The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (26 page)

As the work got under way a landing party set out to reconnoiter the shore, find fresh water, and gather wood. A few miles to the southeast they came across a river that meandered through a grassy plain, and nearby they ran into a group of locals.

“The inhabitants of this country are tawny-colored,” noted the Chronicler. “Their food is confined to the flesh of seals, whales and gazelles, and the roots of herbs. They are dressed in skins, and wear sheaths over their virile members.” They carried spears of olive wood tipped with a sliver of fire-hardened horn, and packs of dogs accompanied them wherever they went. The Portuguese were
surprised to find that the dogs barked just like the ones back home, and the birds, too—cormorants, gulls, turtledoves, crested larks, and many others—were equally familiar.

The day after the fleet arrived, Vasco da Gama went ashore in his ship’s boat with several of his crew. While he was setting up a large wooden astrolabe to take a more accurate reading of the latitude than was possible at sea, his men spotted a party of Africans gathering honey. The bees made their hives on the drifts of sand that piled up around bushes near the shoreline, and the locals were busy smoking them out. The sailors crept up on them, grabbed one man who was conveniently small in stature, and dragged him off to the
São Gabriel.
Since he was clearly terrified, the captain-major sat him at his table and ordered two ship’s boys—one of them a black slave—to sit beside him and tuck into a good meal. Gradually the visitor began to help himself to the food, and by the time Gama returned he was almost gregarious. He stayed on board overnight, and the next day Gama dressed him in handsome clothes, gave him a few trinkets—some bells, crystal beads, and a cap—and set him free.

Soon he reappeared on the shore, as Gama had hoped, with more than a dozen companions. The captain-major had his men row him to the beach, and once there he laid out before the Africans small samples of cinnamon, cloves, seed pearls, and gold. In gestures he asked if they had anything similar to sell. When it became clear that they had never seen anything of the sort, he handed out some more bells and tin rings and returned to his ship.

The next day another group appeared, and the day after, a Sunday, forty or fifty locals gathered on the shore. After dinner the Portuguese landed and exchanged some small coins for conch shells, which the Africans wore as earrings, and fans made from foxtails. The Chronicler, in search of a souvenir, bartered one copper coin for “one of the sheaths which they wore over their members, and this seemed to show that they valued copper very highly.”

When the commerce was over, a loudmouthed sailor named Fernão Velloso asked Gama if he could accompany the natives to
their village to see how they lived. The amateur anthropologist would not be dissuaded, and at his brother’s urging Gama gave in. While most of the party returned to the ships, Velloso went off with the Africans to feast on freshly roasted seal served with roasted roots. Paulo da Gama and Nicolau Coelho, meanwhile, had stayed behind with some men to collect driftwood and lobsters from the shore. When they looked up they saw a pod of young whales gliding between the ships in pursuit of shoals of small fry in the shallows. Paulo and his crewmen jumped into their boat and set off in hot pursuit, brandishing harpoons that were attached to the bow by ropes. The sailors took aim, and a barbed head pierced one whale’s back. As the pain hit, it thrashed and dived, pulling the line taut in seconds. The little boat flipped up and lurched into the bloody foam; only the shallow coastal water, which made the whale run against the bottom and cool down, stopped the men from being dragged out to sea.

A little later, as the sportsmen and foragers were returning to the ships, Fernão Velloso came pelting down a hill with his dining companions in hot pursuit. When he had eaten his fill, the Africans had gestured in no uncertain terms that it was time for him to go back to his people. He had run off in a panic, and he began hollering to the fleet.

Gama had been watching for his return. He signaled the boats to turn back and rescue the would-be ethnographer, and in case of more trouble he ordered his men to row him to the shore.

As Velloso pounded down the sands toward the boats, the Africans stayed back in the cover of the bush. The sailors, though, were in no hurry to rescue their cocky comrade. After four months they had already had enough of his boasting, and they decided to make him sweat it out. They were still enjoying the joke when two armed Africans ran purposefully onto the beach. The mood abruptly changed, but before the rescuers could climb ashore, the rest of the Africans emerged and unloosed a fierce volley of stones, arrows, and spears at the boats. Several men were wounded—including
Vasco da Gama himself, who had no sooner appeared on the scene than he was shot in the leg with an arrow—and the landing party retreated pell-mell to the fleet. Gama salved his wound with a paste of urine, olive oil, and theriac, and he salved his pride by ordering his crossbowmen to fire at will toward the shore.

The captain-major decided he had been taught a salutary lesson, and it would stay with him for the rest of his time at sea.

“All this happened,” recorded the Chronicler, “because we looked upon these people as men of little spirit, quite incapable of violence, and had therefore landed without first arming ourselves.”

N
OTHING MORE WAS
seen of the locals, and the Portuguese stayed for four more days to finish their repairs. On November 16, at first light, they left the bay and stood out to the south-southwest. Two days later they caught their first unmistakable glimpse of the Cape of Good Hope. Its stage set of mountains glowed in the setting sun, a milestone as monumental as the decades-long journey it marked.

Once seen, the Cape proved tricky to pass. The winds howled along the coast from the south, and for four days the ships battled out to sea and were blown back to land. Finally, at midday on November 22, with the wind now astern, they doubled the Cape. Only one fleet had sailed these waters before, and Bartolomeu Dias had only seen the legendary landmark on his way home.

The trumpeters blasted a fanfare, and the crews thanked God for guiding them to safety.

For three days the ships hugged the coast, passing lush woods and the mouths of numerous streams and rivers, until they reached an enormous bay, six leagues deep and six leagues wide at its mouth. This was the place where Dias had had an unfortunate encounter with some herdsmen, and Gama was forewarned.

The explorers sailed into the bay, past a little island whose shores were solid with seals, and anchored off the beach. It was to be a long stay. The supplies on the three main ships had already run low, and the contents of the storeship needed to be transferred to them.

A week passed with no sign of any inhabitants; only a mysteriously large number of fat cattle roamed the shores. Then, on December 1, ninety or so men emerged from the hills, and some came down for a walk along the beach. At the time most of the company were on the
São Gabriel
, and as soon as the Africans appeared they armed and launched the ship’s boats. As they neared the shore, Gama threw handfuls of little bells onto the sand, and the curious locals picked them up. After a moment they came right up to the boats and took some more bells from the captain’s hand. The veterans of Dias’s voyage were perplexed; perhaps, the sailors surmised, before their recent skirmish the news had traveled that the visitors meant no harm and gave away gifts.

Gama, who was still recovering from his injury, was less sanguine. He told his men to row away from the overgrown spot where the Africans were gathered and make for the open beach, where there was less chance of a surprise attack. At his gesture the locals followed.

The captain-major landed with his captains, soldiers, and crossbowmen, and he signaled the Africans to approach in ones or twos. In return for his bells and a few red nightcaps, he was presented with some fine ivory bracelets. Clearly elephants were plentiful; great piles of their dung were all around.

The next day two hundred locals appeared on the beach, leading a dozen fat oxen and cows and four or five sheep. The fattest ox was ridden by a man sitting on a litter of twigs supported by a reed packsaddle; the other beasts had sticks through their nostrils, which turned out be signs that they were for sale. After months of chewing on dried and salted meat, an ox roast was a mouthwatering prospect. The Portuguese made straight for the shore, while their hosts produced some flutelike instruments, struck up a tune, and began to dance. Gama was now in high spirits, and he ordered the trumpeters to play. The Portuguese stood up in the boats and danced along, and the captain-major joined in.

The explorers bought a black ox for the bargain price of three
bracelets and feasted off it for Sunday lunch the next day. “We found him very fat, and his meat as toothsome as the beef of Portugal,” noted the Chronicler.

Both sides began to relax in the festive atmosphere. More curious locals began to appear, this time bringing their women and little boys as well as herds of oxen and cows. The women stayed back on a low hill just behind the shore, while the men gathered in groups on the beach, dancing and playing more tunes. As the Portuguese arrived the older men approached them, fanning themselves with more foxtails, and the two sides managed to communicate in signs. It all seemed thoroughly cheery until the sailors noticed the young men of the tribe crouching in the bush, weapons in hand.

Gama drew aside his African translator Martim Affonso and told him to try to buy another ox with some more bracelets. The Africans took the bracelets, drove their cattle into the bush, and pulled Affonso to a nearby watering hole where the Portuguese had been filling their barrels. Why, they angrily asked, did the strangers take away their precious water?

The captain-major was starting to get a bad feeling about the whole situation. He drew his men into a huddle and shouted to Affonso to get away and join them. The Portuguese retreated to the boats and rowed along the shore to the open space where they had first landed. The locals followed, and Gama commanded the soldiers to strap on their breastplates, string their crossbows, grasp their lances and spears, and line up on the beach. The show of strength seemed to work, and the Africans backed away.

Gama ordered the soldiers to the boats, and they rowed off a short distance. The captain-major was anxious, the Chronicler recorded, to avoid killing anyone by mistake, “but to prove that we were able, although unwilling to hurt them, he ordered two bombards to be fired from the poop of the longboat.” The Africans were now sitting quietly, just off the beach in front of the bush. When the guns went off and the balls went whistling overhead they jumped up and fled, dropping their animal skins and weapons in their panic.
Two men ran out a minute later to gather up the scattered possessions, and they all disappeared over the brow of the hill, driving their cattle before them. No more was seen of them for days.

As the work of cannibalizing the storeship for spare parts and wood came to an end, Gama had a fire set in the stripped hull. For several days the burning hulk smoldered and smoked like a somber warning signal. The sailors, though, had quickly forgotten about the troubles onshore—that was the captain-major’s problem—and were more interested in a bit of recreation. One party rowed to the island in the middle of the bay to take a closer look at the colony of seals. The animals were so tightly packed that from a distance the island itself seemed a mass of smooth, shifting stones. Some were as big as bears, roared like lions, and attacked men without fear; spears thrown by the burliest sailors glanced off their skin. Others were much smaller and cried like goats. The Chronicler and his party of sightseers counted three thousand before they gave up, and to amuse themselves they fired their bombards at them. There were strange birds, too, that brayed like asses and were “as big as ducks, but they cannot fly, because they have no feathers on their wings.” They were Cape penguins, and the explorers massacred them, too, until they grew bored.

By their twelfth day in the bay the three remaining ships were almost ready to leave, and the sailors set out once again to fill the water casks. On one sortie they took with them one of the padrões, the stone pillars bearing the royal coat of arms, that they had carried from Portugal. Gama had had a large cross made out of the mizzenmast of the storeship, and after the pillar was set up, it was fitted to the top.

The next day, as the little fleet set sail, the Africans finally emerged from the bush. They had been keeping a watch on the uncouth strangers all along, and they seized their chance for revenge. A dozen men ran out and smashed the cross and the pillar to pieces in full view of the departing ships.

It was now December 7, and there was a palpable mood of
nervous excitement on board. Bartolomeu Dias had turned back home just a little farther ahead, and Vasco da Gama’s men were about to trespass on nature’s secret places. Many were convinced they were sailing toward an uncrossable threshold, and their worst fears soon seemed to be confirmed.

No sooner had the fleet left the bay than the wind dropped, the sails sagged, and the ships lay all day at anchor. The next morning—the day of the Immaculate Conception, the Chronicler piously recorded—they moved off, only to sail into a terrifying storm.

The waves reared into watery cliffs. The vessels heaved toward the inky clouds and dropped into the abyss. A piercing cold wind battered at the stern, and everything went pitch dark. With the ships under full canvas the prows plunged under the waves, and the captains hastily ordered the foresails struck.

Freezing seawater crashed on the decks and soaked the sailors’ woolen cloaks. Belowdecks all hands were on the pumps, but water seeped and washed in faster than they could expel it, and the holds flooded. The howling heavens drowned out the pilots’ commands, but even with several men hanging on to the tiller, the ships were almost impossible to control. As the tempest reached its worst Nicolau Coelho’s caravel disappeared from sight, and the most seasoned sailors thought they had seen their last day. They wept and confessed to each other, and struggling to form a file behind a cross, they prayed God to show mercy and preserve them from disaster.