Segge, in his confusion, had called out a salutation in Dutch, and to his great joy, received a greeting in his own language.
“I don’t speak it fluently,” Abel O’Brien said, after the introductions, “just enough to get along with others who fight the Portuguese!”
O’Brien also spoke Tupi-Guarani, so he and Segge had been able to converse freely. Abel O’Brien had taken Segge up a winding path to the cavern. There was a level fenced-in area in front of the opening; passing through a sturdy gate, Segge was surprised by the order he found. To one side stood wooden storage bins for manioc and grain; next to them was a well-equipped forge, beside which lay a pile of iron spearheads and implements. On the opposite side were several water casks, placed at different levels. The uppermost cask was fed by a channel made from split and hollowed tree limbs; the water trickling into the top tank came from a spring beyond the small enclosure, the overflow from this cask filling the barrels below. Four parrots and a red macaw offered a raucous greeting as the men moved through this area.
A similar orderliness prevailed in the big cave. The stony base was swept clean; arranged neatly against the walls were chests and a collection of swords, muskets, and powder. When Segge asked how this small arsenal had been obtained, O’Brien smacked his fancy breastplate. “The Portuguese aren’t the only men who make conquests,” he said, and indicated that Segge should move to the platform.
Two of Abel O’Brien’s women had entered. Both extremely young, they giggled as they approached the men with bowls of food and fruit and a tall silver jug with a drink served in crystal goblets! The liquid was thin and refreshing, with a fruity taste. Segge had nodded with satisfaction as he sipped it. “What is it?” he asked. “A wine?”
O’Brien laughed. “Drink as much as you desire and you’ll not suffer for it. This is unfermented juice of the passion fruit and other products of the forest.”
“I expected cachaça.”
“Not here, my friend. Nor do I eat the flesh of beasts.”
“For what reason?”
“Meat I lost the taste for — as prisoner of the cannibals. Cachaça?” He put an arm around the nearest of the two girls. “What need have I for cachaça or tabak?” He smiled broadly. “Can you not see? I am Abel . . . alive . . . in this second Eden.”
Segge sighed heavily.
“This distresses you?”
Segge had then told O’Brien some of his experiences. Later, when they’d eaten and the girls had been sent away, O’Brien removed his Spanish armor, settled himself comfortably on a pile of hides, the top one a jaguar pelt, placed a bowl of fruit between them, and launched into the story of his own and Bernard’s search for El Dorado, and the attempt to establish English colonies and plantations along the Amazon . . .
“Four years after we came, Bernard sailed home, not in defeat, but with the hope of returning with ships of pilgrims for this paradise. He was away when the old dog Maciel Bento Parente attacked.”
O’Brien’s hand went to his doublet and he withdrew a crucifix inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which he wore at his breast. “It was hers,” he said. “My Rebecca . . . Rebecca Goodheart. Oh, my love!” O’Brien’s voice cracked. “When I first saw Rebecca, she was a child, only thirteen years old and sailing with her father in Roger North’s ship. I was a man of twenty, and wise to the world. All these years, Secundus Proot, and I can still see her on the deck of that ship, gazing out across the water with such tremendous hope toward this New World.
“When Parente attacked, Rebecca and the women and children were placed for their safety aboard the only ship in the vicinity. One hundred and twenty-five souls, Secundus. The ship was driven aground by the dog Parente, and one hundred and twenty-five souls put to the sword and torn to pieces.
“Five of us escaped to the side of your countrymen,” O’Brien went on. “The Dutch had forts up the Rio das Amazonas and we joined them for three years. We were few men, even with the natives who stood with us, and we suffered many reverses. But then in 1629 Bernard came back. He persuaded a shipload of English and Irish Papists and other dissidents who had fled persecution in England to come to the Amazon. Some had wanted to go to the settlements in North America, but Bernard promised to lead them to paradise, here, at the Amazon!
“But just when we’d begun to rebuild, we were again attacked by a force of Portuguese and natives — not Bento Maciel Parente but others equally vicious and unforgiving. That was the end. The Dutch offered help, but Bernard wouldn’t accept it. Instead, he surrendered to the Portuguese, who swore by the Cross of Christ that we would be unmolested. We were taken to Belém, where some of our party began to doubt this holy Portuguese oath and fled —”
“You were one of them?”
“I stayed with Bernard,” he said. “And how God punished me for believing the Portuguese who had killed my Rebecca. We were banished from Belém and sent in chains to the malocas of cannibals. Separated from Bernard, I was placed with flesh eaters at a village on the Rio Pará. ‘You tell us you love the savages, Irishman,’ the Portuguese said. ‘Make friends with them so that we may have peace in our land!’” O’Brien laughed. “They expected me to be devoured, but I did exactly as the administrator ordered: I made friends. They spared me, for I led them in battles against their enemies. God forgive me, I delivered the cannibals more victims than they’d ever known.”
“I was held by the Tupinambá,” Segge said quietly. “I know to what lengths a man will be driven.”
After a year with the cannibals, O’Brien added, he had left them and come upriver to the Tapajós led by Tabaliba. These natives he had aided, too, in clashes against their enemies, until he tired of the conflicts and moved to this cave, where he began his settlement ten years ago. His cousin Bernard who had been allowed to return to Belém, had left Brazil, having abandoned hope for his colony.
“You’ve never wanted to return to Ireland?”
“I swore that I would never leave until my work is done.”
“What work?” Segge asked.
“Here a Spaniard, there a Portuguese — my work,” O’Brien said, looking intently at the stack of muskets. “Never many, for we are not a large force, just myself and thirty warriors below. But, by the grace of God, we’ve been given success.” He smiled broadly. “The Portuguese would call me a pirate — Bloody Abel O’Brien of the Rio das Amazonas! That’s if they ever identified my wild gallants and me! We take every precaution, Master Proot. We leave no survivors; and if we did, they’d simply report another attack by savages raiding out of the forest, for we disguise ourselves as such.”
They were outside now. Abel O’Brien paced slowly back and forth.
“Bento Maciel Parente.” He drew out the name with menacing emphasis. “The son. I have been thinking, Secundus, that it is time for me to end my work.”
The Irishman was quiet for a while. Then he raised his face to the starlit heavens. “Yes, by God, I see it is time! We’ll sail against the slavers, Secundus.”
Segge was taken aback. “There are hundreds of them! They have a ship with guns!”
“So I’ve heard. But we, too, can bring a force such as has never been seen before on the Rio das Amazonas, if we act swiftly and send Tabaliba and the elders to every village downriver. Wherever there’s a native who has felt or feared the sorrow inflicted by these Portuguese, he will be called to war. We’ll ride them down in the Rio das Amazonas, young Bento Maciel Parente and every dog who runs with him. We’ll ride them down, Secundus, and liberate those they take to ruin at Belém!”
“Do you really think it can be done?” Segge asked, excitement growing in his chest.
“You’ve told me you are an artist.”
“I was before . . .”
“Then fight alongside me, my friend, and I’ll promise you a scene of glory — such a scene, painter Proot, as you could never imagine!”
“Death-Bird Island,” the natives called the mile-and-a-half-long kidney-shaped island sixty miles downriver
from the Tapajós village raided by Bento Maciel Parente and his slavers. The island lay between two bends of the Rio das Amazonas, which was four miles wide at this point.
Death-Bird Island merited its name. It was thickly wooded, and the branches above a steep bank opposite the channel were heavy with urubu.
On this day, September 7, 1644, the single-masted, shallow-draft flagship of Bento Maciel Parente’s slave flotilla approached the south bend. Built at Belém, she had been constructed with her river missions in mind. She was sixty feet long with ample beam and flush deck. She had no cabin but a thatched shelter toward the stern. Her mast was stepped close forward and she had a long bowsprit; two gaff-rigged sails and topsail could be raised, and a spread of canvas could be unfurled between mast and bowsprit. She was maneuverable, with fourteen pairs of oars to navigate her when there was no wind. And she was deadly: She mounted eight brass cannon and four swivel guns. She was called Nossa Senhora do Desterro, and shared this name with Fort Desterro, situated one hundred miles farther down the Rio das Amazonas and the last outpost beyond Belém.
To keep pace with her fleet this day, the Desterro was lightly rigged with only a foresail hoisted. Around her and half a mile astern of the vessel rode eighty canoes bearing slavers and the six hundred Tupinambá auxiliaries, and 736 men, women, and children seized from the village of Tabaliba and other settlements attacked by the force. The canoes were from twenty to thirty-six feet long, some of bark, others of single-tree construction. Many were crowded with as many as thirty people. The larger craft had eight oarsmen who stood up front with a bowman setting the beat as they paddled, an energetic stroke to keep up with the Desterro.
Amador sat on the deck under the thatched shelter with Bento Maciel and his officers. Three of the officers were Portuguese-born; one was from Lebanon (Segge Proot’s “Turk”); four were half-breeds — two the sons of black women, and two mamelucos.
While boarding the Desterro, Amador was reminded of the Hopewell, which had carried him to Pernambuco. He had dreaded a repetition of that foul passage, but he needn’t have worried: The smooth-flowing river and light breezes and the airy shelter on deck made life aboard the Desterro quite tolerable.
When the flight of Segge Proot and the natives from the enclosure had been discovered, Amador had raged the loudest, and offered to search for the fugitives.
“I brought the Hollander to your camp, Capitão Bento Maciel,” he had cried. “Let me be the one who seeks redress!”
Bento Maciel had been furious at the loss of Tabaliba and the others, but his anger did not equal Amador’s.
“A musket, Capitão! A machete! The Hollander must be captured!”
“Calma, Paulista . . . calma! We have hundreds of slaves. Why hazard a force in the forest for only twenty-eight savages and a heretic?”
“It’s a matter of honor,” Amador replied stoutly.
“Leave the Hollander to the savages. He will never survive this sertão.”
As the Desterro sailed downriver, Amador’s experiences during the years passed in the sertão with Segge Proot were uppermost in his thoughts. And he remembered, too, Senhor Fernão Cavalcanti’s request that he take Proot away from Engenho Santo Tomás for six months. If nothing else, I honored my arrangement with Senhor Fernão. I saved the senhorita from the worst temptation.
The Desterro entered the south bend. Her helmsman held her on course for the middle of the channel between Death-Bird Island and the riverbank. A light breeze filled the big foresail.
In addition to the men at the shelter, the ship carried a crew of twenty. Two were up forward, one sitting astride the bowsprit looking out for tree trunks and similar hazards. Two men stood in the stern with the helmsman, one observing the progress of the eighty canoes spread out around and behind them, the other keeping an eye on two fishing lines he’d cast out over the railing.
Without warning, a barrage of musket fire was unleashed against the Desterro from both sides of the channel. To the right, assailants rose from a trench behind an earth mound camouflaged with branches and debris; to the left, they were concealed in the brush. Before the fusillade ended, archers with long bows loosed a storm of arrows to follow the hail of lead.
The instant the attack was launched, at the far end of the channel, a barrier constructed of 520 feet of lianas — expertly joined and nowhere less than ten inches thick — rose six feet out of the water.
“The guns!” Bento Maciel roared. “Man the guns!”
He dropped to his knees and crawled along the deck. Two crew were already tugging at a hatch that covered the area where gunpowder and shot were stored. Kegs of powder and weapons were also kept in the bow, where decking from bulwark to bulwark formed a low forecastle, no more than a crawl space into which men now scrambled frantically to supply the ship’s guns.
Two swivel guns were situated amidships to port and starboard, and two at the stern. But only two of these four guns could be manned; the first shore volleys had knocked out almost a quarter of the Desterro’s officers and crew.
The helmsman screamed and doubled up with pain as he was hit by an arrow that tore into his left arm, but he did not let go of the tiller.
On both banks, hundreds of warriors boldly showed themselves with taunts and bravado, as the forty muskets and two hundred bows kept up a furious assault against the slavers. In the canoe fleet, shocked Tupinambá began to rally and grabbed their bows, but the counterattack was initially weak and disorganized. Worst off at this moment were the hundreds of unarmed prisoners caught in the midst of this battle: Some huddled in the bottom of the canoes; others leapt or were thrown overboard, bewildered and terrified. Few thought to attack their guards.
And now those in the Desterro showed why the Portuguese men-of-war had such a fearsome reputation. It was true that the great Lusitanian Empire was virtually in ruin, smashed by the new power of the Hollander and the growing harassment by Englishmen. But it was equally true that wherever Portuguese were still called to fight, there rose all the power and glory that older generations had known with As Conquistas!
Within five minutes, gun ports had been banged open, charges rammed home and round shot fed into the barrels. With a thunderclap and burst of smoke, they hurled their first projectiles toward the shore. The swivel guns were ready, too. A musket ball grooved the scalp of the mameluco who stood beside the gun on the stern and killed him instantly. But The Turk — a blood-soaked kerchief around his neck — leapt up quickly to the gun and sent a hail of small shot in the direction of Death-Bird Island.
Swiftly the Desterro was converted to a fighting ship. But even as belching fire and acrid smoke signaled the Desterro’s response, her men became aware of the full extent of the trap set for them.
Eight hundred yards ahead, where the mighty liana barrier blocked the slavers’ passage, war canoes that had hidden behind the northern end of the island rode into view. The paddlers ducked as the canoes slipped beneath the liana cable; then they took up their stroke, dozens of craft moving toward the Desterro.
But this squadron did not represent the main threat. To the south, 150 canoes swept around the island. The Desterro and every craft that rode with Bento Maciel Parente’s flotilla were bottled into the channel.
Abel O’Brien stood boldly in the prow of one of the lead craft, the spray flying up around him as the canoe raced through the water. “Faster, my Tapajós! Faster, my gallants!”
Segge was exultant as the canoe in which he was standing rushed to battle. Never before had he found himself in such a situation. Today, Secundus Proot, he told himself, you’re not an artist — you’re a warrior come to deliver the wrath of God to those who richly deserve it!
He had equipped himself from Abel O’Brien’s ample resources. He wore a heavy leather jerkin, a bright orange sash, and blue breeches. Two bone-handled pistols, long knife, and war ax were thrust into his belt. Two loaded muskets lay at the feet of one of Abel O’Brien’s warriors, who sat ready to reload for Segge.
Segge’s appearance bore one comical aspect: Perched on his head was a rusty iron helmet. Segge had paraded around the cave in this headgear to Abel O’Brien’s vast amusement. “Rather this than a musket ball in the brain,” was Segge’s defense.
A mile had separated this main force of attackers from the Desterro when they entered the channel, but the gap was swiftly narrowing. In accord with a plan of Abel O’Brien’s, half the craft now swung off to the right to engage the slavers’ canoes, and the rest of the force kept behind the seven lead canoes bearing toward the ship.
The Desterro was being maneuvered with oars, in an attempt to turn her so that she would offer less of a target to the land-based attackers. It was also hoped that by coming around, the Desterro might raise sail and attempt to blast a passage between the canoes surging up the channel.
But Bento Maciel Parente and his officers were aware that more than likely they would have to battle it out in the middle of the waterway. To improve their chances, they had signaled the canoes carrying the main corps of raiders, men with knowledge of the ordnance aboard, and succeeded in taking twenty of their comrades onto the Desterro’s deck. Four of the cannon and three swivel guns were now in action.
“The Hollander!” Amador screamed the moment he distinguished the tall, big-bodied figure. “Proot! Oh, God! It’s Proot!”
The Desterro’s bulwarks were low and offered little enough protection from the missiles streaking across the water. But such was his anger that Amador leapt up from the gun where he’d been assisting Bento Maciel and dashed toward the stern. Ignoring the arrows that hissed past him, he almost knocked down The Turk at the swivel gun. “The Hollander — he’s mine!”
Brazil Page 48