Scanning the faces round about, he soon saw the Marquis standing with a group of other gentlemen just below the poop. As he advanced towards them, de Pombal caught sight of him and exclaimed in surprise, ‘Mr. Brook! How do you come to be aboard the Nunez?’
With a bow, Roger said, ‘May I have a word with Your Lordship in private?’
Inclining his head, the Marquis left his companions and walked over to a place on the windward side of the ship, where there were fewer people. When he halted, Roger bowed again and resumed:
‘My lord, I have a confession to make. I am passionately enamoured of Lisala and could not support the thought that I would never see her again. This led to my forming a resolve to emigrate to Brazil. Having taken my decision hastily, I had no opportunity of securing for myself suitable accommodation for the voyage; so, yesterday afternoon I came aboard Nunez and stowed away. I need hardly assure you that my intentions are honourable. I am by no means without fortune, and own a pleasant property in England. I request your permission to pay my suit to your daughter.’
Greatly taken aback, de Pombal stared at Roger. After a moment he said, ‘Mr. Brook, I hardly know what to say. By leaving Europe in this fashion you have clearly demonstrated your devotion to my daughter. But my choice of a husband for her is a matter requiring grave consideration. During the voyage I can do no more than allow you to make her the subject of your attentions.’
For the time being, that was all Roger required and to have gone into the matter further might have led to complications. Putting his hand quickly to his mouth, he bowed and said, ‘I thank you, Sir. Now … now, if you will forgive me, I must leave you, as I am feeling far from well.’ Then he turned and hurried away to the fo’c’sle where he knew the ‘heads’ lay.
During the course of the day he had good cause to resent more than ever having been forced to undertake this long voyage. He learned that over fifteen thousand people: nobles and officials with their families and servants, were accompanying the Prince Regent into exile. Every warship and merchantman in the great fleet was crowded beyond her normal capacity. Only persons of high rank enjoyed the privilege of sleeping in narrow cabins; the rest dossed down where they could on the deck or below it, in odd corners with their cloaks wrapped round them and only the valises they had brought with them for pillows.
He learned that, on the previous evening, the fleet had got away only by the skin of its teeth. Junot and his weary, bedraggled vanguard had entered Lisbon while many of the ships had still been at anchor. The French had even prevented a few ships from leaving by sending off boats packed with troops who had shot down the sailors in the rigging, then boarded the ships and captured them.
But Don Joao, in the flagship Principe Real and his principal Ministers, Antonio de Aranjo and the Viscount de Anadia, had got away. Other Counsellors, the Marquis de Belas, Don Rodrigo da Sousa, the Duke of Cadaval and Dr. José Carreira Pieanco, were in Medusa and, like de Pombal, temporarily separated from their master.
In Nunez, no orderly routine had yet been established. When food was produced in the main cabin at the usual dinner hour, protocol soon went by the board. Normally, the Grandees and their ladies would have been given ample time to take their pick of the most enjoyable edibles, but after a few minutes, there ensued a wild scramble and everyone piled on to his own plate spoonsful from the dishes nearest to hand.
Faced with the problem of where to sleep in the overcrowded ship, Roger went to the Captain and bartered some of his gold for permission to doss down in the flag locker. It was no more than a cubby-hole adjacent to the deck house on the poop; but at least it would not be as stifling as the crowded cabins below decks, and the flags provided a not uncomfortable couch on which to lie.
Next morning he presented himself to Lisala and her aunt. They showed no surprise, as the Marquis had already told them of Roger’s presence aboard. De Pombal, who was with them, made no reference then or later to Roger’s having asked Lisala’s hand in marriage. Apparently, in conformity with his long career as a diplomat, he had decided to leave the matter open and await developments.
After a few days, life aboard the Nunez began to form a pattern. De Pombal and six other noblemen had formed a committee, the decisions of which were accepted as orders by the other passengers. A roster was drawn up, dividing them into three classes: the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the servants. To prevent the unseemly jostling at meal times, three services took place at hourly intervals. The poop was reserved for the nobility, the waist of the ship for the ordinary citizens and the fo’c’sle for the menials. The stock of food was listed and strictly rationed. To minimise the appalling congestion, those who had no cabins were divided into watches which alternately spent eight hours below and eight hours on deck. Masses were said at eight o’clock in the morning and four o’clock in the afternoon, so that both watches could perform their devotions daily. Hours were set for games and competitions, the educated were formed into reading circles and held Spelling Bees; those having vocal or musical talent helped to while away the long evenings as a choral society or by giving concerts. The gentry also amused themselves with charades and playing cards.
Thus, as the flotilla ran down the coast of Africa in better weather, boredom and distress at having been uprooted from their homes was, to some extent, alleviated. But little could be done to lessen the discomfort of their quarters, the monotonous, inferior food and the claustrophobia resulting from spending all one’s waking hours with hardly space to move about among the swarm of people constantly occupying the crowded decks.
Roger consoled himself as well as he could with the companionship of Lisala. As they sat side by side during the mornings and sometimes in the afternoons, he taught her to speak English. The frequent lessons enabled her to pick it up quite quickly, and soon they were able to talk together of matters that it would not have been desirable for their neighbours on the deck to hear and understand.
But for them to make love in such conditions was impossible. By night and day every corner of the ship either had someone squatting in it or it was liable to be invaded at any moment. To visit her in her cabin was equally out of the question, as at all hours people were passing up and down the passage outside, so the risk of his being seen going in or out was too great to be taken.
The fact that they were constantly together added to their frustration and, in Roger’s case, it strengthened his secret determination to abandon Lisala rather than go to Brazil, if he could possibly manage to escape from the Nunez.
His hopes of this were pinned on the fact that all convoys bound for South America always put in at Madeira. There, stores would be replenished; fresh fruit, vegetables and livestock would be taken on board. During that activity it seemed certain that an opportunity would occur for him to go ashore and, if British warships were still escorting the convoy, secure a passage home in one of them; or, at the worst, remain there until a ship called that would take him back to Europe.
On the evening they sighted the island he felt very heavy-hearted and talked with special tenderness to Lisala; for he was terribly distressed at the thought of parting from her. But long experience had taught him that, sooner or later, all passionate attachments, except that between him and Georgina, declined at best into no more than an affectionate relationship; and that, after a year or two he would meet with some other woman whose beauty and personality would set his brain on fire.
But his secret plans were set at naught by the elements. During the night a storm blew up. He woke in the early hours, to find the Nunez rolling and pitching in a heavy sea. Prone to seasickness as he was, a quarter of an hour later he was vomiting into a bucket.
When dawn came, feeling incredibly ill he staggered out on to the deck. Rain was descending in torrents, reducing visibility to less than a hundred yards. Every stitch of canvas had been taken in and, with bare masts, the Nunez was being driven through great, spume-flecked waves by the fury of the storm.
Roger lurched back to hi
s cubby-hole and collapsed on the pile of flags. He was sick again and again, until there was nothing remaining inside him. Yet, with soul-searing pain, his wretched stomach automatically continued in its attempts to throw up.
Later, he was vaguely conscious that Lisala, who had proved a much better sailor than he was, had his head in her lap and was doing her best for him. But her ministrations did little to relieve his agony. For hours on end the ship continued to soar up mountainous waves, then descend like a plummet into the troughs between them. At the same time she laboured on with a ghastly corkscrew motion, causing her to shudder with every twist, and her timbers to groan from the strain put upon them. At times she rolled so heavily that it seemed certain that she must turn turtle and go down. As, unresisting, Roger rolled with her from side to side on his couch of flags, he prayed that she would. Death seemed to him preferable to continuing longer the torments he was suffering.
From time to time he lapsed into unconsciousness, only when he came to again to enter on a new bout of agonising retching that reduced him to mental and physical exhaustion.
For three days the hurricane continued. At last the ferocious waves subsided into a heavy swell. Still dazed, he crawled out of the flag locker on hands and knees and looked about him. The Nunez was still running with bare masts before the tail end of the storm and he saw that her foremast was missing. It had been snapped off six feet above the deck.
Round about, other passengers were lying on the deck, sprawled grotesquely in a sleep that might have been death, or squatting against the bulwarks, staring in front of them with vacant, lack-lustre eyes.
Gradually some of them pulled themselves together, levered themselves up on to the still heaving deck, and compared experiences. Roger learned that everyone aboard, with only a few exceptions among the crew, had succumbed to seasickness. A few ships in the flotilla might have succeeded in reaching Madeira and sheltering in the bay of Funchal; but the majority had become scattered and were now out in the wastes of the Atlantic.
That afternoon, under still leaden skies, those passengers who were sufficiently recovered assembled to partake of cold food. Yet, when it came to the point, the majority of them could not face it. To the discomfort of overcrowding, which made the ship a human ant-heap, was now added the horror that it stank to high heaven with vomit and excrement.
The Portuguese officers and crew, aided by a number of the more stalwart passengers, did what they could to cleanse the decks of the sewage which had accumulated from prostrate victims of the tempest; but it was the best part of a week before the awful stench no longer caused the weaker elements of the ship’s company to be again overcome by nausea.
For several days after the great storm, a heavy swell continued to make life on board far from comfortable; but at length it subsided and the daily routine established before they had sighted Madeira was resumed. Meanwhile, several other ships, including a Portuguese man-of-war, had been sighted and converged to form a small convoy. Signals were exchanged, but no news was forthcoming from any of them about the Principe Real, on board which were Don Joao and his family.
Every day carried them a little further southward and, to begin with, they enjoyed the warmer sunshine; but later the heat added to their miseries. Below decks, it became stifling; so the poop, the waist of the ship and the fo’c’sle were packed with a solid jam of men and women sitting or standing, all listlessly endeavouring to get a breath of air. Tempers frayed. There were angry disputes, violent quarrels over the possession of a few square feet of deck and, at times, there were fights in which knives and belaying pins were used.
Week after week the hellish voyage continued, periods of rough weather alternating with spells of calm, when the sails hung slack and the unhappy passengers suffered acutely from sunburn. Dysentery was rife, food short and water strictly rationed. Hardly a day passed without one or more deaths from various causes. During the hurricane many people had been injured and were still nursing broken bones. Others went mad from sunstroke and several, driven out of their wits by their terrible existence, committed suicide by jumping overboard. Few any longer bothered to maintain a presentable appearance. All the men let their beards grow; the hair of the women became lank or scruffy, their clothes were bedraggled and their faces peeling.
At long last, soon after midday on January 20th, they sighted land. Going down on their knees, they gave heartfelt thanks, then eagerly scanned the shore. For a while it appeared to be a solid mass of tall trees right down to the water’s edge; but, as the Nunez came nearer in, they discerned a break in the forest, then a cluster of small, half-hidden buildings from which a score or more of boats were putting out.
As they approached, they separated, one or more making for each of the ships in the flotilla. Three came alongside Nunez. Two were canoes manned by Indians—small, copper-coloured men with lank black hair and painted faces. The third was a ketch, in the stern of which were three men wearing wide-brimmed hats of plaited straw, dirty cotton shirts, and leather breeches. One was a Portuguese, the other two were half-castes.
The Portuguese came aboard and announced himself as Senhor Pedro Sousa. He told them that the little township was Macoé, and that he ran a trading post there. When he learned that the flotilla was part of a large fleet in which the Prince Regent had sailed to take up permanent residence in Brazil, he expressed great delight; he regretfully shook his head when they expressed their eagerness to land. Macoé, he said, had no more than a dozen white inhabitants and, apart from primitive native huts, less than a score of buildings; so the accommodation there would be hopelessly inadequate to house the thousand or more people who had arrived in the convoy.
However, it transpired that Rio de Janeiro, for which the flotilla had been making, was only a hundred miles away to the south. Meanwhile, he promised to supply them with as much fresh fruit and vegetables and as many chickens and pigs as his small community could furnish; then returned to his ketch to go ashore and put this matter in hand.
An hour or so later, the canoes began to come off again to the several ships, loaded with these supplies which were received with rapture by the voyagers who, for several weeks past, had been forced to exist on a minute ration of salt pork and weevilly biscuits. With the best will in the world, Sousa could send off only enough to provide very small portions per person; but, even so, they savoured every mouthful with extraordinary pleasure.
Sousa was a guest at this meagre but greatly-appreciated evening feast. Afterwards, Roger drew him aside and said, ‘Senhor, I have very urgent business in Rio which has already been too long delayed. At the moment the wind is not favourable to ships heading south; so, if you could sell me horses and a guide, I’d reach the city more swiftly by taking the coast road. How say you?’
The Portuguese hesitated. ‘I could fulfil your needs; but there are certain risks. The road is rough, and you might encounter hostile Indians.’
‘I’ll take that risk,’ Roger replied, ‘so, when you go ashore, I will go with you.’
He then wrote a brief note to Lisala, which read: My love, do not be worried by my leaving the ship. I’ll see you in Rio. Going below, he pushed it under her cabin door. An hour later, Sousa climbed down the rope ladder to his ketch. To the surprise of those who were seeing the Portuguese off, Roger followed him. Laughing up at them as he descended, he said:
‘I’ve stolen a march on you. Senhor Sousa has invited me to spend the night in his house; so I will be the first to see something of our new country.’ A little envious, but admiring his initiative, they waved him away.
Sousa lived in a long, low, wooden building which was also his store, where he bartered gaudy trinkets with the Indians in exchange for rare woods, alligator skins and other commodities. When they reached it, one of the half-castes was called in and, over drinking horns of maté—which Roger found similar to rather nasty tea—a bargain was struck. For two of his pieces of gold the half-caste and an Indian would convey him to Rio.
Soon after
dawn the next morning they set out, the Indian riding a hundred yards ahead, to warn them of danger, and the half-caste with a lead mule loaded with a bivouac and provisions.
The road was no more than a track and, for the greater part of the way, ran through dense jungle. The trees were taller than any Roger had ever seen. Looped from their branches hung gigantic creepers; huge ferns and smaller trees bearing strange fruit grew so thickly in between that the sides of the track formed impenetrable walls of greenery. For long stretches the trees met overhead so that, in spite of the blazing sun above, the way was lit only by a mysterious twilight. The air was humid and, in spite of the shade, it soon became intensely hot.
Occasionally they forded shallow streams and after a while Roger suggested they should strip at one of them and refresh themselves with a dip. But his companion would not let him because, in addition to danger from alligators, there lived in them swarms of tiny piranha fish that would attack a man and tear every shred of flesh from his bones in a matter of minutes.
The silence, broken only now and then by the calling of a bird or rustle made by an animal in the undergrowth, was most oppressive. Once they saw a jaguar crouched on the branch of a tree; but the half-caste scared it off with a shot from his musket. From other trees twenty-foot-long pythons hung lazily, head down, and to pass them they put their horses into a gallop.
Strings of orchids dangled from roots in the forks of many of the trees; bright-plumaged macaws flapped squawking across the track; and huge butterflies flitted from bush to bush. But Roger, dripping with sweat as though he were in a Turkish bath, constantly tormented by mosquitoes and saddle-sore from moisture trickling down between his legs, was suffering far too much discomfort to enjoy these beauties of nature.
They halted to feed and bivouac on the edge of Indian villages in which the natives were semi-civilised and friendly. Late in the afternoon of the second day, to Roger’s intense relief, they rode into the outskirts of Rio. It was the 23rd January 1808, eight weeks to the day since he had, unexpectedly and most unwillingly, left Lisbon. Never in all his hazardous life had he experienced such prolonged misery. Owing to seasickness and lack of good food during the long voyage, he had lost both weight and vigour; his two-day ride had resulted in his face becoming swollen with insect bites, and he was suffering from sunburn on his hands and neck. But now, at last, he could hope for better times and a resumption of the delights that Lisala was so eager to give him.
Evil in a Mask Page 33