The Earthly Paradise

  The cold fit of common sense broke over him again in a wave. He had been thinking nothing but nonsense-he must beware of these fits of misguided enthusiasm. One such, during his conversation with the King, had been responsible for his ever coming to the Indies. He was acting like a hot-headed boy instead of like a man of a mature forty who had already risen to the topmost height of his own profession. He was quite as mad as Garcia, who was setting out with a single caravel with twenty men and four horses to find and conquer the Grand Khan. And-it was extraordinary how muddled his mind was now-he had been on the point of forgetting again that he himself was just as involved as Garcia in this mad attempt. Sick despair closed in upon him again.

  Tomas had come aft; he hesitated for a moment between Garcia and Rich, and then finally addressed himself to Rich.

  ‘Shall I start the Indians baling, sir?’ he asked. ‘She hasn’t been baled today, and she makes water fast. And there’s the stores we put in the forehold, sir. I don’t like--’

  Apparently Tomas had a great deal on his mind regarding the condition of the ship. He talked volubly, while Rich only half heard him. Rich remembered how the captain ought to make a tour of inspection round his command every morning and settle the day’s work. He allowed Tomas to lead him forward, and below. He agreed about the necessity for baling. He looked dubiously at a pile of stores in the forehold, packed in queer containers, half sack, half basket, peculiar to Espanola, and he left it to Tomas to decide how they should be re-stowed. What with weed and worms and wear and tear the Santa Engracia was in poor condition, he was told-Tomas went as far as to say, when they were in solitude of the afterhold, that he would be dubious about sailing her from Palma to Barcelona on a summer’s day.

  But Rich was growing more and more dizzy with fatigue and lack of sleep. He tried to display an owlish intelligence as Tomas poured out his troubles, answering his remarks with non-committal monosyllables. He escaped from him in the end and found his way to the captain’s cabin under the poop. In a drawer of the little table there he came across the late captain’s papers and instruments. There was a roll of accounts of one sort and another, all dealing with the outward voyage and apparently of no more importance. There was a paper of sailing instructions in the handwriting of the Admiral himself, dealing with the problem of finding Espanola from Spain-Rich’s swimming eyes could not struggle with that now. There was a rough chart of the Indies, apparently by the same hand; that might be useful. There was astrolabe and cross staff, and, in a leather pouch, a table of the sun’s declination at weekly intervals throughout the year. That was all Rich wanted to know. He pushed the other things aside, and laid his head upon his arms on the table as he sat on the stool screwed to the deck. And in that attitude, despite the rolling of the ship, he slept heavily for a couple of hours.

  21

  The voyage went on, somehow. On the third day they doubled Cape Alta Vela and were able to set a westerly course along the southern coast of Espanola, the old Santa Engracia, leaking like a sieve and encumbered with weeds a yard long on her bottom, lumbering along before the persistent urging of the wind. Far on the horizon to the north rose the green mountains of the island. Each day brought its scorching sunshine and its torrential rain, its blue skies and its rainbows.

  Each day brought afresh to Rich the strange feeling of the unreality of it all, despite the harsh realism of the ship’s routine, the baling and the constant repairs. He practised diligently each day with astrolabe and cross staff-he told himself that his very life might depend on his skilful use of them, while at the same time he found it impossible to believe. He worked out the little calculation necessary to ascertain the speed of the ship by measuring with his pulse the time taken by an object thrown overboard from the bow to reach the stern. He pored long and diligently over the Admiral’s chart of the Indies, at the long sweep of islands at its eastern end where--as the last voyage had ascertained-lay Trinidad and the mysterious country of the Orinoco and the Earthly Paradise. Westmost of the chain lay Espanola, divided by a narrow strait from the long peninsula of Cuba which jutted out two hundred leagues or so from the unknown mainland of China or India. So the Admiral had drawn it; Rich was aware that there had been whispers that Cuba was merely another island, the vastest of them all. The Admiral had silenced the whispers by decreeing that any such whisperer would lose his tongue.

  But whether Cuba were an island or not, the task Garcia had laid upon him was to steer the Santa Engracia up through the strait between Cuba and Espanola, and then north-westerly, on and on until they reached the country el Baboso knew of, the land where the temples reached the sky and where worked gold was to be seen everywhere. Rich fancied it must be the land of the Great Khan which Marco Polo the Venetian had visited, but he occasionally had doubts. It might be some new unvisited empire, if it existed at all. If it existed at all-Rich could picture the Santa Engracia sailing on and on over the blue sea until her motley crew died of hunger and thirst and disease, himself among them. Or perhaps in that direction there really was an edge to the earth, despite the Admiral’s denials, and the Santa Engracia might find herself hurtling over it to plunge into the depths. He tried to hint at his fear to Garcia, but Garcia only shrugged his shoulders and laughed callously. Despite his comfortable plumpness, Garcia was a man of iron will and quite without fear-without heart in his body, Rich came to think.

  Certainly without a heart in his body. Three of the sailors--not Tomas-and four Indians were caught the second night by Julio Zerain trying to desert in the longboat; Rich heard the judgment which issued from Garcia’s lips the next morning and heard the wild screams of the wretched men as their punishment was dealt out to them. He could not bear to listen--more especially as he would certainly have joined in the attempt if the sailors had taken him into their confidence. He might be screaming there on the deck now, in that case. It was something to thank God for that he had not been allowed the captain’s cabin, but had had to sleep in the ‘tweendecks with a dozen Spaniards. They had kept him from any such perilous endeavour. He would die-he was sure of it-if ever he were punished in that manner. That morning he knew worse misery of soul than ever since he had left Spain; more could not be said than that.

  There was other bloodshed on board. Rich did not know how the quarrel started, but he heard shouts and the clash of steel forward; Fernando Berrocal and Pablo Mourentan had their swords out--the blades flashed fiercely in the sunshine-and were fighting out their quarrel in the manner of hot-blooded youth. Garcia came up from below on the run; he roared like a bull and dashed forward drawing his sword. Tarpia appeared from nowhere, sword drawn, too. Berrocal’s blade was beaten out of his hand. Mourentan, thrusting wildly at Garcia in his excitement, received a sword cut on his shoulder which sent him staggering and helpless to the rail.

  ‘Fools!’ bellowed Garcia. ‘I will have no fighting in this ship. That fool there has less than he deserves. The next man to draw steel will hang. I swear it by the Holy Sacrament.’

  He glowered round at the silent crowd and pointed to the yardarm, magnificently animal despite his fat and his rags. Perhaps he remembered the rules on board the Holy Name of which Acevedo had once reminded him. He needed every fighting man in the campaign he was planning, and he had come to appreciate not only how easily quarrels may arise in the cramped life aboard ship, but also how easily the whole ship’s company might become involved. Rich thought bitterly of the time when he had believed himself to be acquiring the art of managing men--including this same Garcia. He knew now that he could never compare himself with him. He was no man of action; in a great shaking-up like this expedition to the Indies every man found his own level in time.

  Seventy leagues to the west of Alta Vela lay Cape San Miguel, the westernmost point of Espanola; it interested Rich to find that they reached it at the very moment which he predicted. His dead reckoning had been correct, and so was the Admiral’s chart--or else they both contained the same error. Rich might at one time have speculated deepl
y on the philosophy of compensating errors, but nowadays he was too engrossed in hourly problems to waste time. He accepted God’s mercy with gratitude and left it at that; as soon as he saw the shore of Espanola trending away back to the eastward from the bluff green eminence of San Miguel, and knew he had made all the westing necessary, he had to lay a fresh course through the straits, for there was no leeway to spare at all on this next leg of the passage.

  No leeway to spare; indeed it became apparent that they would never double Cuba in a single tack. For as they bore northward the wind backed northward as well. Rich and Tomas laid the Santa Engracia as close to the wind as they could, striving to make northing while they still had sea room, but she drifted away to leeward spiritlessly, encumbered by her weeds. Rich gazed despairingly at the tell-tale angle which his unaided eye could observe between the trace of her wake and the line of her masts. The cliffs of Cuba loomed in sight, a hard line on the horizon ahead, and still the wind blew from the north. They had to wear the ship round, heading back almost in the direction in which they had come.

  Garcia watched the manoeuvre curiously and suspiciously.

  ‘Why back to Espanola, navigator?’ he asked. There was a grim jocularity in his tone. ‘I ask you to sail north-west and’-he glanced up at the sun-’even a poor landsman like myself can see you are sailing south-east.’

  Rich endeavoured to explain the difficulty he was encountering. Today there was none of the elation which previously had led him to answer with spirit. He was too frightened of Garcia again now.

  ‘I see,’ said Garcia, consideringly, but with still a hint of unsatisfied suspicion in his voice. ‘But you do not want to go too close to Espanola, do you? We would not like to lose you, learned doctor-not now that you have proved your worth. And I might add that we will see that we do not.’

  Hastily Rich disclaimed any thought of attempting to desert from the Santa Engracia, but the words died away lamely in face of the cynical smile on Garcia’s face.

  ‘I have no need of further assurance of your loyalty, learned Don Narciso,’ said Garcia, with a glance forward to where the previous deserters had suffered.

  But he grew more human as he stood beside Rich watching the ship’s progress on the other tack.

  ‘These zigzag methods call for much explanation to me,’ he said. ‘I served for a term in His Highness’s galleys against the Moors. We never used them there. The slaves took the oars and we went wherever we wished. When the time serves I will have galleys built for use in these waters. There are slaves enough to be found.’

  There were two days when the wind failed altogether, and the Santa Engracia wallowed helplessly in the calm, with San Miguel still in sight to the eastward, and the porpoises sported round her as if to show their contempt for her sluggishness, and the flying fish furrowed the deep blue of the water. When it blew again, the wind was still hardly east of north, and day by day the Santa Engracia beat back and forth across the wide channel, gaining hardly more than a few yards each day, while tempers grew short on board and the murmuring hidalgos, who had actually come to recognize the shores, which encompassed them, asked bitterly how long the blundering incompetence of their navigator was going to keep them confined. Rich began to pray for a southerly wind, which would carry them off towards the mad adventure which he so much dreaded.

  22

  Long afterwards Rich remembered those prayers; he suspected that it was because of his impiety and incipient heresy that his petition was granted in the fashion which God chose. It was two weeks before the feast of San Narciso of Gerona (who had always stood his friend) to which he had been looking forward as perhaps bringing relief from his troubles. The wind had died away again when they had nearly clawed their way northward to the open sea, and the Santa Engracia drifted helplessly with Cuba barely in sight from the masthead and Espanola invisible over the horizon. It was oppressively hot, although there was a thin veil of cloud over the sky, through which the sun showed only at rare intervals and then a mere ghost of his usual self. The Santa Engracia pitched and rolled in a swell which was extraordinarily heavy for the narrow waters in which they lay. Spaniards and Indians sat helpless about the decks, gasping in the heat; Rich felt his clothes wet upon his back.

  He prayed for a wind, any wind, and the wind came. Gently it came at first, only a mild puff, steadying the ship in her rolling and making the sails flap loudly. Rich started from the deck in wild excitement. Those puffs of wind were from the south-a few hours of this would see them through the straits, and free. Tomas noticed the puffs of wind, too; he was having the yards braced round in haste. Soon there was quite a breeze blowing from the southward, piping in the rigging, and the Santa Engracia was under full sail before it, heading gallantly to the northward over the grey sea.

  But the breeze had brought no relief from the heat, curiously enough. It was a hot wind, a fiery wind. Rich felt his skin still drip even while the breeze blew upon him. There was an Indian on the forecastle chattering excitedly to Tomas, and Tomas was trying to puzzle out what he was saying. He led the Indian aft to where Rich stood with Garcia, and the Indian babbled in panic.

  ‘Hurricane,’ he was saying, or some word like that. He was frantic with the desire to express his meaning-it was a most vivid example of the curse of Babel with which God had afflicted the world because of its impiety.

  ‘Hurricane,’ said the Indian again, wreathing his hands. ‘Hurricane-big wind.’

  He pointed up to the sky and waved his arms; the clouds to which he was pointing had a baleful yellow gleam now which was echoed in the sea below.

  ‘Big wind,’ said the Indian, and now that he had the Spanish words he had sought he amplified them.

  ‘Big-big--big-big wind,’ he said, wildly. He was trying to convey to his stolid taskmasters the impression of a wind bigger than their imagination could conceive. Rich and Tomas exchanged glances.

  ‘Wind’s freshening,’ said Tomas. It was blowing half a gale, certainly, and Santa Engracia was heaving and plunging before it over the topaz sea.

  ‘You had better shorten sail, Tomas,’ said Rich, and then, as bigger gusts came, ‘No, heave her to.’

  Tomas nodded decided approval and rushed forward; the Indians there were all scurrying to and fro, wringing their hands and wailing, ‘Hurricane, hurricane’-there was something about the strange Indian word which filled them with terror. Only two or three were in a fit condition to help Tomas and his men as they battled with the foresail. Rich saw Tomas, clearly frightened now, beckon to some of the Spaniards at hand for assistance, and some of them in the urgency of the moment actually ran to help him. Rich went to the tiller to help the man there heave her to-it was a muddled moment, but the ship came round under the pressure of the mainsail while only the top of one wave came in over the waist amid screams from the Indians. The seamen got the mainsail in, leaving only the lower corner spread; with the yard braced right round and the tiller hard over the ship rode nearly bows on to the wind, meeting the sea with her starboard bow. She was as safe as they could make her, now, and already the wind was blowing a full gale. Garcia came, blown by the wind, aft to Rich, with Manuel Abello, the only one of the old colonists who had joined the expedition, behind him.

  ‘Abello here knows what the Indians are saying,’ he shouted in Rich’s ear. ‘He has seen these hurricanes before.’

  Abello was hatless, and his long hair and beard were blown into a wild mop in front of his face.

  ‘Nothing can live in a hurricane,’ he shouted. ‘Make for land.’

  Rich had no words for him. It was not the moment to try to explain that the poor old Santa Engracia, hove to before a full gale, could do nothing more now except try to live through it-the Admiral himself would attempt no more. Tomas was clawing his way round the deck with his men, driving the Indians below and making all as secure as might be.

  ‘Why don’t you do as he says?’ shouted Garcia.

  ‘I can’t-’ said Rich.

  The force
of the wind suddenly redoubled itself. It shifted a couple of points and flung itself howling upon the Santa Engracia--Rich saw the line of the wind hurtling over the surface of the water. The Santa Engracia lay over, took a huge wave over her bows, and then wearily came up to the wind again. The wind was nearly taking them off their feet. They felt as if they were being pushed by something solid, and it was still increasing in force; they had all been dashed against the lee rail, and it was with incredible difficulty that they regained their footing. Rich felt himself being swept away again. He seized a rope’s end and began to tie himself to the rail, with great clumsy knots-it seemed mad for a grown man to tie himself to his ship for fear of being blown away, but everything in this world was mad. The deck forward was strangely bare-only Tomas and another man were to be seen there, clutching the rail. The sea they had shipped must have swept the others away. Tomas saw Rich looking at him and pointed up to the mainsail. The small rag of canvas which had been left spread there was blowing out, expanding like a bladder as the gaskets gave way. Next moment the whole sail was loose; a moment later it had flogged itself into fragments which cracked like gigantic whips in the gale with a noise which even the gale could not drown.

  The ship must be hurtling to leeward at an astonishing pace, thought Rich, with a mad clarity of mind. He wondered how, when he next worked out the ship’s position, he could allow for all this leeway whose pace and direction were quite unknown to him. Then he told himself he would most likely never work out the ship’s position again. And he was in mortal sin-he had been intending to confess before sailing in the Holy Name. He was frightened now, for the first time since the gale began, and he tried to pray into the shrieking wind.

  A huge wave suddenly popped up from nowhere and came tumbling over the poop. Rich felt himself dashed against the rail with terrific force; he choked and strangled and struggled in the water until the Santa Engracia shook herself free. Garcia and Abello were gone from beside him, and Rich felt nothing more than a neutral callousness for their fate. The masts went directly after-Rich actually was unaware of the loss of the foremast, but he saw the weather shrouds of the mainmast part and the wind whirl the mast away like a chip. Everything else on deck was going, too-tiller and windlass and boat and all. Only Tomas was still there, bound to the forecastle rail. The Santa Engracia was rolling like a spiritless log on the surface of the sea.