The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Come, then,’ Iago said, looking to leeward where the land loomed out of the grey murk, ‘pass the word. ’Twill be better than this altercation.’

  Lorenzo raised his voice and broke the spell. This time the men ran to their stations with a semblance of order and a willingness to try their best that surprised Marmolejo. ‘It must be your example,’ he said to Iago, but Iago was not listening. He had seen Ximenez emerge into the waist, saw him stare about himself, observed the confused expression on the dwarf’s face and then watched the wretched fellow bend over and vomit copiously on to the deck. Fortunately sea water still sloshed about and quickly washed the stinking slime into the scuppers and over the side.

  ‘Ximenez!’ Iago called sharply. ‘Come here.’

  The pallid dwarf dragged himself reluctantly up the ladder to the half-deck. ‘Master?’

  ‘How is it below?’

  ‘As if Satan had established himself there, master. Hell itself must be preferable to this . . .’ Ximenez heaved again.

  ‘Over the lee side!’ Iago commanded, thrusting Ximenez down the sloping deck, grinning at the dwarf’s discomfiture and further amused as the spectacle of seasickness – so contagious among the uninitiated – suddenly infected Marmolejo. As the two turned back inboard wiping their mouths, brothers in misery and adversity, Iago laughed. ‘You will not believe me now,’ he remarked, ‘but it will pass in a day or so.’

  The two men, one small, deformed and sumptuously dressed, the other tall, bearded and in his wind-wracked plain habit, stared back bemused.

  Under Lorenzo’s conning, the Santa Margarita turned away from the wind, her yards swinging. Then having brought her high stern to the gale – which caused a drop in the strong apparent wind over the deck and the illusion that all their miseries were at an end – she continued her alteration of course until the rushing air blew in over her larboard bow and her yards were braced sharp up on the larboard tack.

  ‘Now you must spew to starboard,’ Iago said to the two wan faces as they gagged and retched again.

  As the setting sun, long hidden behind the cloud-bank, drew the day to its close the wind increased. It was clear the Santa Margarita was making excessive leeway, and although the high poop kept the ship riding easily, despite the size of the seas that had built up since the onset of the squall, they were making little progress to windward. While they would just weather Corregidor, under so reduced and wounded a rig the Santa Margarita was quite incapable of beating clear of the bay. Having almost gained the open sea beyond the narrows, this seemed a twist that proved, or so Fray Mateo Marmolejo averred, that the Devil’s tail was kinked.

  Having consulted the captain-general, whose permission had to be sought for every manoeuvre of the flota despite the fact that Don Juan Martinez Guillestigui was a soldier not a sea-officer, Lorenzo gave orders for the anchor to be readied. The pilot-major had, Olivera told Iago upon enquiring, decided to shelter off Mariveles until the wind moderated. A moderation would not, Olivera thought, be long in coming.

  ‘By tomorrow,’ Olivera said, ‘if we have bent new sails, we shall resume our passage.’

  ‘I hope you are right,’ Marmolejo said, taking himself below. He had voided his belly and sought now the comparative comfort of his hammock. The friar’s disappearance was well timed as the Santa Margarita drove under the shelter of Cochinos Point. Standing into the adjacent bay at the tip of the Bataan Peninsula, the great não approached the village of Mariveles which stood at its head. In sight of the village cooking fires she rounded-to, came head to wind and upright after what seemed to the passengers huddled below an age on her beam ends. As she lost way and the wind began to drive her astern, her best bower anchor was let go from the starboard bow. What was left of the daylight leached out of the torn wrack that drove over their heads as the seamen clambered aloft to furl her remaining sails. It was almost dark as the San Geronimo joined them in the anchorage: of the other ships there was no sign.

  Upon anchoring, Iago went below. In the meagre light of the glims and lanterns that swung from the deck beams under the half-deck he could see the ship’s state was shambolic. The air was stale with vomit and the inhabitants of the space lay about on the haphazard deck cargo in a stupor, relieved only that the ship had ceased her wild antics and anxious that she should not resume them. He could not resist a wry smile at the spectacle of Ximenez prostrate upon a large bale. Only Ah Fong seemed unaffected, though her pretty snub nose wrinkled at the nauseating stink filling the air of the overcrowded space.

  ‘You should have been on deck at my side,’ Iago said to her with a grim smile. ‘A young man should have been at the side of his master.’

  She stared back at him. ‘My master would not have me at his side when I see in his eyes he had a mind to have me beneath him,’ she laughed.

  ‘Have a care, Ah Fong,’ he said with gentle seriousness, ‘we must not be caught making two dogs.’

  She made a face, a pretty moue, of disappointment. ‘I should not want to wait too long,’ she said.

  Iago pushed the thought aside. After his exertions the thought of submitting to Ah Fong’s tender embrace was seductive. ‘Wash this poor fellow down, Ah Fong,’ he told her, indicating Ximenez’s sweat-glazed head.

  She shook her head. ‘He has the head of a Devil,’ she remarked distastefully, ‘he is not like other men.’

  ‘No matter. He may do you a service one day. He has a heart like other men and maybe other parts, so be careful.’

  ‘Oh, I have seen his parts, they are like a horse!’ She laughed and Iago would have been amused at her candour had not a third party joined them.

  ‘Don Iago . . .’

  Iago turned towards Arrocheros. ‘Don Iago,’ the merchant repeated, his face a mask of horrified anticipation, ‘how are we to endure a voyage of such misery?’

  Suddenly tired and hungry, Iago responded as politely as his shortening temper allowed. ‘It is not, was not, so very bad, señor. Believe me, you will get used to such alarums in due course.’

  ‘Used to such terrors? But it is intolerable!’

  ‘You think so now, Señor Arrocheros, but I do assure you that in a fortnight you will be as seasoned a mariner as myself.’

  Arrocheros shook his head in disbelief. ‘They tell me you went . . . er, up the masts?’

  ‘I went aloft, yes, to secure the upper sails, the topgallants.’ He was too weary to offer a more fulsome explanation. Besides it did not matter. He found his cloak and drew it about his shoulders. Now someone else was calling his name.

  ‘Don Iago!’ It was Rodrigo de Peralta.

  ‘Don Rodrigo? What is it?’

  ‘The captain-general asks that you dine with him in an hour.’

  Iago nodded wearily. ‘In an hour? Certainly. Please thank the captain-general for his courtesy.’ Thus disposing of his social obligations, Iago kicked the dwarf. ‘Ho! Ximenez! Get off your arse. You have slept long enough. Call me in half an hour with hot water and a razor. I am to dine in state.’

  Then Iago lay down and an instant later was fast asleep.

  An hour later Ximenez did as he was bid and, feeling a little fresher but with his appetite as yet unassuaged, Iago made his way aft, approaching the great cabin, which extended right across the stern of the Santa Margarita. Here he encountered Olivera.

  ‘Do not delay me, señor,’ Iago said, ‘I am commanded to dine.’

  ‘Aye, Don Iago, I know, as is the pilot-major, but be pleased to let him know the wind is freshening again and that our anchor is dragging.’

  Iago cocked an ear. In the half-light of the aftercastle he could feel the thrum of the wind, its transmitted power strangely alive in the ship’s timbers. And he could feel something else, something more regular, a small steady vibration that told of the dragging anchor and the tremor its slow movement through the seabed carried upwards to the hull of the Santa Margarita.

  ‘Dragging?’ he asked and the glare of a glim caught the anxiety in Olivera’s e
yes.

  ‘Aye and we shall shortly be embayed, for the mouth of the Cañas River lies directly under our lee. You must tell the pilot-major!’

  ‘Very well,’ Iago responded, fully alarmed, ‘I shall pass the word.’

  ‘Thank you, Don Iago.’

  Even as Olivera opened his mouth to speak, a gust struck the ship with the force of a cannon shot. Both men felt her snub at her cable, adding to the strain already upon it.

  ‘Do you tell the cabin, Don Iago,’ Olivera said, already moving away, ‘I must turn up the hands!’ Olivera ran forward shouting orders and Iago turned with equal expedition, brushing aside the two sentries at the cabin door, both of whom had been privy to this conversation.

  Iago threw open the door on to a colourful and brilliant scene; the candelabra threw a thousand points of light off the glasses, the jewelled costumes of the assembly and the plate upon the table.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ he called. ‘It is imperative that we make sail before we are cast ashore. The wind has risen and we are in danger of being embayed!’

  ‘¡Diablo!’ Lorenzo handed his goblet to a servant and, casting a cursory, ‘By your leave, Excellency . . .’ in Guillestigui’s direction, made for the deck.

  ‘It is bad, Don Iago?’ the captain-general asked.

  ‘I fear so, Excellency.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ remarked Guillestigui, making light of the situation, his tone heavy with irony, ‘we shall make a quick passage with such a breeze.’ His entourage laughed dutifully.

  ‘Please excuse me, Excellency.’ Iago turned away to follow Lorenzo out on deck.

  Up in the blustery darkness, with the wind still howling in the rigging, Iago’s eyes took a moment to become accustomed to the darkness. Hurrying towards the knot of sea-officers at the break of the half-deck, Iago joined Lorenzo alongside Olivera.

  The pilot-major cursed again when he realized the wind’s strength and direction. ‘Why in the name of the Virgin did you not call me sooner?’

  ‘The wind backed and came up in an instant. It started the anchor from the bottom,’ Olivera threw back as he directed the hands forward and aloft, to man the capstan and cast the gaskets off the topsails.

  ‘God grant that we have not left it too late! An extra two men at the helm, for the love of Christ! Where is the gunner?’ Lorenzo raised his voice. ‘Calcagorta!’

  ‘Señor?’

  ‘A gun for the San Geronimo!’

  ‘There is no need!’ Iago’s words were drowned in the boom of the San Geronimo’s saker as she signalled her own warning to the flagship, and they could see a pale parallelogram appear. A moment later all three ghostly topsails were set upon the dark form of their consort’s masts. From the waist of their own ship a weird and wailing shanty rose but it was clear from Llerena’s howls that the men were having trouble heaving up the cable against the strength of the gale. For five long minutes the men at the capstan strained at their bars, gaining ground with pathetic slowness. Not content with this hiatus, Guillestigui, accompanied by his gentlemen and the senior friar Ocampo, had emerged on to the half-deck with an air of amused, if disturbed, conviviality. They appeared to ridicule the rude sailors at their antics. Several of them still bore goblets.

  ‘Excellency,’ Lorenzo almost pleaded, ‘this is no place . . .’ But Olivera interrupted this remonstrance, calling that the San Geronimo was under way. The spectacle of being left behind was too much for Lorenzo.

  ‘Foreyards brace sharp up for the larboard tack! Main and mizzen for the starboard!’

  Iago flung himself on the mizzen brace and tailed with the handful of able seamen mustered for the task. With its topsail gone, the main stood naked, though they would brace it and – if and when they cleared the bay – let fall the course. As soon as he was satisfied with the bracing of the yards, Lorenzo ordered the fore- and mizzen-topsails set and sheeted home, immediately shouting: ‘Cut the cable!’

  From forward came the thump, thump of an axe and then they all felt the ship tremble as the cable parted and, with her head yards braced aback, watched as she fell off the wind and heeled over under the press of the wind in her canvas. When the windward leaches of the foretopsail began to shiver and the sails on the mizzen-mast filled with a crack, Lorenzo bawled: ‘Foreyards, sharp up! Starboard tack!’

  The Santa Margarita leant again to the wind’s violence, falling off to leeward and then slowly, ever so slowly to those upon her deck able to judge, began to forge ahead. But they were far from safe. Even with only two topsails full the ship was over-pressed and to those capable of feeling it there was that sluggish submission to the heel which had no countering resistance in it. This and the force of the wind made it imperative to reef both topsails, yet in doing so the Santa Margarita would lose way and she had some distance to go before she had worked clear of the river and weathered the eastern point of Mariveles Bay. Once they had fought out into the strait they would be able to ease the helm and run before the storm, all the way back to Cavite, where they could seek shelter to refit the ship; but they had yet to clear the bay without anything carrying away aloft.

  Something of the seamen’s anxiety must have communicated itself to the onlookers on deck for, as they stood across the bay, one of the friars raised a chant and was quickly joined by others. The words of the psalm could barely be heard above the roar of the wind, the piping of the rigging and the hiss and thunder of the sea, which grew as they drew slowly out of the bay’s shelter.

  As if initiated into some obscure fraternity, Lorenzo, Olivera and Iago had drawn close together on the half-deck from where they could see the vacillating compass card and line up parts of the straining ship with glimpses of the distant land in order to gauge their progress. Below his breath Olivera was unconsciously swearing; Lorenzo stood rooted to the spot and Iago wondered, if they did have to lay the Santa Margarita on the other tack, whether they still had sea-room to wear her, for she would never stay in these conditions.

  ‘Nothing infects the people like the anxiety of the shipmen,’ Lorenzo remarked, as if scolding Olivera for some imagined misdemeanour.

  ‘God knows we have cause to be anxious,’ retorted Olivera, after which the three men stood in silent encouragement of the helmsmen below them at the whipstaff. After what seemed an interminable time – as the voices of the friars called upon the Trinity of God, the Holy Virgin and Santa Margarita to assist them – the ship drove closer to the point so that the land loomed over them. Even though it lay in their lee, they could smell the rich vegetation of the forest.

  And then, quite suddenly and miraculously it seemed to some, the Santa Margarita cleared the point and stood out into clear water beyond the headland. For a further ten minutes no man dared break the spell before Lorenzo gave the order to put up the helm and start the weather braces. Slowly the Santa Margarita turned to larboard, heading back to the north-east and the refuge of Cavite.

  There were cries of praise to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost; the Mother of God was invoked, and Blessed St Nicholas, as the patron saint of sailors, was thanked for his intercession. St Clement was remembered and a thin chorus of praise in the reedy voices of the nuns rose to the virtuous and virginal Santa Margarita, whose name-day approached. They had been saved. And not a rope-yarn had broken. That their escape was miraculous was, Father Ocampo asserted in a loud voice in the comparative lull that followed their running before the wind so that all might hear him, ‘due entirely to the goodness of Almighty God’.

  In the chorus of amens and the multiple crossings of breasts in high- and low-born alike, no one noticed the silent relief of the three sea-officers, Lorenzo, Olivera and the sobrasaliente Don Iago Fernandez, whose mouths had run dry.

  But Father Ocampo, in the manner of priests, had not finished. He turned and, in his commanding voice, addressed the captain-general.

  ‘Don Juan Martinez, take heed of the escape we have had. Divine Providence has intervened and sent us back, that we may start this voyage agai
n, this time in a spirit of holiness and contrition, sincere in our confessions, clean in our bodies and minds, our ship, which shall be our Ark, made better for her purpose and lightened of the venal load she carries for wicked profit.’

  There were those who expected Guillestigui to make a reply, but the captain-general, though he made a remark to Olalde and provoked laughter from those within hearing, turned away and went below to shut himself in the great cabin.

  As the bells were struck to mark the watch’s halfway point, Iago realized that it wanted two hours to midnight. It seemed like a previous year that they had first drawn the flukes of the anchor from Cavite Bay, rather than the day before. They had it seemed expended a vast amount of energy and, to be sure, had lost several sails. On the other hand they had made no progress in all that eventful time and had succeeded only in leaving one valuable iron anchor to the fishes in Mariveles Bay. That anchor, Iago mused, was irreplaceable: it had been brought all the way from the forges of Seville in distant Spain.

  Four

  The Curse

  Iago woke to find Ximenez standing beside his hammock, hot shaving water and a razor readied for his master. Behind him hovered Ah Fong with his shaving bowl. Iago stretched; he was aware that he had woken in the night that followed his exertions in the Santa Margarita’s rigging, somewhere around dawn when her second bower anchor had been let go, its heavy hemp cable had rumbled out through the hawse and the não had come to a blessed rest.

  ‘We are again anchored off Cavite, master,’ Ximenez explained, ‘and Don Felipe Corço has been on board.’

  Iago rubbed his eyes and threw his legs out of the bed Ximenez had extemporized for him by throwing a palliasse on top of some boxes. ‘Who?’ he asked sleepily.

  ‘Felipe Corço, the captain of the port.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. What does he want?’

  ‘It is more what the captain-general and pilot-major require,’ Ximenez said, lathering vigorously, ‘though it is Fray Ocampo who makes the most noise with his supplications.’