They left the islands of the Dragon’s Mouths to starboard and crept slowly before the wind on an easterly course. The north-eastern corner of Trinidad, which they were leaving behind them, had been steeper and loftier than the central part where they had landed yesterday, and this chain of islands appeared to be a continuation of the ridge. The last island of the chain in sight was not quite so bold in outline, but as they drew up to it Rich could see that it was steep enough, all the same, and as wooded and green as the others. Slowly they coasted along it, but it was a good deal bigger than the rest of the chain. Rich could see no end to it as he looked along its green flank.
Throughout the ship there was a bustle and an interest in what they were discovering, oddly at variance with the comparative apathy of yesterday. Rich told himself that the enthusiasms of men in a mass ebbed and flowed like the tides of the ocean. They ate their food today with one eye over the ship’s side; they stayed voluntarily exposed to the two tremendous rainstorms which swept down on them from Trinidad. Even the hidalgos were interested, talking freely and imperilling their dignity with their pointings and gesticulations. The look-out at the mast-head announced land right ahead, across their course-low green hills again. With land to the west of them now, as well as land to the north and land to the east, and the water shoaling fast, the Admiral ordered a southerly course in his determination to circle round this large island. He had ordered a chair to be brought up to the poop, and sat there with his white beard fluttering and Perez and Spallanzani at his elbow. He feared lest his squadron might be embayed here, where the wind blew always from the east, and it was well before sunset that, as the sea grew shallower and the land ahead was seen to trend farther and farther to the southward, he ordered the anchors to be let go.
‘I shall send the longboat tomorrow, Don Narciso,’ he announced, ‘to discover if there is a passage ahead or to the southward. Would you care for another jaunt?’
‘I am no seaman, Your Excellency,’ said Rich, taken a little aback. He had not been ready for this question.
‘There will be seamen with you to take the soundings and set the course,’ said the Admiral. ‘I would go myself, but, as you see--’
With a gesture the Admiral indicated his rheumaticky joints. There was a hurt, pleading look in his eyes. Rich had won his trust, and there were few enough people on earth whom the Admiral trusted. Ever since Pinzon had deserted him on his first historic voyage of discovery, and set out to discover new countries for himself, he had been cautious about despatching expeditions which could make themselves independent. It was dangerous-in his view, at least-to delegate authority either to turbulent and needy hidalgos or to adventurous captains. Rich might be an agent of the King and Queen, but he was an honest one; he could be trusted not to plunder the inhabitants nor-much worse-to conceal treasure, not to go off on expeditions of his own nor (the Admiral’s suspicions were unbounded) to bring back false information which might wreck the whole voyage.
‘It would please me very much if you would go, Don Narciso,’ said the Admiral. Several hidalgos were listening.
‘I will come and pull an oar,’ said Rodrigo Acevedo.
‘I, too,’ said his brother.
There was a little ripple of volunteering round the circle. A respite from the cramped conditions of the ship, the chance of fresh food and new sights, the possibility of finding women and pearls and gold-they were all willing to come for the sake of these. They all eyed Rich, with his new reputation as a bold fighting man, and for the sake of that reputation he could not refuse.
‘Thank you, Your Excellency,’ he said. ‘I shall much appreciate the honour.’
Five seconds later Garcia was addressing him as privately as a crowded ship permitted.
‘May I be one of the party?’ he asked.
Their eyes met-the burly young hidalgo with his bristling beard and his shabby flaunting clothes, and the stout little lawyer with the sharp eye belied by the unobtrusive manner. It was strange for the one to be asking a favour of the other, and yet he undoubtedly was.
‘There are others who have not been ashore at all,’ Rich temporized.
‘Yes,’ answered Garcia with a placatory grin, ‘but I should like to go again.’
‘And you remember what happened?’ said Rich. He did not want Garcia in his party; he was afraid.
‘I remember. But--’
Rich knew that if he refused him he would offend him. On the other hand there was a chance of loyal service from him now-only a chance, but that was better than making a certain enemy of him.
‘Will you stay with me if you come?’ he asked.
It was a big effort to screw himself up to talk like a superior to this haughty young man who could wring his neck like a chicken’s-who had been on the point of doing so the night before. But it was the only course open to him.
‘Yes,’ said Garcia.
So Garcia was one of the twenty men who crowded the longboat at dawn next day when they pushed off from the Holy Name and headed for the low green shore while the ones left behind waved farewell. The air was hot and sticky; it had rained heavily during the night and the overcast sky bore promise of more rain still. There was only just enough wind to fill the sail and push them slowly forward; it was fluky and variable, too-twice Osorio at the tiller had to shout an order as the sail flapped heavily over to the other side. A flight of pelicans flapped solemnly overhead.
There was no sign of a break in the land to the northward; to the south the hills grew lower and died away into a flat green coast. It was to the south, then, that Rich directed Osorio to steer the boat. The sun broke through the clouds and glared upon them with a terrible eye, illuminating the shore to which they were trending; a seaman standing in the bows cried out that he could see a break in the coast. Rich climbed to his feet and stood precariously balancing in the sternsheets-he had no faith in his own judgment, and yet, as commander of the expedition, he had to make some pretence at employing it. So low and flat was the shore that it was hard to distinguish where the sea ended and the land began, but Rich thought he saw what the seaman indicated-there was at least an arm of the sea running up into the land there.
With the dying wind they were compelled to take in the sail and set to work with the oars, and they took an occasional cast of the lead as they headed in. Three fathoms-two and a half fathoms-three fathoms again.
‘Hardly enough for the flagship,’ commented Osorio, spitting loudly over the side.
They were close to the shore now; the trees that fringed the sea were a sad grey, not the bright green of Trinidad, and they seemed to have their roots set actually in the water. Osorio put the tiller over until the boat was close in, and the men rested on their oars while she drifted, the gurgle and bubble at the bows dying away along with her motion.
‘Look there!’ said somebody, pointing to the trees.
On the bare grey stems close to the surface of the water there were oysters clustered thick. Osorio reached out and snapped off a brittle branch-the tip that trailed in the water bore four of them.
‘We know now where those pearls come from,’ commented Rich.
Osorio eagerly prised an oyster open with his knife, and poked a gnarled forefinger into its interior.
‘None there,’ he said, hesitated a moment, and then swallowed it noisily.
The boat lurched as everyone tried to grab for oysters; there was an interval as oysters were gathered and knives were borrowed. Food and pearls were sought with equal eagerness, but no pearls were found. Osorio turned over the shell he held in his hand and examined it curiously.
‘They are nothing like our oysters at home,’ he said, with his mouth full, and then, looking across at the birds wheeling over the sea, ‘It is more than pearls that they make. No wonder there are so many sea birds here.’
‘So the birds eat oysters, then?’ asked Rich.
‘No,’ said Osorio, ‘the oysters grow into birds.’
He opened a fresh specimen for th
e purpose of his lecture.
‘These half-tide shell fish always do that. Many’s the goose I’ve eaten which was a barnacle once. I expect these become pelicans. See here, sir. You can see the wings starting to sprout. And this must be the head-the long beak must grow later, when they are fledglings. Every spring tide brings them out in thousands, the same as butterflies come from chrysalises.’
It was an interesting point in natural history, and an apt comparison. Rich told himself that it was no more marvellous that a pelican should develop from a half-tide oyster than that a butterfly should emerge from a dull chrysalis, and yet somehow it did appear so; the one was a wonder to which he had been accustomed all his life, and the other was new. He supposed that when at last the expedition reached the Asiatic plains he would experience the same sensations on seeing the unicorns that only a virgin could tame, and the upas tree which destroyed all animal life within half a mile.
They took to the oars again, and the boat crept along up the inlet. Monkeys appeared on the shore, chattering loudly at them from the tree-tops; gaudy birds flew over their heads, and the steaming heat closed in upon them. The inlet was no more than half a mile broad when it divided, one portion continuing easterly and the other trending off to the south. Osorio at the tiller looked to Rich for orders.
‘Which do you think looks more promising?’ asked Rich as casually as he could manage.
Osorio shrugged enormously and spat again.
‘Go to the right, then,’ said Rich; if one way appeared as good as another to Osorio it was no use for himself to try to judge by appearances. Southward lay the Isle of Grace, opposite to Trinidad across the Serpent’s Mouth; that was one solid bit of knowledge. The best chance of finding a passage was to keep to the northward of Gracia.
Now it began to rain, the usual relentless downpour to which they had grown accustomed in these latitudes. The roar of it drowned the noise of the oars in the rowlocks and the squeaking of the stretchers. The near-by land was almost blotted from sight, and the jesting conversation in the longboat came to an untimely end. The men at the oars rowed in dogged silence, and the rest sat patiently suffering. The channel divided again, and Rich again took the northern arm, but this immediately divided once more, and he took the southern arm this time in the hope of preserving as direct an easterly course as possible. And these were only the main channels; peering through the rain Rich fancied that there were plenty of minor waterways, mere threads of water by comparison, diverging from the wide channels. It was bewildering.
Then at last the rain stopped, and the sun shone once more. The forest beside them steamed, and they could hear again the innumerable sounds of the life within it. The men at the oars were relieved by their companions, and the longboat pushed on along the channel. And here they were balked; the channel split into two channels, at right angles to each other, and each was barely wide enough-the oars caught against the vegetation on either side.
‘There’s no way through here for the flagship,’ said Osorio.
‘No,’ agreed Rich, hoarsely.
At Osorio’s orders they backed water again until they could turn the boat, and they retraced their course; there was a resentful murmur at this wasted labour.
‘We must try again,’ said Rich, loudly. ‘The Admiral relies on us to discover a passage.’
But the mention of the Admiral had small effect-he did not command these men’s devotion.
The bank where the nose of the boat touched it in turning was soft and oozy; this was an amphibious sort of island, plainly; the distinction between land and water was not a sharp one. Still they rowed along winding channels, turning now south and now north, yet in general holding steadily eastward, rowing interminably.
‘We must be three leagues from the sea,’ said Osorio.
‘That at least,’ agreed Rich.
‘And no sign of a spring yet.’
Everyone on board would be glad of fresh water to drink, instead of the flat and unpalatable reserve carried in the two casks. In these salt marshes there would be no chance of finding drinking water. Rich wondered what the birds and the monkeys drank-presumably these torrential rains made pools among the greenery. Anything was possible here; yet it was strange to find a marshly island surviving in the midst of the ocean, where one would expect the great waves to wash it away. To the east Trinidad gave it protection, but what of the north, and the west, and the south? It was puzzling.
The channel in which they found themselves now was wider than several they had previously traversed. And here the vegetation did not come quite to the water’s edge. There was rock-pebbles-in sight. The same idea seemed to strike Osorio and Rich at the same moment. Osorio moved restlessly in his seat, staring at the bank. Rich cautiously put one hand into the water and tasted the drops which he lifted out. It was palatable water, almost fresh.
‘We’re in a river, by God!’ said Osorio.
‘Yes. The water is drinkable,’ said Rich.
The rowers rested on their oars at the announcement, mopping their sweat. Two or three men leaned dangerously over the side and sucked up water like horses. There was a babble of talk.
‘Under that bank,’ mused Osorio, ‘there’s quite an eddy. Look! There is a current running here. And it’s a big river.’
A river a quarter a mile wide, thought Rich. And those innumerable marshy channels through which they had struggled! Rich thought of Padua, of the innumerable arms of the Po, embanked by the labour of centuries. And there were all the mouths of the Ebro, too, in the dreary marshland beyond Tarragona. He had seen the mouths of the Rhone, too, and he had heard of the mouths of the Rhine and of the Nile. This must be a delta, too; and the deductions to be drawn from that simply staggered the imagination. It could be no small island which they were exploring; a river the size of Ebro implied a land the size of Arragon at least. Larger still, most probably. Perhaps-perhaps it was the mainland of Asia at last.
But then again there were difficulties. Rich remembered the description by the Venetian, Marco Polo, of the Asiatic countries and of the court of the Grand Khan, its wealth and its fleets and armies. If this were the mainland those armies must have pushed hither to conquer this productive country, and those fleets must have coasted along these shores. Certainly the land would not be sparsely peopled by naked Indians with no knowledge of metals-and wearing pearls worth a king’s ransom. If the Grand Khan’s fleets had not come here, it must be because it was not part of the mainland of Asia at all, but a mere island-a large island-and far enough from Asia not to have been discovered from that side. That implied a wide stretch of ocean to the westward of it, as large a stretch, perhaps, as the ocean they had already traversed on their way from Spain. And this in turn implied that the world was far larger than anyone thought, that the Admiral’s calculations were vastly at fault, and that they had not reached the Indies at all. That was as nonsensical as the other theory.
It was a dangerous thought, too. There had been doubters before, on the Admiral’s second voyage, and the Admiral had not only compelled everyone to swear a solemn oath that they had believed Cuba to be part of the mainland of Asia, but also had publicly threatened to cut out the tongue of any man who affirmed the contrary-very right and proper treatment for dangerous sceptics, thought Rich, involuntarily, until he came back with a shock to the thought that it would take very little more to push him himself over into the abyss of scepticism as well. And he had never yet been a sceptic in his life.
Osorio was addressing him-apparently had been trying to attract his attention for some time.
‘Shall we land and eat our food?’ asked Osorio.
‘No,’ said Rich, after a moment’s thought. ‘Let’s push a mile or two more up the river first.’
As far as he was concerned, he would have no appetite for food while consumed by his present doubts. There was just a chance that the theories were all wrong, that this was not a river at all, current and fresh water notwithstanding. A little further effort might re
solve all doubts, might carry them to a place where all was clear-might even take them again to the open sea on the farther side of this mysterious island.
The oars groaned in the rowlocks, the blades splashed monotonously alongside, and the boat crawled steadily up the channel round a vast bend. Another bend succeeded to that, the banks here lined with a wide stretch of golden sand. Some vast dull-coloured creatures lay sunning themselves there; at the sound of the oars they bestirred themselves and wallowed down into the water.
‘Iguanas,’ said Garcia, in reply to a question from a companion. ‘Lizards.’
They certainly looked like lizards, like large specimens of the kind of creature they had seen scuttling along the branches in Trinidad, and of which they had eaten at the Indians’ invitation.
‘Tender and sweet as chicken,’ said Tarpia, with a smacking of his lips. All hands stared over at the sandbank, now quite deserted.
Round the next bend the character of the river changed. A long way upstream they could see rocks, and a sparkling of wavelets, and a hint of white water.
‘Rapids,’ said Osorio.
‘I fancy so,’ agreed Rich. At that rate they had reached the limit of their expedition in this direction; no sensible purpose could be served by dragging the boat over the rapids, even if it were possible. Yet Rich was conscious of a feeling of disappointment; he did not want to turn back. He wanted to push on and on into the depths of this new and mysterious island. But the men were hungry and tired, and already the current was running faster.
‘We’ll land,’ said Rich, curtly.
A narrow deep channel ran aimlessly up between a sandbank and the sand of the shore, and Osorio guided the longboat into it. The sharp shelving edge made a suitable landing place; while the oarsmen scratched ineffectively at the sand with their blades a seaman in the bow took a grip with the boathook and drew the heavy boat in, so that Rich was able to step ashore almost dry-shod. The heat and glare from the sand came up into his face like a fountain of fire, and he hurried forward to the shade of the trees with the rest of them capering and chattering after him. A little crowd of monkeys overhead peeped through the branches at them and chattered more shrilly back until misgivings overcame them and they fled over the tops of the trees like thistledown over a field before they stopped again to peep.