I hadn't gone five meters when I realized that my chain with the Virgin of Carmen medal had come off. I stopped, and managed to grab it as I began to sink into the turbulent green water. Since I had no time to put it in my pocket, I clenched it tightly between my teeth and kept on swimming.
I felt my strength ebbing but I still couldn't see land. Then I was terrified again: maybe--no, surely--the land had been just another hallucination. The cool water had made me feel better and I was now in possession of my faculties, swimming feverishly toward an imaginary beach. But now I had covered too much distance: it was impossible to go back and look for the raft.
12
Resurrection in a Strange Land
Only after swimming furiously for fifteen minutes did I sight land again. It was still more than a kilometer away. But now I hadn't the slightest doubt that it was real and not just an apparition. The sun shone gold on the tops of the coconut palms. There were no lights on shore. There wasn't a town or a house visible from the sea. But it was land.
After twenty minutes I was exhausted, but I was sure I would make it. I swam on faith, trying not to let emotion make me lose control. I had spent half my life in the water but it wasn't until that morning of March 9 that I understood and appreciated the importance of being a good swimmer. Even though I was losing strength all the time, I kept on swimming toward shore. As I got closer, I could see the coconut palms more and more clearly.
The sun rose just as I felt I could touch bottom. I tried, but it was still too deep. Apparently I wasn't close to a beach. The water was deep very near the shore, so I had to go on swimming. I don't know exactly how long I swam. As I got closer to shore the sun heated up overhead, but it was now warming my muscles rather than punishing my skin. For the first few meters the icy water had me worrying about cramps. But my body warmed up quickly, and then the water seemed less cold and I swam with fatigue, as if in a haze, but with a spirit and a faith that prevailed over hunger and thirst.
I saw the thick foliage clearly in the weak morning sun as I tried to touch bottom a second time. The ground was right there beneath my feet. What a strange sensation it was to touch the ground after drifting at sea for ten days.
But I realized very quickly that the worst was yet to come. I was totally exhausted. I couldn't stand up. The undertow threw me back into the water, away from the beach. I had the Virgin of Carmen medal clenched between my teeth. My wet clothes and my rubber-soled shoes were terribly heavy. But even in such extreme circumstances one is modest; I thought that at any moment I might meet someone. So I went on struggling against the undertow without taking off my clothes, which hindered my progress. I was beginning to feel faint from exhaustion.
The water was above my waist. With tremendous effort, I managed to push ahead to where it was only up to my thighs. Then I decided to crawl. I dug into the sand with my hands and knees and pushed myself forward. But it was useless; the waves pushed me back. The tiny sharp grains of sand abraded the wound on my knee. I knew it was bleeding but I didn't feel pain. My fingertips were scraped raw. Even though I could feel the sand penetrate the flesh under my fingernails, I dug my fingers into it and tried to crawl forward. Very soon I felt another wave of terror: the land and the golden coconut palms began to sway before my eyes. I thought I was being swallowed up by the earth.
But that was probably an illusion brought on by exhaustion. The thought that I might be in quicksand gave me tremendous energy--a vitality born of terror--and painfully, without mercy for my raw fingertips, I went on crawling against the force of the undertow. Ten minutes later, all the suffering and hunger and thirst of ten days took their toll on my body. I lay exhausted on the warm, hard beach, not thinking about anything, not thanking anyone, not even rejoicing that, by force of will, hope, and an indefatigable desire to live, I had found this stretch of silent, unknown beach.
Human footprints
The first thing you notice on land is the silence. Before you know it, you're enveloped in a great silence. A moment later you hear the waves, distant and sad, crashing on the beach. And the murmur of the breeze amid the coconut palms heightens the feeling that you're on land. Then there is the knowledge that you've saved yourself, even if you don't know what part of the world you're in.
Once I had pulled myself together a bit, I began to look around as I lay there on the beach. The landscape was harsh. Instinctively, I looked for human footprints. There was a barbed-wire fence about twenty meters away. There was a narrow, twisting road with animal tracks on it. And next to the road there were some coconut shells. At that moment, the slightest trace of a human presence took on the importance of revelation. Boundlessly happy, I rested my cheek on the warm sand and began to wait.
I lay there for about ten minutes. Little by little I was regaining my strength. It was after six in the morning and the sun shone brightly. Among the coconut shells along the side of the road were some whole coconuts. I crawled toward them, propped myself up on a tree trunk, and pressed one of the smooth, impenetrable fruits between my knees. Anxiously I inspected it for soft spots, as I had done with the fish five days before. With each turn I could feel the milk splash inside. The deep, guttural sound reawakened my thirst. My stomach ached, the wound on my knee was bleeding, and my fingers, raw at the tips, throbbed with a slow, deep pain. During the ten days at sea there had never been a moment when I felt I would go crazy, but I thought I would that morning as I turned the coconut round and round, trying to find a place to open it and listening to the clean, fresh, inaccessible milk splash around inside.
A coconut has three eyes at the top, arranged in a triangle. But first you have to shell the coconut with a machete to get to them. I had only my keys. Several times I tried using them to cut into the hard, tough shell, but I had no luck. Eventually I gave up. I flung the coconut away in a rage, still hearing the milk splash inside.
The road was my last hope. There at my feet the cracked shells suggested that someone came around to knock down coconuts--that someone came by every day, climbed the trees, and shelled the coconuts. And there must be an inhabited place nearby, because nobody travels a long distance just to collect a load of coconuts.
I was thinking about all that, propped up against the tree trunk, when I heard the distant barking of a dog. My senses grew alert. I was on guard. A moment later, I thought I distinctly heard the clanging of something metallic coming closer on the road.
It was a black girl, incredibly thin, young, and dressed in white. She was carrying a little aluminum jug, the top of which was loose and jangled with every step she took. What country am I in? I wondered as I watched the black girl, who looked Jamaican, walking toward me along the road. I thought of the islands of San Andres and Providencia. I recalled all the islands in the Antilles. This girl was my first chance, but also possibly my last. Will she understand Spanish? I wondered, trying to read the face of the girl, who, not having seen me, was distractedly scuffling along the road in her dusty leather slippers. I was so desperate not to miss my chance that the absurd thought occurred to me that she wouldn't understand me if I spoke to her in Spanish--that she would leave me there at the side of the road.
"Hello! Hello!" I said anxiously, in English.
She turned and looked at me with huge, white, fearful eyes.
"Help me!" I exclaimed, convinced she understood me.
She hesitated a moment, stared at me again, and took off like a shot, scared to death.
A man, a donkey, and a dog
I thought I would die of anxiety. In a flash I saw myself right at that spot, dead, picked apart by vultures. But then I heard the dog bark again. My heart started to pound as the barking got closer. I raised myself up on the palms of my hands. I lifted my head. I waited. One minute. Two. The barking grew closer. Soon there was only silence. Then the crash of waves and the rustle of the wind in the coconut palms. Then, after the longest minute of my life, an emaciated dog appeared, followed by a donkey laden with a basket on either side. Behind the
m walked a pale white man wearing a straw hat and pants rolled up to his knees. He had a rifle slung across his back.
He saw me as soon as he rounded the bend in the road, and looked at me in surprise. He stopped. The dog, with its tail pointing straight up, came over to sniff at me. The man stood still, in silence. Then he unslung his rifle, planted its butt in the ground, and went on watching me.
I don't know why, but I thought I was somewhere in the Caribbean other than Colombia. Not certain he would understand me, I nevertheless decided to speak Spanish to him.
"Senor, help me," I said.
He didn't answer right away. He continued to look at me enigmatically, without even blinking, his rifle stuck in the ground. All I needed now was for him to shoot me, I thought dispassionately. The dog licked my face, but I didn't have the strength to move away.
"Help me," I repeated desperately, worried that the man hadn't understood me.
"What happened to you?" he asked in a friendly tone of voice.
When I heard him speak I realized that, more than thirst, hunger, and despair, what tormented me most was the need to tell someone what had happened to me.
Almost choking on the words, I said, without taking a breath, "I am Luis Alejandro Velasco, one of the sailors who fell overboard from the destroyer Caldas of the National Fleet on the twenty-eighth of February."
I thought the whole world would know the story. I thought that as soon as I told him my name, the man would be obliged to help me. But he didn't budge. He stayed where he was, watching me, not troubling himself about the dog, who was now licking my injured knee.
"Are you a chicken sailor?" he asked, perhaps thinking of the merchant ships that traffic in hogs and poultry along the coast.
"No, I'm a sailor in the Navy."
Only then did the man move. He slung the rifle across his back again, pushed his hat back on his head, and said, "I'm going to take some wire to the port and then I'll come back for you." I thought this was a pretext for him to get away.
"Are you sure you'll come back?" I asked in a pleading voice.
The man replied that he would. He would be back. For certain. He gave me a kindly smile and resumed walking behind the donkey. The dog stayed by my side, sniffing me. Only when the man was a little farther away did it occur to me to ask him, almost shouting, "What country is this?"
And very matter-of-factly he gave the only answer I wasn't expecting at that moment: "Colombia."
13
Six Hundred Men Take Me to San Juan
He came back, as he had promised. Even before I began waiting for him--only a little while after he left--he returned with the basket-laden donkey and the black girl with the aluminum can (his girlfriend, I learned afterward). The dog hadn't left my side. He had stopped licking my face and my wounds and had left off sniffing me. He lay at my side half asleep, not moving until he saw the donkey approach. Then he jumped up and started wagging his tail.
"Can you walk?" the man asked me.
"I'll see," I said. I tried to stand up but lost my balance.
"You can't," the man said, catching me before I fell down.
He and the girl managed to lift me onto the donkey. Supporting me under each arm, they got the animal moving. The dog ran ahead, jumping around.
There were coconuts all along the road. At sea I had been able to endure the thirst, but here on the donkey, moving along a narrow, winding road lined with coconut palms, I felt I couldn't hold out a moment longer. I asked for some coconut milk.
"I don't have a machete," the man said.
But that wasn't so. He was carrying a machete on his belt. If I had had the strength just then, I would have taken the machete away from him by force, shelled a coconut, and eaten it whole.
Later, I found out why the man wouldn't give me any coconut milk. He had gone to a house located about two kilometers from where he had found me, and the people there advised him not to give me anything to eat until a doctor could examine me. And the nearest doctor was two days' journey from there, in San Juan de Uraba.
In less than half an hour we reached the house, a primitive structure at the side of the road, made of wood with a tin roof. Three men and two women were there. Together they helped me off the donkey, took me to a bedroom, and put me in a canvas hammock. One of the women went to the kitchen, brought back a little pot of cinnamon-flavored boiled water, and sat down at the edge of the bed to feed me spoonfuls of it. I drank the first few drops greedily. With the next few I felt I was regaining my spirit. Then I didn't want any more to drink; I wanted only to tell them what had happened to me.
No one knew about the accident. I tried to explain, to give the whole story so they'd know how I'd been saved. I'd had the idea that in whatever part of the world I turned up, everyone would already know about the catastrophe. It was disillusioning to realize, as the woman spoonfed me cinnamon water like a sick child, that I had been mistaken.
Several times I insisted on telling them what had happened. Impassive, the men and women sat at the foot of the bed, watching me. It seemed like a ceremony. If I hadn't been so happy to be saved from the sharks and all the other dangers of the sea I had endured for ten days, I would have thought that they were from another planet.
Believing the story
The kind manner of the woman who fed me wouldn't permit any distractions from her purpose. Each time I tried to tell my story she said, "Be quiet now. You can tell us later."
I would have eaten anything. From the kitchen came the aroma of lunch being prepared. But all my pleading was useless.
"After the doctor sees you, we'll give you something to eat," they said.
But the doctor did not arrive. Every ten minutes they gave me little spoonfuls of sugar water. The younger of the women, a girl, cleaned my wounds with cloths and warm water. The day passed slowly. And gradually I began to feel better. I was sure I was in the care of friendly people. If they had given me food instead of doling out spoonfuls of sugar water, my body wouldn't have withstood the shock.
The man I had met on the road was named Damaso Imitela. At ten o'clock on the morning of March 9, the day I landed on the beach, he went to the station house in nearby Mulatos and returned with several policemen to the house where he had brought me. They knew nothing about the tragedy either. No one had heard the news in Mulatos; newspapers don't reach them there. In a little store where they've installed an electric motor, they've got a refrigerator and a radio. But they don't listen to the news. As I learned later, when Damaso Imitela reported to the police inspector that he had found me lying exhausted on the beach and that I had said I was from the destroyer Caldas, they turned on the motor and listened to news programs from Cartagena all day. But by then there was nothing about the accident. There had been only a brief mention the evening it occurred.
The police inspector, all the policemen, and sixty men from Mulatos got together to help me. A little after midnight they came to the house, and their conversation woke me from virtually the only sound sleep I had had in the last twelve days.
Before dawn the house was filled with people. All of Mulatos, men, women, and children, came to get a look at me. That was my first contact with a crowd of curiosity seekers, the kind who in subsequent days would follow me everywhere. The crowd carried lanterns and flashlights. When the police inspector, together with almost all his companions, moved me from the bed, it felt as if they were tearing away my sunburned skin. It was a real scramble.
It was hot. I felt I was suffocating in the crowd of protective faces. When I walked out to the road, a sea of lanterns and flashlights spotlighted my face. I was blinded in the midst of the murmuring throng and the loud orders of the police inspector. I couldn't imagine when I might reach some destination. Since the day I fell off the destroyer, I had done nothing but travel an unknown route. That morning I went on traveling, not knowing where, unable even to imagine what that diligent, friendly crowd was going to do with me.
The tale of the fakir
&
nbsp; The road to Mulatos from the place where they had found me is long and arduous. They put me in a hammock supported by two poles. Two men at the ends of each pole carried me along a narrow, twisting road lit by lanterns. We were in the open air, but it was as hot as a closed room, because of the lanterns.
Relays of eight men traded places every half hour. Then they'd give me a little water and bits of soda biscuit. I wanted to know where we were going and what they were going to do with me. They talked about everything but that. Everyone spoke except me. The inspector, who led the crowd, wouldn't let anyone get close enough to talk to me. I could hear shouts, orders, and conversation in the distance. When we reached the main street of Mulatos, the police couldn't handle the crowd. It was about eight o'clock in the morning.
Mulatos is a fishing hamlet and has no telegraph office. The nearest town is San Juan de Uraba, where a small plane from Monterilands twice a week. When we reached the hamlet I felt I had arrived somewhere. I thought I would receive news of my family. But Mulatos was barely the midpoint of my journey.
I was put in a house and the whole town lined up to get a look at me. I thought of a fakir I had seen for fifty centavos in Bogota about two years earlier. You had to stand in line for several hours to get a look at him. You moved about two feet every half hour. When you reached the room where the fakir was displayed in a glass box, you no longer wanted to look at anybody, you just wanted to get out immediately, stretch your legs, and breathe fresh air.
The only difference between the fakir and me was that the fakir was in a glass box. He hadn't eaten for nine days. I had been ten days at sea and one day in bed in a room in Mulatos. I watched the faces parade before me--black faces, white faces--in an endless line. The heat was terrible. Then the appropriate response came to me--a sense of humor about it all--and I guessed that someone might even be selling tickets to see the shipwrecked sailor.