer of the Guard! Lend us the long-boat!’
Don Jacinto Merino, who had the guard again, went to the Great Cabin to report the matter. ‘O! O!’ shrieked Doña Ysabel. ‘They have murdered my brothers and now they come to murder me. For the love of all the Saints, deny them what they ask!’
‘Feign deafness, Don Jacinto,’ said the General, equally alarmed, ‘until we can make out who they are.’ They shouted four or five times more, and then silence fell.
When it grew light, the beach was seen to be deserted, but an hour or so later thirty soldiers marched out of camp. Don Alvaro hailed them, ordering them to stand fast until he had conferred with their officer. They obeyed, and he went hastily ashore in the skiff, accompanied b
y Don Jacinto, the Chief Pilot, myself and Some servants.
‘Who commands you?’ he asked the men.
‘At your Excellency’s orders,’ answered the Adjutant, stepping forward.
‘And your errand?’
‘We are bound for Malope’s village. He must take us up the coast in search of more provisions.’
‘But Malope collected a boat-load of food for us yesterday!’
‘So he did, your Excellency. Four pigs and half a dozen bunches of bananas were allotted to the camp; the greater part remained in the San Geronimo. The Major told us to borrow the long-boat and have it filled again, but since no one answered our shouts, we decided to borrow canoes from Malope instead.’
The Islands of Unwisdom Page 29