“He was in his rough sea clothes,” Ferdinand continued, “but the minute I saw him, I knew something was afoot. He knelt down before Manoel and whispered to him for a few moments, and then, all of a sudden, the King looked up, and called right out, ‘Gama has returned!’” Ferdinand drew a long breath, and swallowed hard. “I—I felt queer, I can tell you. Shaky inside and out!”
“No wonder,” said Ruth. “I’d have cried!”
“There was a great to-do, of course,” Ferdinand ran on. “Everybody crowded around and talked at once. Then Manoel made them all listen, while Rodriguez told his story.
“He said that four days before, he was sailing away from Terceira to Portugal, and met a ship that appeared to be having hard work to navigate. He hailed her, and someone aboard called out that she was the San Gabriel from India where she’d been in command of Vasco da Gama! You could have heard a pin drop when he came out with that. Everyone went wild, and I saw Manoel pretend to smooth his hair—but actually he was wiping his eyes! Well, Rodriguez had sailed day and night, landed at Cascaes, and ridden at top speed to Cintra, so as to be first with the news!”
“Then Gama will soon be here,” cried Abel. “Perhaps today!”
In the same breath, Scander demanded, “Where’s the other two ships, the Berrio and the San Raphael?”
Ferdinand’s face fell. “Wait a minute,” he told Scander. “It’s not all good news. Paulo da Gama has just died at Terceira. So Vasco—”
“Paulo dead?” Nicolo broke in. Almost he had said: “Rodriguez didn’t tell us that!”
“Poor Paulo!” Ruth murmured, but Nejmi said, softly, “Poor Vasco!”
“Yes, ‘poor Vasco,’” Abel repeated. “He loved Paulo so.”
“When we rode down from Cintra this morning, expecting to find Gama already here, we didn’t know about Paulo,” Ferdinand went on. “Rodriguez didn’t, either. All he’d stopped to hear was just the word that Gama was back. But at the palace we found messages from the San Gabriel and the Berrio. They’ve—” he caught his breath—“they’ve both come in! They’re anchored off Belem.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Scander. “The Berrio down river, you say? I caulked the old girl’s seams! I’m going down to see her! But how about the San Raphael?”
“Stop your noise,” laughed Ferdinand, “and let me finish! Didn’t I say I was in a hurry?” He turned to Abel. “Do you know, sir, I took my courage in my hands and begged permission of Manoel himself to bring you the news!”
The corners of Abel’s mouth twitched, but all he said was, “At worst he could only have refused you! Go on, lad.”
“Well, here’s the message the San Gabriel sent to the palace. In the first place, the San Raphael’s gone!”
From the corner of his eye Nicolo caught a covert glance from Scander, while Ferdinand was hurriedly explaining:
“She was in bad shape and had lost most of her crew, so they burned her. Later on, the other two ships got separated in a storm, and the Berrio came on here alone. Paulo grew so much worse that Vasco put in at the Verde Islands, and sent the San Gabriel on, while he took Paulo in a small vessel to Terceira. Some ship has just now brought in news of his death at the monastery there, and that Vasco will stay on to mourn for him!”
For a while no one spoke, till Scander said, “Now I suppose everybody’s saying they knew all the time Gama would come back!”
“Oh, falling over each other to see who can shout it oftenest and loudest—especially when the King’s near to hear them!” rejoined Ferdinand. “And Manoel’s as bad as any of them, too!”
“I fancy he’d even take a good, stout oath that he’d never harboured any doubts on the subject,” Abel mildly suggested.
Ferdinand jubilantly swung his cap around. “He’s already planning another expedition, sir. And I’m going on it if I have to play stowaway!” He bent toward Abel, and lowered his voice. “That’s the first thing I’m going to ask Gama,” he confided. “To take me the next time.”
He uncrossed his knees, and stood up, stretching and yawning. “I didn’t even go to bed last night,” he exclaimed, “thinking about the new expedition!” He began to move toward the door. “I won’t be able to get off for a while, on account of all that’s going on, but I’ll send word as soon as Gama says when he’s coming.”
At the door he hurriedly turned. “Nicolo! I forgot to tell you what Rodriguez got for being first with the news: the King has made him a gentleman of the household and his sons, pages! And by the way,” he threw over his shoulder, “nothing come of—of what I told you in your room?”
“Nothing,” Nicolo carelessly answered. But as soon as the gate had closed after the boy, he gave a sigh of relief. “It’s not so easy to pretend surprise when all the time you know what’s coming!”
“Marco was right after all, about their burning the ship, wasn’t he?” Nejmi exclaimed. She looked shyly at Nicolo. “It was Rodriguez, wasn’t it, who told you—”
“Yes—about Gama!” Abel struck in with an amused look at Nicolo. “I guessed it the minute Ferdinand spoke his name—while you were trying so hard to look innocent!”
“There’s one thing I’ll wager you don’t know about Master Conti’s going to Cascaes,” Scander volunteered, and before Nicolo could stop him, he was telling the real reason for the trip, and the plan to send The Golden Star in search of Gama.
“I wish everybody could know that!” Abel’s tone was quiet, but the look in his eyes—and in the eyes next to him brought the blood to Nicolo’s face.
“Rodriguez said about the same thing, sir,” he stammered, “but I made him promise not to mention it.” He turned to Scander. “I suppose he’s made his last trip on The Golden Star. We’ll have to find someone to take his place.”
“I’ll wager you he’ll miss the smell of pitch, and the feel of a sheet in his palm!” Scander pensively observed.
“I wonder how his wife’ll like being a lady,” murmured Ruth.
“We’ll have to find someone to take Rodriguez’ place,” Nicolo repeated. “And I know a good man, too!” He looked hard at Scander. “How about it?”
For a moment the burnt gimlet holes stared back. Then, over the brown face, crept a deep red.
“I mean it,” laughed Nicolo, as he reached over and slapped Scander on the back.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” cried Nejmi. “Scander should have our—” she caught herself up on the telltale word—“our very best. Yours and mine, Nicolo!” she ended, flushed and radiant.
Scander beamed as he looked round the table. “There’s nothing on earth I’d exchange for the captain’s job on The Golden Star! I wouldn’t have taken it a minute sooner, though,” he added. “But now that I know Abdul’ll never come—”
He broke off, fumbling at his belt, and brought out a dingy leather bag wound around with a thong. “Here’s something else, besides my knife, that I’ve kept on me,” he said, without raising his eyes. “You remember I once told you how—how I got hold of the price my old captain took for Nejmi, in the market at Aden?”
“Scander!… That?” As if she doubted her eyes, Nejmi reached out and timidly touched what lay between the brown hands.
Silently Scander passed the bag to Abel who weighted it for a moment, gave a surprised whistle, and then handed it across the table.
“Good Lord, man!” Nicolo exclaimed, when Ruth and he had had their turn, and the dingy packet was again in Scander’s hands. “You told me you starved when you first landed in Lisbon, and with all that coin in your belt…”
“Think I’d touch that for vittles and drink?” Scander scornfully demanded. His eyes softened as they fell on Nejmi. “I always figured that sometime she’d be needing a dowry, and I reckon—” he laid the bag in her lap—“I reckon that time is right now!”
CHAPTER 24
Dom Vasco da Gama
A glittering day of summer, with Lisbon’s hills cut sharp into deep blue sky. A breeze-crinkled harbour of crowded craft and fluttering
pennants.
Everywhere, throngs. They jammed the steep streets and streamed out on water-front and river shore; fought for foothold on the quay edge; clung to pile heads.
Gusts of cheering, of shouting, of laughter; breathless intervals of waiting, watching; then, pent-up hearts bursting forth again. A town gone mad with joy. That was Lisbon on the day that Gama came home!
On the edge of the quay overhung by the House of Mines, stood Abel Zakuto. Not an inch, in any direction, could he have turned, for the mass of humans behind him. But, at least, no one was in front of him! This was precisely why he had come down here at sunrise—to make undisputed claim to this particular spot with its stout pile to hold to. Nothing must be between him and Gama’s ships! There was no doubt that Gama would anchor off this quay, in line with the House of Mines; for he wouldn’t have forgotten, even in this long absence, that the King always sat in the balcony to see any action in the harbour. Of course, too, that was where Manoel would first receive Gama.
Any moment now he could be expected. Already there was a rumour that he had left Belem. A long time it had seemed to Abel since Ferdinand had burst in with the first news—these weeks, while the San Gabriel and the Berrio waited down river for Gama to mourn, first at Terceira, where he had buried Paulo, and then at Belem. Of course, Abel reflected, he might have gone down and visited the ships. Scores had; so had Scander—and had returned with excited accounts of foreign pilots that Gama had brought back. But not that for him! He would see those caravels come in as they had gone out—led by their Captain-Major!
Oh, for Bartholomew—that together they might have stood here! And for Covilham, no less. Hail to your valiant soul, Pedro de Covilham! Of all the workshop group that young rascal, Ferdinand, would be the first to take Gama’s hand! It would probably be days before Gama could come to the familiar old meeting place, besieged as he would be by visitors and fêtes and one thing and another. Hard, too, this noise and to-do for him, still wrapped in his grief for Paulo.
A stir on the balcony caught Abel’s eye: Manoel arriving, with his suite, and decked out in his royal best. Well, it was an occasion worth the finest ermine ever trapped! Now he’d sat down, as excited as a boy! You could tell it by the way he rested those long arms of his on the railing and leaned far over them to gaze where everybody else was gazing—at that bend Gama must now soon round.
Abel tightened his hold and looked back over the sea of heads. Somewhere, at an overhanging window, safe above the jostle and press, Nicolo had found standing space for Ruth and Nejmi. That child, Nejmi! What would they all say if they knew her part, first and last, in this tremendous affair?
A sound like low thunder! Cannon! A tense moment, as if all Lisbon held its breath. And then, from every throat in that vast throng, a wild clamour: “Gama! Gama!” Another instant, and cannon from harbour and from shore were booming their answer to that distant salute.
Again the thunder, much closer. Then, slowly, almost wearily it struck Abel, two caravels, the royal colours at their mastheads, glided into sight.
If Lisbon had shown its joy before, it was nothing to what it did now. It was a city abandoned to joy, gone literally mad with it. From crowds and from cannon went up a roar that shook the air and turned one deaf and dizzy. Almost Abel wondered whether he could keep his footing.
On came the caravels, over the crisp little waves. Wholly lost to all else, Abel watched them draw nearer and nearer. That was the San Gabriel ahead, with the tattered scarlet pennant of the Captain-Major at her crow’s nest. Gama must be aboard her! And close behind, the Berrio. Welcome home to you, Nicolau Coelho! Even at this distance one could see the battered hulls, and the gaping seams. Men were at the pumps! In a sort of ecstasy Abel’s eyes noted the stained sails, the weathered spars, the faded rigging—and mentally saluted them. Ah, dear and gallant scars of war-worn conquerors! He knew tears were streaming down his cheeks, and he didn’t care.
Now the San Gabriel was coming about. He could see sailors laughing and gesticulating, and waving from the rail. There were the officers, standing together on the main deck. Was it his fancy that their faces seemed lifted in a sort of homesick rapture to Lisbon’s crowded, climbing roofs? And see—those dark faces standing out sharp from the others! The foreign pilots Scander had told about! Gaudy as parrots in their red and yellow rig and as eager as boys.
Ah, that figure on the poop, apart from all the rest! In black, from the small, round cap to the close fitting tunic and cloak. Pale, grief-stricken, yet with an air of quiet resignation that sent a moment’s hush over the throng. The Captain-Major! Now they were at it again, splitting the very sky: “Gama! Gama!” And now Gama himself was moving forward, bowing gravely.
A woman’s sob behind him caught Abel’s ear: “He’d give it all up, if he could have back his brother!” He looked over his shoulder—a young woman, eyes swollen with long weeping, a baby in her arms. One of those whose man had stood his last watch. A sad number of his mates were with him, too, according to the accounts Scander had brought back from his visit to the Berrio.
The rattle of metal brought Abel’s head around: the San Gabriel’s anchor—and now the Berrio’s! And there went a royal boat, manned with the King’s own sailors, drawing alongside the San Gabriel. He would wait only to see it bring Gama ashore. After that he would go home, to think over from first to last this great day; to relive each detail, that to the end of his life never a jot of it should fade from his memory. For this day would change the face of the world!
He forgot the boom of cannon and the cheering as he watched Gama descend into the boat; stand, as he gravely acknowledged the oarsmen’s salute, and then seat himself, a sombre figure among splendid uniforms. The boat shot forward and, for a few moments, his face came into plain sight. Worn, and lined with grief it was, and years older, Abel noted with a pang. Yet, it had a serenity that had not been there when he had gone away, the serenity of a spirit, Abel said to himself, that has tried itself and kept the faith of its own making.
The boat swerved toward the landing, and Gama was hidden from view. Immediately there was a mad surge to follow him. At last, Abel was free to move—to go home. In the rest of the day’s celebrations he was not interested. He had seen what he had come to see: Bartholomew’s ships, and Gama!
It was slow work through the crowded streets, but finally he was climbing the stairs, then entering the court. He glanced about. No one back yet.
He went into the workshop, walked eagerly to the windows. There they were! Somewhat hidden by the other shipping, but distinguishable by the Royal Standard. Brave, beautiful things, those shabby, leaking ships! Themselves outworn, the thing they had done would never die. And from that doing still greater would come, just as their accomplishment had had its roots in those first venturings of the Great Navigator’s frail barks. Ah, straight back to him, must Portugal trace this great day! Other expeditions would follow—Portugal would have her rivals! But in the end it was more than Portugal or any nation. It was Man uncovering the face of his world—searching out Truth. Oh, he was glad that he had a part, small though it was, in those ships down there! His compass. His astrolabe!
He turned, and exultantly surveyed the shelves, the tools, the bench. He had hardly touched them since Gama had been gone—he’d been so busy with the maps—but he’d done some long thinking about ways to improve his instruments. And now, with the message those shabby, gallant ships had brought him…
From shelf to shelf he went, taking up this instrument and that. Oh, but he was hungry for the twirl of a bit, the rasp of a saw! He critically examined a compass, the counterpart of the one he had given Gama. He could better that! There must be a transparent top to the box. The compass card should be at the bottom of the box, below the needle, instead of the present awkward arrangement. At a glance, then, a man could get his bearing. And that astrolabe he’d made for Gama—the first metal one in Europe! There must be more like it. No excuse for wooden ones with Abel Zakuto able to make better!<
br />
He returned to the windows to gaze, not at Gama’s ships now, but at the town itself; at the crowded houses that climbed from blue harbour to blue sky. Ah, let him look well—that he might remember well!
Voices made him turn. They were all back again; Scander, too. Abel studied them as they came toward him: thoughtful—almost reverent. Even Scander seemed subdued.
“Abel, you passed right below us,” Ruth was saying, as they entered the workshop. “We called and called, but you never so much as looked up!”
“I didn’t hear you, my dear. I was thinking.”
Nejmi ran to him and caught his hand, and he saw that the golden light was in her eyes.
“You were thinking about the ships!” she whispered. “Oh, Master Abel, when I saw them sail into the harbour, it was as if Allah said to me, ‘See, now! Wasn’t it worth all the pain and trouble?’”
“I couldn’t help but think,” Nicolo said quietly, “how hard it was that Master Diaz couldn’t be here today, and Covilham—and Paulo da Gama!”
“Poor Vasco,” Ruth murmured. “He looked so sad in that black suit.”
“Different enough from that gay velvet cloak he wore when he went away,” exclaimed Scander. “Why the man’s aged ten years!”
“It was pitiful, the way he tried to smile when the people cheered him,” said Nicolo. “We caught a glimpse of him when he was walking up to the House of Mines between a count and a bishop—at least so people said they were! We didn’t see Manoel receive him. Too many heads got in our way!”
“I saw everything,” Scander chuckled, “from the mast of a little craft. I bribed the captain to let me aboard! Lord! When Master Gama knelt down front of the King, and kissed his hand, I couldn’t help thinking ’twould be more fit if the King had knelt and kissed his hand!”
“What do you think, Master Abel!” Nejmi broke in. “Scander talked with the foreign pilots that Master Gama brought.”
“I saw them,” Abel declared. “Black as ebony, aren’t they?”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 99
