Columbus

by Laurence Bergreen

  The eclipse commenced, as predicted. The earth’s shadow expanded and darkened until it covered the entire moon, turning it into a faint red disk suspended in the night sky. Most lunar eclipses are plainly visible to the naked eye, and based on Ferdinand’s account, the occurrence of February 29 was especially dramatic.

  Under the influence of this magical transformation, Columbus’s immense power of suggestion took hold. He appeared to interpret, if not control, the heavens. “The Indians grew so frightened that with great howling and lamentation they came running from all directions to the ships, laden with provisions, and praying the Admiral to intercede with God that He might not vent His wrath upon them, and promising they would diligently supply all their needs in the future.”

  Extracting as much benefit as possible from the moment, Columbus announced to the throng that he wished to have a word with God, and he disappeared into the depths of his ramshackle cabin, an old necromancer at the height of his powers. In the near darkness, the Indians cried and shrieked at the bloodred, malevolent moon waxing overhead. In seclusion, Columbus consulted an hourglass to calculate the time remaining para el eclipse lunar. “When the Admiral perceived that the crescent phase of the moon was finished and that it would soon shine forth clearly, he issued from his cabin, saying that he had appealed to his God and prayed for them and had promised Him in their name that henceforth they would be good and treat the Christians well”—and here was the crucial part—“bringing provisions and all else they needed.”

  Drawing on his reserves of strength, Columbus informed the awestruck Indians that God had pardoned them, “in token of which they would soon see the moon’s anger and inflammation pass away.” They needed no more persuading, and unified by terror and relief, they paid tribute to the Admiral and offered prayers to God, who had spared them. “From that time forward,” Ferdinand intoned, “they were diligent in providing us with all we needed, and were loud in praise of the Christian God.” It was apparent to the young man, as to the other marooned Europeans, that the Indians feared eclipses and, at the same time, “were ignorant of their cause.” It did not occur to them that “men living on earth could know what was happening in the sky.” It never troubled Columbus, his son, or any of their company that the Admiral had practiced a grand deception in the name of God. They were safe, and that was all that mattered. God would forgive them.

  It had been eight months since Fieschi and Méndez set off to Santo Domingo on their rescue mission. By this time they should have returned or sent word of their whereabouts, but there was nothing—no canoe, no Indian, no Spanish survivor of the mission, and no sail on the horizon to indicate their fate. Rumors spread that they had drowned, or been slaughtered by Indians, or, in Ferdinand’s words, had “died on the way from sickness and hardships. They knew that from the eastern end of Jamaica to the town of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola stretched over one hundred leagues of very difficult navigation by sea on account of contrary winds and currents and of travel over very rugged mountains by land.” Indians whispered about a ghostly shipwreck that had been spotted “drifting down the coast of Jamaica,” but its substance remained a mystery.

  Yet another mutiny broke out, this time led by an unlikely candidate, the apothecary Vernal. It grew unchecked until late March 1504, when a sail appeared on the horizon. The ship, a little caravel, had been dispatched by Nicolás de Ovando, and it anchored close to the hulks of Columbus’s shattered flotilla.

  “The captain, Diego de Escobar, came aboard and informed the Admiral that the Knight Commander of Lares, the Governor of Hispaniola, sent his compliments and regretted that he had no ship large enough to take off all the Admiral’s men.” He hoped to send one soon, and as a token of his goodwill, Captain Escobar gave Columbus a “barrel of wine and slab of salt pork,” both welcome luxuries in this isolated outpost, before returning to his vessel, raising anchor, and sailing that night “without even taking letters from anyone.”

  The caravel’s appearance, to say nothing of the gifts of food and wine, so astonished the stranded mariners that the mutineers immediately “covered up the plot they had been hatching,” although the alacrity with which Captain Escobar departed inspired a new set of conspiracy theories. The men speculated that Nicolás de Ovando had no intention of rescuing his despised rival Columbus, whom he wanted to perish in his obscure Jamaican refuge. As Ferdinand saw matters, Ovando “feared the Admiral’s return to Castile,” and worried that the Sovereigns would “restore the Admiral to his office and deprive him (Ovando) of his government.” For this reason, Ferdinand theorized, Ovando had sent the little caravel not to assist the Admiral but “to spy on him and report how he might be totally destroyed.”

  Another rumor, mentioned by Las Casas, held that Columbus was plotting a “rebellion against the king and queen with some notion of handing these Indies over to the Genoese or to some other country apart from Castile.” Even Las Casas dismissed the allegation as “false and invented and spread by his enemies as a wicked calumny,” but the chronicler could not resist discussing it, especially because the claim gained enough currency to reach the Sovereigns. Not knowing whether he would ever be rescued, or whether his words would ever reach Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus demolished this theory in a passionate self-defense: “Who could entertain the notion that a poor foreigner would, in such a place, dream of rebelling against Your Majesties, for no reason whatever, with no support from any foreign ruler, surrounded by your subjects and countrymen?”

  Even if those arguments held the Sovereigns at bay, Columbus still had to assuage his rival Ovando, whom he tried to lobby and flatter in equal measure. “When I left Castile, I did so to the great rejoicing of Their Majesties, who also made me wonderful promises, and in particular that they would see all my assets restored and would heap still more honors on me; these promises they made both by word of mouth and in writing.” Having put Ovando on notice, Columbus shifted his argument. “I ask you, my lord, not to entertain any doubts on that score: please believe that I shall obey your orders and instructions in every particular.” Not only that, but Columbus had heard from Escobar “how well and how tirelessly you have looked after my affairs, and I acknowledge this, my lord, with a grateful heart.” Rising to heights of artful insincerity, Columbus sighed, “Ever since I met you and got to know you, I have always understood, my lord, deep in my heart, that you would do everything you could for me no matter what the circumstances.” He knew that Ovando would “hazard anything, even your own life, to rescue me.”

  And if these words succeeded in calming Ovando sufficiently to spare Columbus death on a distant shore, the Admiral faced the fears of his own men, and had to persuade them all that he had ordered the caravel to depart without them—not as part of a devious plot to put them all at risk, but because it was simply too small to carry them. Either all went, or none.

  Ovando’s caravel brought one other item of particular interest: a letter from the absent Méndez. The day after departing from Jamaica, Méndez’s letter began, he and Fieschi enjoyed a cruise through blissfully calm weather, “urging the Indians to paddle as hard as they could with the sticks they use for paddles.” In the heat, the Indians refreshed themselves by jumping into the water, and resuming their place. “By sunset, they had lost sight of land.” At night, half of the Indians continued paddling as the Spaniards aboard the canoes kept a vigil, and by dawn, everyone was exhausted. Even the captains took turns paddling, and with the dawn of the second day, the voyage continued without interruption, with “nothing but water and sky” surrounding them. As the day wore on, the Indians, thirsty from physical labor, depleted the canoes’ water supply. By noon, the sun tormented everyone. The sole respite from debilitating thirst came drop by drop from the captains’ “small water casks.” The trickle proved to be “just enough to sustain them till the cool of the evening.”

  The canoes plowed through heavy seas, their diminutive masts and flickering paddles barely visible above the waterline, as their o
ccupants, drenched and exhausted, hoped to raise the little island of Navassa, about eight leagues distant. Even with the benefit of the most determined paddling, these canoes could make no more than ten leagues against the current in a twenty-four-hour period.

  The unending exertion put the paddlers at risk of dehydration, a common affliction in the Caribbean, even on the water. One Indian died on the second night, as others, prostrate with exhaustion, lay on the bottoms of the canoes, and still others tried to paddle but strained to move their arms. With one feeble stroke after another they made their way, dabbing salt water on their parched tongues. By the time night fell for the second time, they still had not reached land.

  At moonrise, Ferdinand learned from Méndez’s letter, they raised the white cliffs of Navassa, all two square miles of it, shimmering above the frosted wave tops. The whiteness came from the exposed coral and limestone poking out beyond the uninhabited island’s grass cover. They were still one hundred miles south of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Nevertheless, Méndez “joyfully” pointed out Navassa, and carefully doled out water to the paddlers. By dawn they had reached the island.

  What they found was “bare rock, half a league around.” No Indians greeted them with water, food, or counsel. After they hurriedly offered thanks to the Lord for their survival, they realized that Navassa was nearly treeless and, worse, appeared to lack the drinking water they needed so desperately. In search of streams, they clambered and crawled from one steep cliff to another, collecting trickles of precious water in gourds. Eventually they found enough to fill their stomachs despite warnings not to drink too much. Nevertheless, some of the Indians drank without restraint, and grew violently sick, or died.

  The rest of the day passed in relative tranquillity, the men playing and “eating shellfish that they found on the shore and cooked, for Méndez had brought flint and steel for making fire.” But they could not tarry; foul weather could arrive at any time. That evening they pushed off for Cape San Miguel, the nearest point on Hispaniola, traveling throughout the night to arrive by dawn, the fourth day after leaving Jamaica. They arrived exhausted once again, and spent two days recuperating before facing the challenges ahead.

  Fieschi wished to return to Columbus, as arranged, to report their safe arrival on Hispaniola, but his traveling companions, both Europeans and Indians, were “exhausted and ill from their labors and from drinking sea water,” and refused to accompany him, “for the Christians regarded themselves as having been delivered from the whale’s belly, their three days and nights corresponding to those of the prophet Jonah.”

  But Méndez had a different idea. Despite suffering from “quartan ague,” an archaic term for malaria, he led his men inland “over wretched paths and rugged mountains” to the western province of Xaraguá, formerly the refuge of Roldán and his rebels, where Nicolás de Ovando busied himself putting down another Indian rebellion. The cold-blooded governor feigned delight when these emissaries from Columbus appeared from nowhere, and in keeping with his anti-Columbian agenda, delayed giving the exhausted travelers permission to trek the seventy leagues to Santo Domingo.

  During the seven months they were detained at Xaraguá, Méndez witnessed the governor’s cruelty. “He burned or hanged eighty-four ruling caciques,” including Anacaona, “the greatest chieftain of the island, who is obeyed and served by all the others.” She was also known as a composer of areítos, or narrative poems, and had been considered friendly to the Spaniards. At a feast in her honor organized by eight caciques, to which Ovando was invited, he set fire to the meetinghouse, arrested her and other Indian leaders, and executed all of them. Most were shot; Anacaona died by hanging. She was thirty-nine years old. Her husband, Caonabó, had been captured by Alonso de Ojeda, and died at sea en route to Spain. Even the Spaniards were appalled by Ovando’s brutality toward friendly Indians, but there was little they could do about it.

  When the governor finally considered the pacification of Xaraguá complete, the indefatigable Méndez got permission to go on foot to the capital, all but forbidden to the Admiral himself. There he drew on Columbus’s “funds and resources” to buy and equip a caravel. “None had come for more than a year,” Méndez recalled, “but thanks be to God three arrived during my stay, one of which I bought and loaded with provisions: bread, wine, meat, hogs, sheep, fruit,” all now available, for a price, in this remote outpost of the Spanish empire.

  He supervised provisioning the caravel for the voyage, and dispatched her to Jamaica in late May 1504, so that the Admiral “and all his men might come in it to Santo Domingo and from there return to Castile.” Méndez went ahead with two ships “to give the King and Queen an account of all that had happened on that voyage.” There would be much to tell.

  At about this time, in Spain, Queen Isabella fell seriously ill at Medina del Campo, a city known for its trade fairs, a little more than twenty miles from Valladolid. “The doctors have lost all hope for her health,” wrote Peter Martyr in despair. “The illness spread throughout her veins and slowly the dropsy became apparent. A fever never abandoned her, penetrating her to the core. Day and night she had an insatiable thirst, while the sight of food gave her nausea. The mortal tumor grew fast between her skin and flesh.”

  As her strength ebbed and her thoughts turned to eternity, she cut back drastically on official business coming before her.

  As for Columbus and “all his companions,” having spent an entire year marooned in a lush, obscure, and troubled paradise on Jamaica, they “were highly delighted with the ship’s arrival.” When Méndez and Columbus later renewed their friendship in Spain and recalled the rescue, “His Lordship told me that in all his life he had never known so joyful a day, since he never expected to leave Jamaica alive.”

  For the moment, Columbus still had to neutralize the mutineers led by the Porras brothers, who had little appreciation for Méndez’s heroics. To bring them around, he dispatched two representatives—Ferdinand described them only as “respected persons”—considered friendly to both parties; they came bearing a gift in the form of the mouthwatering salt pork that Ovando had sent to Columbus. Captain Porras warily conferred with the two envoys by himself, fearing that they “brought an offer of a general pardon that his men might be persuaded to accept.” Nothing, not even Porras, could keep them from learning about the arrival of the caravel and its promise of a safe return to Spain, and, eventually, of Columbus’s offer of clemency.

  The mutineers made a counteroffer: if given another ship all their own, they would leave. Failing that, they might consider leaving if they were guaranteed half the space on the little caravel Ovando had sent. And they wanted access to Columbus’s stores, because they had lost all of theirs. Becoming impatient, Columbus’s envoys explained why these demands were “unreasonable and unacceptable,” whereupon Porras’s men declared that if they were not willingly given what they wanted, they would seize it. With that, they turned their backs on the envoys, and the promise of a peaceful resolution. They went back to their followers, decrying Columbus as a “cruel and vengeful man,” and they told the others not to be afraid, they had friends at court who would rally to their side against the Admiral. (Ferdinand Columbus reflected on Roldán’s recent rebellion: “And see how well their enterprise turned out; assuredly it would be the same with them”—that is, with Porras’s followers.)

  Porras devised an argument to defeat the powerful presence of the caravel and Méndez’s return. Do not believe your eyes, he told them. The ship was not real. It was merely, as Ferdinand recalled, a “phantasm conjured up by the magic arts of which the Admiral was a master,” an image evoking Columbus’s striking fear into the Indians by appearing to conjure a menacing lunar eclipse. “Clearly, a real caravel would not have left so soon, with so little dealing between its crew and the Admiral’s men.” If it had been real, “the Admiral and his brother would have sailed away in it.”

  Columbus’s behavior these past eleven months invited this kind of wild speculation. Confine
d to his cabin, grumbling orders, leading the Indians to believe that he controlled the heavens, he acquired the aura of a man possessed if not by supernatural skills then by the gifts of prophecy and revelation. Spain had come to regard him as the discoverer of new lands, but he believed himself an instrument of divine revelation. Others had come to accept that Columbus was making history, but he wanted to see his deeds emblazoned in Holy Scripture, glittering with fire, and, if need be, soaked in blood. Other explorers, especially those seeking to usurp him, wrote on water, while his accomplishments would stand as monuments, or so he believed. He created history as he went, as if time and place were two aspects of the same entity that he had chased for twelve years, guided by Marco Polo, inspired by the Bible, and driven by his lust for gold.

  If not wholly convincing, Porras’s crude deception caused the mutineers to doubt what they could plainly see. So he strengthened the mutineers’ resolve, and prepared them to lay siege to all the ships, confiscate their contents, and even take the Admiral prisoner. Emboldened, they occupied an Indian village called Maima, close to the beached ships, to prepare an assault. As he had in similar situations, Columbus dispatched his brother Bartholomew “to bring them to their senses with soft words,” reinforced by fifty armed loyalists in waiting to repel an attack, if it materialized. On May 17, the Adelantado positioned himself on a hilltop “a crossbow shot” from the village and charged the two aides who had negotiated unsuccessfully with Porras to try again. The mutineers refused even to speak to the representatives. Six rebels conspired to slaughter Columbus’s brother, believing that once he was out of the way, the other loyalists would surrender.