To the Indies (5 page)

Rich could see, as he peered under the peak of his helmet, the gleam of more armor on the decks of the two caravels lying hove-to a short distance away. The fleet was close up to the land, and had been lying-to through the dark hours. Rich gazed across the intervening water: easy green slopes, lush vegetation, dazzling white surf where the ocean swell burst upon the beaches . . . The steady east wind blew, but it hardly tempered the sweltering heat; Rich in his armor and helmet felt as if he were being roasted alive.

Here came the Admiral, in his usual dignified procession, walking stiffly on account of his rheumatism. Orders were bellowed and stamping men hauled at ropes. Round came the ships, westward before the wind, heading close along shore. Now Rich could understand why the Admiral had so persistently, when the expedition was being got together, demanded only little ships — nothing more than a hundred tons. The two small caravels could sail far nearer the beach and have the land under far closer observation than could the
Holy Name
. A sailor in the bows of each vessel was heaving the lead and chanting the depths, but apart from the men engaged in the actual work of the ship everyone’s attention was fixed upon the land.

It was a silent shore. There were birds wheeling overhead, but save for the birds there was no sound, no sign of life. Only the expressionless green slopes and the monotonous surf — a dead landscape, changing and yet in no way different as they cruised along beside it. They had hoped for the teeming millions of Asia, opulent cities and luxurious princes — to impress whom, they were wearing the armor that burdened them. Even at the worst they had hoped at least to see the laughing naked peoples whom they had discovered in the other islands, but here there was nothing. Nothing at all.

The Admiral was giving an order now, and the bombardier fussed over his swivel cannon. He ladled powder into the muzzle, and stuffed it down with a mop. He clicked his flint and steel over his tinder, blew at the spark, tried again, got his match alight, whirled it round to make it glow, and pressed it on the touch-hole. There was a loud bang and a puff of smoke. The birds screamed and a little cloud of them appeared above the trees on the island. The echo of the report ran flatly along the shore, and that was all. No welcoming human appeared; the armored men stood stupid and silent on the decks.

“A lovely land, Don Narciso,” said the Admiral’s voice in Rich’s ear — he started with surprise. “Green and fertile, like Andalusia in springtime.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said Rich, unhappily.

The Admiral was breathing great lungfuls of air. There was a fresh color to his cheeks and a fresh light in his eyes. He wore his armor and his cloak over it as if they were gossamer.

“There is something rejuvenating about the air here,” said the Admiral. “Do you not notice how fresh and sweet it is?”

“The sun is hot,” protested Rich feebly.

“Naturally, seeing that at noon it is directly overhead at this time of year. But that calls forth the treasures of the soil, the fruits, the minerals. This will prove to be the richest quarter of the earth, Don Narciso.”

“We must hope so.”

“Hope? We know it to be so already. The ancients proved it, and the Scriptures tell us so. Last night, Don Narciso, instead of sleeping, I pondered over our new discoveries. I thought about this new balminess of the air, as compared with the windless and torrid regions of the ocean which we have crossed. I compared this blessed land with the stifling unhealthiness of those regions of Africa which the Portuguese have discovered and which lie as close to the equinoctial line as does this. There must be an explanation of the difference. Is it not likely to be that the earth is not a perfect sphere, as one might deduce from what one knows of the northern half, but drawn out and prolonged towards this point, like, say, the thinner end of a pear? Or perhaps on a smaller scale — one can naturally not be certain yet of exact proportions — like the nipple on a woman’s breast?”

“The possibility had not occurred to me, Your Excellency,” said Rich, bewildered.

“But now you must appreciate it. Here we must be farther from the earth’s center, closer to heaven, remote from evil. I think we must be close beside the Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, where the Tree of Knowledge grows, and where man is near to God.”

Rich stared up, under his helmet’s peak, at the tall gaunt Admiral and the ecstasy in his face. Yesterday they had reached Ophir, today it was the Garden of Eden. He could think of no passages either in the ancients or in the Scriptures to justify either theory. He was at a loss of words with which to make any pretense at a reply. But he was preserved from the necessity, for the Admiral’s keen eyes had detected an indentation in the shore-line. He turned to give orders in his clear, penetrating tenor, and the seamen leaped to obey him. The steersman dragged the tiller over; the sails were clewed-up; the anchor was let go and the cable roared through the hawse-hole. Even Rich, with his mere theoretical knowledge of the sea, was impressed by the neatness of the maneuver — as impressed as he was by the Admiral’s sudden change from a dreamer of lunatic to a sailor of profound practical ability. As the
Holy Name
swung to her anchor the Admiral turned to Rich.

“A stream comes down to the sea at that beach, Don Narciso. I shall send ashore for fresh water. Would you care to go with the landing party and take possession of the island in the name of Their Highnesses?”

“Indeed yes. I must thank Your Excellency.”

There was no denying the thrill of excitement which ran through him at the suggestion. Rich forgot the weight of his armor and the heat of the sun; he fidgeted with his sword hilt while the sailors rigged the yard-arm tackles with which to swing out the long boat from the waist. The cooper supervised lowering of the empty barrels into the boat; six seamen scrambled down and took their places at the oars; Osorio the boatswain took the tiller. At a sharp command from the Admiral four of Bernardo de Tarpia’s crossbowmen followed him. Then came Antonio Spallanzani, the Admiral’s Italian squire, with the Admiral’s standard, bearing the lions and castles of Leon and Castile, recently granted him, quartered with the barry wavy, argent and azure, charged with green islands, to represent his discoveries. Those lions and castles in the flag might be of use if ever a legal argument arose regarding the sovereignty over this new land. They would help to make out Their Highnesses’ case — but although the Admiral might be suspected of much, no one had yet openly accused him of dreaming of an independent sovereignty.

They were waiting for him. Rich clambered down into the boat, ungracefully, conscious of many eyes upon him, and realizing only after he had settled himself at Spallanzani’s side that if he had slipped into the sea his armor would have carried him straight to the bottom. The sailors tugged at the oars, and they went dancing over the sea towards the shore.

The Italian sat silent — he had a reputation for taciturnity — while they rowed past the anchored caravels, busy hoisting out their boats, and crept in closer to the shore. There was still only the golden beach and the white surf and the tangled greenery to be seen. The sailors rested on their oars for a space while Osorio stood up and studied the surf. He gave a hoarse cry; the sailors tugged sharply at the oars, and the boat leaped forward on the shoulder of a wave, hurrying on until its motion died away and the sand scraped under the keel and the white foam eddied back past them. The sailors leaped out, thigh-deep, in the water, and hauled the boat up as fast as it would go, until by a wave of his hand Osorio indicated to the two gentlemen that it was time for them to step ashore. Rich scrambled up into the bows and from there over the side; a dying wave swirled past his knees as he stepped into the water and his feet sank in the sand. He struggled up the beach, oppressed by the weight of his armor, until he was beyond the water’s edge. The Italian was close behind him, and the crossbowmen followed, their crossbows on their shoulders. Spallanzani struck the shaft of the flag into the sand and took a paper from his breast.

“We,” he read, a barbarous Tuscan accent coloring his Castilian, “Don Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean, Viceroy and Governor of the Islands of the Indies, Captain-General and Grandee of Spain . . .” It was a solemn formula of possession.

When he had finished Rich took off his helmet.

“This is done,” he proclaimed, bareheaded, to the four solemn crossbowmen, “in the name of Their Highnesses Don Ferdinand and Donna Isabella, by the grace of God King and Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Sicily, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Mallorca, and Seville, Count and Countess of Barcelona, Roussillon and Cerdagne, Duke and Duchess of Athens and Neopatra, Marquis and Marchioness of Oristano and Goziano, Lord and Lady of Biscay and Molina.”

He had left out quite a number of the titles, but he had done enough to ensure the legality of the royal possession, especially as the only witnesses were the crossbowmen, standing with ox-like stupidity in the sunshine. Osorio and his men had put out the boat’s anchor, and were carrying empty water breakers up the beach. At a roar from the boatswain two of the crossbowmen joined in the work; the other two wound up their bows, laid bolts in the grooves, and walked forward to where the stream came bubbling down out of the greenery, to stand as sentries on guard against surprise. It was an elementary precaution to take, so elementary that Rich experienced a feeling of annoyance that he had not thought of it and ordered it himself.

He cleared the hilt of his sword and walked curiously up the beach, conscious now of a particular thrill at making these, his first steps in the New World. The little stream bubbled and gurgled, and he stooped, and filled his hands and drank, over and over again, rejoicing in the water’s cool freshness and in having enough to drink after six weeks of a ration of only three leathern cups of water a day. He walked on beside the stream, to be engulfed in the delicious shade of the vegetation, so dense and tangled that it was only by walking ankle-deep on the pebbles that he was able to make any progress: He turned a corner and the forest behind him cut him off from the sea more effectively than the closing of a door. The sounds of the beach — the surf, and the voices of the watering party — ended abruptly.

Here he could hear only the sound of the brook and the clapping of birds’ wings above him. Looking upward, he could see the birds flitting through the tangle of the branches, birds of gay colors, crying harshly to each other. Some brilliant red flowers grew just out of his reach to his left; there were some strange greenish yellow blooms growing on a decaying stump on the other side of the stream. The noise of his passage disturbed half a dozen more birds — like starlings, he thought at first, and then he saw that they were all of a sombre black, beak and claws and all, funereal birds, with something repellent about their metallic chirping.

There was a breathless heat here in the forest. The shade had been grateful enough at first, but out in the open there was at least a wind, and here the air was stagnant and warm. The sweat streamed down from under his helmet, and his skin began to itch furiously inside his armor where he could not scratch. A mosquito sang into his ear and then bit his neck. He brushed it off, and soon he was busy brushing off flies from neck and face and hands and wrists. He burst through into a little clear space, where the stream expanded into a small pool with marshy banks. There was a startled croaking of frogs, and a dozen splashes told how they had dived back into the pool on his approach. On the surface of the water lay two fallen trees, their exposed parts green with moss; so wide was the pool that the interlaced branches hardly met overhead, and, looking upward, he could see the blue sky again. Tall canes grew here, each twice the height of a man and thicker than his wrist. The gay birds with hooked beaks flew thick — parrots, they were. He remembered that in the Admiral’s triumphal procession through Barcelona, when he was received by Their Highnesses on his return from his first voyage of discovery, there had been a great many parrots displayed. Probably there was nothing to be found at this landing place which was not to be seen in Guanahani or Española.

He turned back and made his way down the stream again. Were those bees, beating the air above the scarlet flowers? Rich looked at them more closely. They were tiny birds, brilliant in coloring. He thought they were the most lovely things ever seen in his life. He plunged into the thorns in order to view them more closely, but they flew away, erratically, at his slow approach, and would not return. With a twinge of real regret he continued his way. A loud challenge greeted him at the edge of the wood, and he replied, a little self-consciously, “Friend.” It was the first time in his life a sentinel had ever challenged him.