Ferdinand acidly commented on the “Christians’” behavior: “They killed eighteen this way, sparing only a few needed to steer the canoes; this was the Indians’ reward for listening to their false promises and their pleas for aid.”
T
he renegades returned to the marshy Jamaican shore, where they fell to arguing about what to do next. Some of the men aimed to flee to Cuba, thinking “the easterly currents and winds” would carry them to their destination; once in Cuba, they assumed it would be an “easy jump” to Hispaniola, without realizing that many miles separated the two islands. (Ferdinand recognized that Cuba was an island, even if his father clung to the belief that it was a promontory extending eastward from the “Indian” mainland.) Other renegades wanted to return to the relative safety of the wrecked ships they had recently abandoned. They could either make peace with the Admiral or attempt to confiscate his weapons. A third group advocated waiting to try for better weather and attempt to reach Hispaniola again, and eventually they prevailed.
The desperate rebels passed more than a month in a Jamaican village Ferdinand called Aomaquique, relied on the Indians for sustenance, and waited for a favorable wind. When they judged conditions were right, they tried again, failed again, and tried yet once more, defeated each time by contrary winds. Broken in spirit, they trudged back to the harbor where their ships and the remnants of the crew remained, living off the land and, when they could, stealing food from the Indians. The glorious voyage had come to this, a band of scavengers and robbers, unable to save their own skins, or souls, or those of anyone else.
I
n charge of the ruins of two beached ships, Columbus, though enfeebled, tended to the sick among his loyal men. At the same time, he made certain to give the Indians the respect needed to do business. The ailing loyalists, many of them, regained their strength, and the Indians continued to serve, until the system broke down under unequal requirements. “They are an indolent people who will not cultivate on a large scale,” Ferdinand wrote in a cruelly revealing passage, “and we consumed more in a day than they in twenty.”
Worse, as the Indians acquired goods from the Europeans in barter transactions, they “began to be influenced by the arguments of the mutineers” and brought fewer provisions to the visitors. As January 1504 gave way to February, the situation steadily deteriorated. The loyalists were faced with a dilemma: if they abandoned their makeshift dwellings to attack the Indians for more of the cassava, fruit, and water on which their lives depended, they would be “leaving the Admiral to face great danger in the ships.” The Europeans came to realize that the Indians, by starving the intruders by degrees, “believed they had us at their mercy.”
In all honesty, Ferdinand confessed, “we did not know what to do.”
Throughout his years of exploring, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, Columbus had revealed a genius for survival, whether shipwrecked off the coast of Portugal, pleading for support from the Sovereigns, fending off mutineers, or trying to reclaim his legacy from rivals. Now, with no ships at his disposal, Indians slowly starving him, his men reduced to a paltry few, and his health so poor that he could barely stand, he faced his greatest challenge, and to meet it, he devised a supreme ruse in which he virtually became the sorcerer that others had feared he always was. They held that the Admiral of the Ocean Sea could command the tides and even the weather; now, in the name of survival, he plotted to demonstrate that he controlled the heavens themselves.
C
olumbus’s hidden advantage had always been his sophisticated knowledge of navigation. Turning to his store of charts and books, he studied the
Almanach perpetuum
, compiled in 1496 by Rabbi Abraham Zacuto, the Sephardic Jewish astronomer and mathematician who had served João II after the Inquisition drove him from Spain. Portuguese captains often consulted this work, consisting of hundreds of pages of astronomical tables accurately predicting celestial phenomena. Columbus may also have relied on Regiomontanus’s
Ephemerides astronomicae
(1474), which conveniently enough included a table of lunar eclipses occurring between 1475 and 1540. In the past, he had relied on these reference works to calculate latitude and longitude, often with mixed results, and now he turned to them to save his life.
According to Regiomontanus, an auspicious event would occur on February 29, 1504: a lunar eclipse. In this eerie celestial spectacle, the moon passes through the earth’s umbral—or inner—shadow, turning ever deeper shades of orange, and eventually bloodred, before returning to normal. The sight was enough to spark foreboding in superstitious sailors and, Columbus hoped, in credulous Indians.
Regiomontanus included the dates of the eclipses, and diagrams of how completely the moon would dim, hour by hour. But the times of the occurrence differed across the globe, and Columbus could not reliably determine the local time in Jamaica. (Regiomontanus’s calculations applied to Nuremberg, Germany.) And he could not say how accurate Regiomontanus’s prediction for February 29, 1504, might be. He had no choice but to take his chances according to his best estimates. If he succeeded, he would demonstrate supernatural power to the Indians that would deeply influence their behavior. If he failed, he and his men would likely succumb to starvation or slaughter at the hands of the Indians.
He summoned the caciques of the region to a feast. Ferdinand recorded, “He told the gathering through an interpreter that we were Christians and believed in God, who . . . rewarded the good and punished the wicked, as he had punished the mutineers by not permitting them to cross over to Hispaniola, as Méndez and Fieschi had done, and by causing them to suffer many trials and dangers, as the Indians well knew.” Columbus warned the Indians that “God was very angry with them for neglecting to bring us food for which we had paid them by barter, and had determined to punish them with famine and pestilence.”
As the audience absorbed the import of the old Admiral’s words, laughter broke out, at first hesitant, then boldly derisive. He told the doubters, “God would send them a clear token from Heaven of the punishment they were about to receive. They should therefore attend that night the rising of the moon: She would arise inflamed with wrath, signifying the chastisement God would visit upon them.” He stopped, rested, and observed as “the Indians departed, some frightened and others scoffing at his threats.”
The eclipse commenced, as predicted. The earth’s shadow expanded and darkened until it covered the entire moon, turning it into a faint red disk suspended in the night sky. Most lunar eclipses are plainly visible to the naked eye, and based on Ferdinand’s account, the occurrence of February 29 was especially dramatic.
Under the influence of this magical transformation, Columbus’s immense power of suggestion took hold. He appeared to interpret, if not control, the heavens. “The Indians grew so frightened that with great howling and lamentation they came running from all directions to the ships, laden with provisions, and praying the Admiral to intercede with God that He might not vent His wrath upon them, and promising they would diligently supply all their needs in the future.”
Extracting as much benefit as possible from the moment, Columbus announced to the throng that he wished to have a word with God, and he disappeared into the depths of his ramshackle cabin, an old necromancer at the height of his powers. In the near darkness, the Indians cried and shrieked at the bloodred, malevolent moon waxing overhead. In seclusion, Columbus consulted an hourglass to calculate the time remaining
para el eclipse lunar
. “When the Admiral perceived that the crescent phase of the moon was finished and that it would soon shine forth clearly, he issued from his cabin, saying that he had appealed to his God and prayed for them and had promised Him in their name that henceforth they would be good and treat the Christians well”—and here was the crucial part—“bringing provisions and all else they needed.”
Drawing on his reserves of strength, Columbus informed the awestruck Indians that God had pardoned them, “in token of which they would soon see the moon’s anger and inflammation pass away.” They needed no more persuading, and unified by terror and relief, they paid tribute to the Admiral and offered prayers to God, who had spared them. “From that time forward,” Ferdinand intoned, “they were diligent in providing us with all we needed, and were loud in praise of the Christian God.” It was apparent to the young man, as to the other marooned Europeans, that the Indians feared eclipses and, at the same time, “were ignorant of their cause.” It did not occur to them that “men living on earth could know what was happening in the sky.” It never troubled Columbus, his son, or any of their company that the Admiral had practiced a grand deception in the name of God. They were safe, and that was all that mattered. God would forgive them.
I
t had been eight months since Fieschi and Méndez set off to Santo Domingo on their rescue mission. By this time they should have returned or sent word of their whereabouts, but there was nothing—no canoe, no Indian, no Spanish survivor of the mission, and no sail on the horizon to indicate their fate. Rumors spread that they had drowned, or been slaughtered by Indians, or, in Ferdinand’s words, had “died on the way from sickness and hardships. They knew that from the eastern end of Jamaica to the town of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola stretched over one hundred leagues of very difficult navigation by sea on account of contrary winds and currents and of travel over very rugged mountains by land.” Indians whispered about a ghostly shipwreck that had been spotted “drifting down the coast of Jamaica,” but its substance remained a mystery.
Yet another mutiny broke out, this time led by an unlikely candidate, the apothecary Vernal. It grew unchecked until late March 1504, when a sail appeared on the horizon. The ship, a little caravel, had been dispatched by Nicolás de Ovando, and it anchored close to the hulks of Columbus’s shattered flotilla.
“The captain, Diego de Escobar, came aboard and informed the Admiral that the Knight Commander of Lares, the Governor of Hispaniola, sent his compliments and regretted that he had no ship large enough to take off all the Admiral’s men.” He hoped to send one soon, and as a token of his goodwill, Captain Escobar gave Columbus a “barrel of wine and slab of salt pork,” both welcome luxuries in this isolated outpost, before returning to his vessel, raising anchor, and sailing that night “without even taking letters from anyone.”
The caravel’s appearance, to say nothing of the gifts of food and wine, so astonished the stranded mariners that the mutineers immediately “covered up the plot they had been hatching,” although the alacrity with which Captain Escobar departed inspired a new set of conspiracy theories. The men speculated that Nicolás de Ovando had no intention of rescuing his despised rival Columbus, whom he wanted to perish in his obscure Jamaican refuge. As Ferdinand saw matters, Ovando “feared the Admiral’s return to Castile,” and worried that the Sovereigns would “restore the Admiral to his office and deprive him (Ovando) of his government.” For this reason, Ferdinand theorized, Ovando had sent the little caravel not to assist the Admiral but “to spy on him and report how he might be totally destroyed.”
Another rumor, mentioned by Las Casas, held that Columbus was plotting a “rebellion against the king and queen with some notion of handing these Indies over to the Genoese or to some other country apart from Castile.” Even Las Casas dismissed the allegation as “false and invented and spread by his enemies as a wicked calumny,” but the chronicler could not resist discussing it, especially because the claim gained enough currency to reach the Sovereigns. Not knowing whether he would ever be rescued, or whether his words would ever reach Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus demolished this theory in a passionate self-defense: “Who could entertain the notion that a poor foreigner would, in such a place, dream of rebelling against Your Majesties, for no reason whatever, with no support from any foreign ruler, surrounded by your subjects and countrymen?”
Even if those arguments held the Sovereigns at bay, Columbus still had to assuage his rival Ovando, whom he tried to lobby and flatter in equal measure. “When I left Castile, I did so to the great rejoicing of Their Majesties, who also made me wonderful promises, and in particular that they would see all my assets restored and would heap still more honors on me; these promises they made both by word of mouth and in writing.” Having put Ovando on notice, Columbus shifted his argument. “I ask you, my lord, not to entertain any doubts on that score: please believe that I shall obey your orders and instructions in every particular.” Not only that, but Columbus had heard from Escobar “how well and how tirelessly you have looked after my affairs, and I acknowledge this, my lord, with a grateful heart.” Rising to heights of artful insincerity, Columbus sighed, “Ever since I met you and got to know you, I have always understood, my lord, deep in my heart, that you would do everything you could for me no matter what the circumstances.” He knew that Ovando would “hazard anything, even your own life, to rescue me.”
And if these words succeeded in calming Ovando sufficiently to spare Columbus death on a distant shore, the Admiral faced the fears of his own men, and had to persuade them all that he had ordered the caravel to depart without them—not as part of a devious plot to put them all at risk, but because it was simply too small to carry them. Either all went, or none.
O
vando’s caravel brought one other item of particular interest: a letter from the absent Méndez. The day after departing from Jamaica, Méndez’s letter began, he and Fieschi enjoyed a cruise through blissfully calm weather, “urging the Indians to paddle as hard as they could with the sticks they use for paddles.” In the heat, the Indians refreshed themselves by jumping into the water, and resuming their place. “By sunset, they had lost sight of land.” At night, half of the Indians continued paddling as the Spaniards aboard the canoes kept a vigil, and by dawn, everyone was exhausted. Even the captains took turns paddling, and with the dawn of the second day, the voyage continued without interruption, with “nothing but water and sky” surrounding them. As the day wore on, the Indians, thirsty from physical labor, depleted the canoes’ water supply. By noon, the sun tormented everyone. The sole respite from debilitating thirst came drop by drop from the captains’ “small water casks.” The trickle proved to be “just enough to sustain them till the cool of the evening.”