The Adelantado turned a cold eye upon him, and Rich was conscious of an uneasy feeling of being in a decided minority. It was by no means the first time since his arrival on the island that he had made suggestions in favor of moderation, and he was aware of the danger of being looked upon as a persistent wet-blanket.
“Could ten thousand people rise in rebellion without a ringleader?” asked the Adelantado sarcastically.
“With these people, I should say it was more likely in the case of ten thousand than in the case of ten,” said Rich.
It was a sweltering hot night, and all those present were feeling trickles of sweat running down inside their clothes, and were moving uneasily on their wooden benches inside the bare room with its earthen walls.
“I don’t believe,” went on Rich, as the others remained silent, “that there’s an Indian alive in this island who could imagine a rebellion of ten thousand people, let alone organize one.”
“Perhaps,” said the Adelantado with elaborate irony, “the learned Doctor will explain to these assembled gentlemen the events of today. I fancied I saw ten thousand Indians armed and in rebellion. Did my imagination deceive me? Were there really only ten?”
“I think they took up arms spontaneously,” said Rich. “Rebellion grows in misery, like maggots in putrid meat.”
“Misery?” said the Adelantado, genuinely surprised.
“Yes, misery,” said Rich. This was a different argument altogether from the one he had begun, but he was equally ready to debate it now that it had arisen. “The Indians work now when they never worked before. They see their friends burned alive, and hanged. Their women are raped. They believe that there will be no end to all this unless the Spaniards are all killed — and until the Spaniards came the Indians did not know what it meant to kill people!”
“So!” said the Adelantado. “They work. How else would we have the gold and the cotton we need? Of course they must work. Men work, relapsed heretics are burned and rebels are hanged, as in any Christian country. Rape? To an Indian woman there is no such thing. And if an Indian intends to kill me, I intend to kill him first. The learned Doctor would not, I suppose. He would have us submit to being killed — No, of course, I know what he would advise: We ought all to get on board our ships and sail home again, leaving the gold in the earth and the pagans in their ignorance.”
Most of the men present were smiling now, even Acevedo, to whom Rich looked for sympathy. There was nobody present who could see his point of view, or understand what he was trying to say. Because the Indians were weaker than Spaniards, because they were pagans, the Spaniards assumed it to be quite natural that they should be forced to work at unaccustomed labor to provide gold and cotton. The Spaniards could see no injustice in that. To them it was a natural law that the weaker should labor for the stronger. And as regards the question of cruelty, these countrymen of his had a tradition of centuries of warfare behind them; the shedding of human blood was a feat that redounded to a man’s credit. The man who killed was performing a natural function of a gentleman; justice in the abstract had no meaning for them. Rich remembered the reminiscent grins which had accompanied their comments on the day’s work, and was forced to a further conclusion: these were men who found pleasure in cruelty, apart from considering it merely as means to an end. They liked it.
Suetonius had written the lives of the twelve Caesars of Rome, and had shown how each in turn had been maddened by absolute power; their lust and their blood-thirstiness had grown with indulgence, like a winebibber’s thirst, until no crime was too monstrous for them. These Spaniards in Española found themselves each in the position of a Caesar towards the feeble Indians. They were intoxicated with the power of life and death, and it was as hopeless to argue with them as it would be with drunken men. He could only sigh and remain silent while the discussion of the plans went on.
So Rich remained a witness of the taming of the Llanos, of all the great plain which stretched between the mountains and the sea in the south-east of the island. He saw the hangings and the floggings. He saw the great troops of Indians rounded up and driven back, after a sufficient number of examples had been made, to their labors. In the foothills of the mountains there ran little streams, in the sands of whose beds there were rare specks of gold; a hundred gourdfuls of sand, washed and painfully picked over, might contain one such speck. Every adult Indian had to produce; every three months, a hawk’s-bell full of gold — the hawk’s-bells which had once been so coveted in the island were now symbols of servitude.
Up in the mountains there hid little groups of Indians, those rare ones who had sufficient inventiveness to realize that there they had best chance of evading their oppressors. Every day detachments marched out from Soco in pursuit. They were fierce men, trained in every ruse of war. They climbed the passes in the foothills, they hacked their way through the mountain forests; they moved by night to surprise their quarry at dawn, or spread out to make a wide drive that pinned the hapless refugees against impossible declivities. The hardships of the campaign were great, the exertions enormous. The nights spent in the drenching tropical rains brought on ague; not only the two hundred original colonists who followed the Adelantado’s banner, but the two hundred newcomers began to show a high proportion of fever victims in their ranks. Food was short; the little patches of roots and corn which the Indians cultivated soon went wild again with lack of attention. Everything, in fact, was short. There was no leather to repair the shoes which the forced marches wore out — no one could tan the hides of the slaughtered cattle, and the rawhide slippers which the men wore lasted only a few days. Clothing wore out, and there was only the flimsy cotton cloth of native weaving to replace it — and not much of that. Every luxury was missing, and every necessity was scarce.
Discontent began to show itself among the Spaniards. The gentlemen wearied of inglorious hardship in the end; the common soldiers and sailors wearied of their exertions even sooner. There was death as well as disease. One Spaniard only died of his wounds — a deep stab by a sharpened cane in his thigh mortified and turned black — but two died of snake-bite, several of fever. The survivors began to murmur a little. They even began to come to Rich with their grievances. The old colonists wanted to be allowed to return to their estates and their harems of Indian girls; the new arrivals wanted to be allowed the chance to set up similar establishments. For these latter three weeks of violent activity on land was quite long enough following their months at sea. They yearned for debauch and for ease. Bartholomew Columbus had led them when they had first arrived; now he had to drive, and he was a tactless taskmaster.
Rich was not present at the quarrel between the Adelantado and Bernardo de Tarpia, but he could picture it easily when it was described to him — the bitter words, the challenge given and insolently declined, the smoldering ill-temper badly hidden. And two days after, Tarpia was gone, and his handgunmen with him, and Cristobal García and a half-dozen more gentlemen, half the sailors, and a score of soldiers. It was the Adelantado himself who told Rich about the defection.
Gone? But where has he gone to?”
“To join Roldan. God blast the souls of both of them!” said the Adelantado. “And I know whose doing it is. You remember that crop-eared blackguard with a squint? Martinez, he called himself. He lost his ears when someone forebore to hang him in Spain. I ought to have hanged him myself. He came to San Domingo weeks back, from Roldan. He said he wanted to resume his allegiance — he was a spy all the time for Roldan.”
“Roldan?” said Rich. “Always Roldan. Who is this Roldan, Excellency?”
The subject of Roldan had been dexterously side-stepped by everyone from whom Rich had attempted to find out anything; it had been (so he had said to himself) like trying to discuss rope with a man whose father had been hanged. It was only now that he was able to hear the truth, and that thanks to the Adelantado.
“Roldan was once my brother’s valet,” said Bartholomew. “He was given the position of Chief Magistrate. After my brother
had left for Spain he began to act as if he was not merely Chief Magistrate, but Adelantado as well. You lawyers are infernal nuisances enough, but a valet with a judge’s authority!”
“You could have deprived him — ”
“No, I could not, by God,” said Bartholomew. He was lapsing into Italian in the excitement of the moment. “He held his post from the Admiral. The mere Adelantado could not revoke an appointment by the Viceroy!”
That was obvious enough; Rich ought to have seen it for himself. And with a flash of insight he could guess at more than the obvious. The Admiral returning to Spain would not trust even his own brother with the full powers he himself held. Fearful for his own authority, he divided the power between his deputy and the chief magistrate.
“And what happened?”
“You can guess,” said the Adelantado with a shrug. “I did not put him in gaol when I had the chance. All the shiftless men of the colony, all the lazy ones who grew tired of trying to screw gold out of the Indians, all the men who wanted to snore in the sun with fifty women to wait on them — they all joined him.”
All the men with whom the hot-tempered Adelantado happened to quarrel, in other words, thought Rich; but he did not say so. He remained tactfully silent and allowed the Adelantado to run on.
“Most of them were out in the Vera — the open valley to the north of the island. There they have all settled; they have left off seeking gold, and live idly, with a hundred miles of mountains between us and them. Roldan is a little king among them. I was going to march on them, now that I have tamed the Llanos. With four hundred men I would have been too strong for them. Roldan would have hanged. But now Tarpia has joined him with sixty men at least, all able-bodied, and I have fifty sick and another hundred whom I can’t trust. Roldan has a new lease of life. But not for long.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There are other ships still to come. Any day they may arrive — the ships under my cousin’s command. They sailed from Spain with you, and they ought to have arrived weeks ago, while you were exploring, but I suppose they have lost their way among the islands — my cousin was always a poor fool. But sooner or later they will come. Those ships bear a hundred horses. There will be two hundred men. Tarpia took no more than ten horses — Roldan has no more than five, thank God. In the Vera the horseman reigns supreme, the same as in these plains here. Once I get those horses landed, and the two hundred men, Roldan’s little hour is finished. I shall hang him on my gallows at San Domingo, and Tarpia and García and half a dozen others beside him.”
That was the right way to treat rebellion, thought Rich, although it occurred to him that the axe would be more fitting than the gallows for men of such blue blood as Tarpia. He found his dislike for the Adelantado diminishing. Rich was heart and soul on the side of orderly government and decent respect for authority, even though it was a shock to him to find himself approving of the execution of Spaniards when he had spent days in silent protest against the killing of heathen Indians. A man who could speak lightly of hanging a terrible man like Tarpia won his admiration for such daring. Rich was a little ashamed of his pity for the Indians; this bold talk of suppressing rebellion was much more the sort of thing he felt he ought to like. All his life so far he had lived as a spectator, and there was something peculiarly gratifying in being at last behind the scenes, in being at least a potential actor. It was better than splitting legal hairs and wrapping up the result in pages of Latin.
Chapter 17
In San Domingo, when the Adelantado returned from his chastising of the Llanos, there was nothing new. The fifty men of the garrison who had remained there with the Admiral had done nothing, heard nothing. Most of them were fever-ridden and asked nothing more than to stay tranquil. Apparently the Admiral had made some attempt to persuade them to heave up the three ships which lay in the harbor and make them ready for sea again, but they had vehemently refused to do such heavy work, and the Admiral had abandoned his attempt. Those sailors who had not deserted to Roldan took more kindly to the suggestion when it was put to them on their return with the conquering army. The ships would sail for Spain when they were ready, with messages and treasure, and the sailors were sure of a passage home.
“There are two hundredweights of gold,” said Diego Alamo, the assayer. Rich had had hardly a word with him since they had left Trinidad, and it was delightful to encounter him again and hear the results of his observations.
“That sounds enormous to me,” said Rich.
“Large enough,” said Alamo with a shrug. “Their Highnesses do not receive that amount of gold in a year’s revenue. And there are pearls besides, of more value still, I should fancy, if the market is not too hurriedly flooded with them.”
“This one island, then, is worth more than all Spain?” said Rich, eagerly. Solid facts of this sort were reassuring, especially when retailed by someone as hard-headed and learned as Alamo. But Alamo shrugged again in dampening fashion.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But part of that gold is what the Indians have saved for generations. And nowhere does the earth breed gold rapidly. A speck here, a grain there, in the sand. One gathers them, and it is years before another speck is formed. During the last few years most of the grains available have been gathered, and in my opinion the annual amount of gold found in the island will diminish rapidly.”
“Oh,” said Rich, disappointed. “Does everyone think that?”
“No. They know nothing about the subject. Nor have they read the ancients. You, Doctor, you have read your Livy, your Polybius? Don’t you remember how our own Spain was conquered by the Romans and Carthaginians? They found gold there, quantities of gold. Spain was to Carthage what these islands are to Spain. But what gold is there now to be found in Spain? A vein or two in the Asturias. A vein or two in the South. No more.”
“And how do you account for that?”
“Spain was a new country. The simple Iberians had little use for the gold which had been breeding there since the creation. From the rivers and valleys all the gold was soon cleared out when the Carthaginians came. Even the seeds of the gold were taken away, so that the country became barren of the metal. I can predict the same of this island.”
“The gold breeds from seeds, you think?”
Alamo shrugged yet once more.
“If I knew how gold breeds I should be as rich as Midas,” he said. “But every philosopher knows that, however it is, the process is slow.”
“So that the value of this island will diminish, year by year?”
Alamo pulled at his beard and looked at Rich, considering deeply. He hesitated before he spoke, and when at last he allowed the words to come he glanced over his shoulder nervously lest anyone should overhear the appalling heresies he was about to utter.
“Perhaps,” he said, “gold is not the most important merchandise this island can produce. I have often wondered whether a country is the richer for possessing gold. We may find the other products of this island far more valuable.”
“The spices, you mean? But I thought — ”
“The spices are unimportant compared with those which reach Spain via the Levant. The cinnamon which the Admiral thought grew here so freely is poor stuff. There are no real spices here — no cloves, no nutmegs. The pepper is not true pepper, even though one can acquire a taste for it quickly enough.”
Rich found all this a little frightening. If the gold returns were to diminish, as Alamo predicted, and the spice trade were to prove valueless, as Rich had long ago suspected, the colony of Española could not be worth having discovered. The three thousand Spanish lives which had already been expended were quite wasted. But Alamo was ready to reassure him.
“The island has treasures beside gold and spices,” he said. “It has a soil fifty times more fruitful than Andalusia. The rain and the sun give it a fertility which it is hard to estimate. One man’s labor will grow food for ten — see how these wretched Indians have always contrived to live in abundance. Ca
ttle multiply here amazingly. My calculations go to prove that by breeding cattle here a handsome profit would be shown merely by selling the hides in Spain — and I know well enough the cost of sailing a ship from here to there.”
“Cattle? Hides?” said Rich. There was a queer sense of disappointment. A prosaic trade in hides was not nearly as interesting as a deal in hundredweights of gold.
“Oh, there are other possibilities,” said Alamo, hastily. “Have you ever tasted sugar?”
“Yes. It is a brown powder beneficent in cases of chills and colds. There is a white variety, too, in crystals. I have had packets sent me as presents occasionally. It has a sweet taste like honey, or even sweeter. Why, is there sugar to be found in this island?”
“Not as yet. But it could grow here — it is expressed from a cane exactly like the canes we see growing everywhere in this country. The sugar cane is grown in Malaga a little, and in Sicily. My friend Patino retails it at five hundred maravedis an ounce. Once start the cultivation here and in a few years we might be exporting sugar not by the ounce, but by the ton.”
That was a more alluring prospect than chaffering in hides. A spark of enthusiasm lit in Rich’s breast, and then died away to nothing again as he began to consider details.