Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (17 page)

They came rushing at them with ropes, prepared to bind their victims as a prelude to imprisonment, torture, and slaughter. “Seeing them running toward them, the Christians, being prepared as always the Admiral advised them to be, fell upon them and gave an Indian a great slash on the buttocks, and wounded another in the breast with an arrow.” At that, the rest of the Taínos ran from the scene of battle.

What should have been a peaceful commercial encounter had turned bloody and vicious, but the unexpected turn of events reassured rather than dismayed the Admiral. He confided to his journal that he was sorry about the ill will engendered by the conflict; at the same time, he was not sorry at all: The Indians would have to learn “fear of the Christians.” Although he appeared indifferent to the reputation of the Caribs, he came around to the opinion that they had just drawn the blood not of the Taínos but of the Caribs themselves, “bad actors” who “ate men.”

Now they had been chastened, or so he hoped. If they encountered the Spanish seamen at the fortress La Navidad, they would “fear to do them any harm.” And even if they were not Caribs, “they must have the same customs,” and would be deterred in the same way. In either case, the charmed relations and fellow feeling between Indians and Spaniards dissipated. Although Columbus had tried to banish the sinister Caribs from his thoughts, it was apparent from his journal, with its frequent mentions of these fierce warriors, that they were on his mind, and to the peaceful Taínos, they posed an ever-present danger.

 

By January 15, three weeks after the shipwreck, Columbus had yet to summon the resolve to leave the Indies and their unfulfilled promise of gold for the repercussions awaiting him in Spain. He invited several Indians aboard
Niña
and sent a barge bearing Spaniards to reconnoiter ashore. He confessed that he could not learn much about a country in the space of a few days, “both from the difficulty of language, which the Admiral didn’t understand except by guess, and because they knew not what he was trying to say.”

To help, Columbus detained four youths aboard
Niña
, communicating with them by sign language. The boys indicated they knew the nearby islands well, and could serve as guides and go-betweens if necessary. So they joined the Spaniards for the journey to Spain, heedless of the elements to which they would be exposed on the open water, and, if they survived, in Europe. From the Indians Columbus also heard a story concerning another island, Matinino, said to contain abundant copper. The island, they added, was “inhabited only by women.” Columbus decided to go there directly, see the women, and carry specimens away with him.

The story evoked Marco Polo’s account of Male Island and Female Island, located somewhere in “greater India.” The legend, beguilingly related by the Venetian, was fact to Columbus and to Europeans. Perhaps the Admiral had managed to locate himself in the Venetian’s world after all. “I assure you that in the island the men do not live with their wives or with any other women; but all women live on the other island, which is called Female Island.” According to Polo, the men visit for three months of pleasure-taking before taking their leave.

Fumbling for the proper words with which to communicate with the island’s inhabitants, Columbus studied their bows and arrows, made from the “shoots of canes.” The Indians inserted a fish tooth at the tip, generally coated with poison. He also noted abundant cotton and chili, “which is stronger than pepper,” yet “the people won’t eat without it, for they find it very wholesome.” Traditional European black pepper belongs to the genus
Piper
, while the shiny green and red chili pepper belongs to the genus
Capsicum
, and there was so much in evidence that he estimated he could “load fifty caravels with it in Hispaniola.” But was chili pepper worth anything in Spain?

Thick mats of seaweed clogged the harbor, he noticed. He had seen it before, “in the gulf when they came upon the discovery,” and in his experience it grew only in shallow waters near land. “If so,” he guessed, “these Indies were very near the Canary Islands,” his jumping-off point before heading out to the uncharted Atlantic, which he called the Ocean Sea, “and for that reason he believed that they were less than 400 leagues distant.” In fact, he would have to traverse more than twice that distance.

The ever-present drifting seaweed was the brown algae, commonly called gulfweed, or sargassum, from which the huge Sargasso Sea takes its name. His fleet had silently and unwittingly entered a sea like no other, stretching two thousand miles east from Bermuda. The water of the Sargasso Sea was intensely blue, so clear that he could gaze two hundred feet into its depths. The sea extends fifteen thousand feet—nearly three miles—to the ocean’s floor. This strange, shoreless sea is defined by the confluence of four currents known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. (In oceanography, a gyre denotes a system of rotating ocean currents generated by large-scale wind movements.) When Columbus sailed through the Sargasso Sea, he experienced a unique combination of wind and water and plant life in the form of sargassum.

Like many sailors, he feared the thick, floating mats would snarl his ships and lead to disaster. In reality, sargassum is too fragile to act as a barrier. It consists of miniature floats containing oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen for buoyancy, and it derives its name from these little structures, which reminded Portuguese sailors of a grape they called
salgazo
. The designation evolved into the word
sargaço
, or seaweed, and later the floating mats of seaweed were classified as the genus
Sargassum
. (There are six species of
Sargassum
, with two,
Sargassum natans
and
Sargassum fuitans
, predominating.) Columbus called it, simply, “weed,” and it was ubiquitous, covering a million square miles, or more, of the Sargasso Sea and Atlantic Ocean. From time to time storms scattered sargassum into the Caribbean Basin, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf Stream, which carried it to the north, along the Atlantic Coast. In time, the Gulf Stream nudged it ashore, or swept it back into the vortex of the Sargasso Sea. So Columbus encountered its feathery stems wherever he went.

 

The homeward passage commenced three hours before dawn, on January 16, before a moderate offshore breeze. Relying on his four Indian guides, he headed in the general direction of the Caribs, “the people whom all those islands hold in so great fear, because it is said that with their countless canoes they range over all those seas, and it is said that they eat the men whom they can take.”

After traveling sixty-four miles, according to his dead reckoning, the Indian guides indicated that their destination would “lie to the southeast.” Instead, he trimmed the sails, proceeded another two leagues, and
Niña
caught what he considered a wind capable of bearing the ship all the way to Spain.

His confidence surged. He had survived the voyage, outlasted a partial mutiny, and discovered a previously unknown part of the world. He had even established and staffed a fort in this remote outpost. Nor did his achievements end there. He had demonstrated the validity of his “grand design” to himself, and soon enough, he would do the same for Ferdinand and Isabella. Nothing could alter those achievements, with the possible exception of Pinzón’s malice or divine intervention.

The two surviving ships of the little fleet (
Pinta
was not far behind) headed out to the open sea with all its hazards. What awaited him on the Iberian Peninsula would be far more uncertain and dangerous than anything he had faced in the mild waters and on the powdery white beaches of the Caribbean.

Symptoms of prolonged isolation from women crept into Columbus’s log. He confessed his fixation with the “island of Matinino,” said by the Indians to be inhabited by “women without men”—a prospect that answered the prayers of many a sailor and even enticed the more circumspect Admiral. According to the local gossip, newborn baby girls were conveyed to a certain island once a year, while newborn baby boys were sent to an equivalent retreat.

The more he questioned his Indian guides on the exact whereabouts of this island, the vaguer they became about its location, their evasions intensifying his interest in the matter. Columbus was never more zealous than when in pursuit of an illusion. He considered making exploratory gestures, but, he recorded, he “didn’t care to tarry,” not to mention the way this nautical detour into venery would be portrayed at home by his enemies and rivals. Fair weather and brisk wind encouraged Columbus to put aside thoughts of the Sirens of the Caribbean and to pursue his northing and easting toward Spain. By sunset, he reported, the breeze began to die down.

Columbus’s system for marking the days was eccentric, even by maritime standards. Mariners generally began their days at noon rather than at midnight, but Columbus preferred to commence his days at sunrise, at least for the outward-bound voyage. On the inbound voyage, such as this one, he marked his days from sunset to sunset. These variations meant that calculations of his fleet’s day-to-day progress were often irregular, and did not always agree.

Similar discrepancies and irregularities marked timekeeping aboard Columbus’s ships. His pilots kept time with a capacious hand-operated hourglass known as the
ampolleta
. On fair days, he was able to correct timekeeping errors by observing the moment the sun reached the zenith, that is, the highest point overhead. Then, for a few hours, all was regulated, but at sea, nothing stayed the same for very long. On heaven and on earth, everything was in motion.

Never completely breaking free of his medieval frame of mind, Columbus relied on a traditional canonical schedule, even at sea. Prime, or daybreak, occurred at 6:00 a.m., Terce at 9:00 a.m., Sext at noon, Nones at 3:00 p.m., Vespers at 6:00 p.m., and Compline at 9:00 p.m. These hours were occasionally elastic, with Prime, usually indicating dawn, observed whenever it occurred, Vespers in late afternoon or early evening, and Compline before the men went to sleep. At Vespers, when circumstances permitted, Columbus called all hands, who read or looked on while prayers were uttered, and the men of the day watch gave way to the evening guard.

It was then, in the dying light of day, he saw a remarkable sight, a booby, the awkward-looking seabird whose name was based on the Spanish word for “dunce,” known to oceangoing sailors everywhere. Soon another booby appeared, and then seaweed: hints and promises of land.

 

On Friday, January 18, the sea churned with albacore, one of the few species of fish recognizable to Columbus and his crew and an encouraging sign that they were approaching Spain. Repeating sailors’ lore, Columbus expressed the belief that they, accompanied by a frigate bird, would lead the ship to a coastal village called Conil, near the city of Cadiz, where they were supposed to congregate. Or as the sailors might have put it, the tuna were towing them toward the city’s girls, renowned for beauty and bawdy repartee. The next day brought boobies and other pelagic birds, but no signs of Cadiz or its beauties. And by Sunday, he was yearning for home, imagining the ocean breeze “as soft and sweet as Seville during April and May,” as it wafted over a gentle, unruffled sea.

He varied his course between north, north northeast, “and at times did northeast by north,” making up so much time that soon
Niña
was bearing down on
Pinta
“in order to speak to her,” by which he meant to apprise himself of Pinzón’s latest intentions. Suddenly the air turned chill, and he expected more cooling as he proceeded north, “and also the nights were very much longer from the narrowing of the sphere.” This observation is but one of many made by Columbus that demonstrate that he fully understood and appreciated that the earth was round, or nearly so, and certainly not flat.

More birds appeared, including petrels, and still more seaweed, “but not so many fishes, because the water was colder.” Yet there was no sign of land, and he had scant idea of his whereabouts in the Ocean Sea or in relation to his outgoing voyage. Amid the unease, the wind died down the following day, and with nothing better to do, the ship’s Indian passengers went swimming in the briny deep, as their more cautious European keepers looked on from the deck of the
Niña
.

That night, a revived but variable wind teased
Niña
to life, but Columbus and his crew resisted the temptation to proceed. They were waiting for
Pinta
to catch up, yet she appeared crippled. “She sailed badly close-hauled,” Columbus noted, “because she had little help from the mizzen owing to the mast not being sound.” For that lapse, the Admiral blamed his subversive rival. “If her captain, Martín Alonso Pinzón, had taken as much care to provide a good mast to the Indies,” he scolded, “where there were so many and of that sort, as he was greedy in leaving them, thinking to fill the ship with them, he would have done well.”