Last Crusade, The

by Cliff, Nigel

  There was obviously no returning to the mainland. The fleet moved off the next morning and anchored close to one of the islands, which the Portuguese called Anjediva, after its local name. The Indians had told them they would find another freshwater source there, and after they had run the captured ship aground, Nicolau Coelho set out to reconnoiter.

  Coelho landed on a pristine beach and delved into a lush forest of coconut palms and tropical evergreens. Suddenly he came upon the ruins of what appeared to be a large stone church on a hill.

  A single chapel was still standing, and it had been reroofed with straw. Coelho peered inside.

  Three black stones stood in the center, and a number of Indians were praying to them. When the Portuguese quizzed them, they explained that Arab sailors used the island to restock with water and wood and had driven out the inhabitants; they only came back to worship the sacred stones.

  Near to the church the search party discovered a large tank built of the same hewn stone. The water was fresh, and they filled some of their casks. When they explored further, they came upon a much bigger tank on the highest point of the island and filled the rest.

  By now the three ships were in a dangerously unseaworthy state. The crews began the long repair process by dragging the Berrio to the beach in front of the ruined church, emptying it, and careening it.

  While they were hard at work, two large boats approached from the mainland. They reminded the Portuguese of the fast galliots—small oared galleys with a shallow draft and a single mast—in which the pirates of the Barbary Coast pounced on passing ships. The rowers dipped their blades to the beat of drums accompanied by what sounded uncannily like bagpipes. Flags and streamers fluttered from the mast. In the distance the Portuguese could see five other ships creeping along the coast, as if lying in wait to see what happened.

  The Indians from Calicut excitedly warned their captors not to let the visitors on board. They were pirates, they said, who roamed the seas in those parts. They would pretend they came in friendship, but at the moment of their choosing they would whip out their firearms, rob them of all they had, and take them as slaves.

  Gama ordered the Rafael and the Gabriel to open fire.

  The men in the boats ducked and shouted at the foreigners. “Tambaram! Tambaram!” they cried; “Lord! Lord!”

  The Portuguese had already concluded that this was the Indians’ name for God, and they deduced that the men were trying to tell them they were Christians. Even so, they assumed it was another ruse, and they kept on firing. The rowers hastily turned back toward the shore, and Coelho chased them in his boat until Gama, fearful of any more mishaps, raised a signal flag to call him back.

  The next day the work on the Berrio was still under way when a dozen men appeared in two smaller boats. They were smartly dressed, and they brought a bundle of sugarcane as a gift for the captain-major. They beached their boats, walked up the sand, and asked permission to take a look at the foreigners’ ships.

  Gama was not in a hospitable mood. By now it seemed as if the whole coast knew about the Portuguese, while the Portuguese knew next to nothing about the coast. Every day a new threat materialized, and he was sure the newcomers had been sent to spy on him. He shouted at them and they backed away, warning twelve more men who were just arriving in two more boats not to land.

  The Berrio was refloated, and the crews moved onto the São Gabriel.

  Despite the hostile reception the locals kept on coming, and some managed to sell the Portuguese fish, pumpkins, cucumbers, and boatloads of the green branches that smelled vaguely of cinnamon. Gama was in a less suspicious frame of mind when a striking figure walked up the beach waving a wooden cross.

  The newcomer was about forty years old and spoke excellent Venetian as well as Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and German. He was dressed in a long linen gown and a dapper Muslim cap, and he had a short, curved sword thrust through his belt. He made straight for the captain-major and threw his arms around him. After embracing the other captains, he explained that he was a Christian from the West who had arrived in this part of the world as a young man and had entered the service of a powerful Muslim lord. He had had to convert to Islam, he confessed, but in his heart he was still Christian to this day. He had been at his lord’s house when news came from Calicut, saying that men who spoke a strange language and wore clothes from head to toe had appeared from nowhere. He had immediately realized they must be Europeans, and he had told his master he would die of sorrow if he was not allowed to pay them a visit.

  His lord, he added, was generosity itself. He had told him to invite the foreigners to his country, where they could help themselves to anything they needed—spices, provisions, even ships—and he had even given them permission to stay on permanently, if they liked what they saw.

  Gama took a shine to the urbane visitor. In his gruffly cordial way he thanked him for his offers and asked him about his master’s land, which it turned out was called Goa. In return his garrulous guest merely asked for a cheese, which he explained he would give to a companion whom he had left on the mainland as a token that the meeting had gone well. The cheese was produced, along with two loaves of freshly baked bread, but he was in no hurry to leave. The Chronicler noted that he had so much to say about so many things that he sometimes contradicted himself.

  Paulo da Gama was beginning to get suspicious, and he decided to have a word with the sailors who had delivered the visitor. They were Hindus and no particular friends of their Muslim customer. He was a pirate, they quietly explained, and his ships were waiting near the coast for the order to attack.

  Paulo spread the news, and the Portuguese seized their caller. The soldiers thrust him against the hull of the beached ship and interrogated him with the aid of a sound thrashing. He still insisted he was an honest Christian, and Gama had him trussed up, hoisted up to the yard, and hauled up and down by his arms and legs. When he was let down, he panted out some home truths. News of the Portuguese had spread far and wide, he told them; the whole country was out to do them harm. All along the shore, large forces of armed men were stationed on boats hidden up creeks; they were only awaiting the arrival of forty ships that were being armed to lead the attack.

  Several bouts of torture failed to make him change the rest of his story. As his voice failed, he seemed to be trying to explain that he had come to find out what sort of people the strangers were and what arms they carried, but it was hard to tell. Gama called a halt, ordered him to be confined on one of the ships, and had his wounds dressed; he had decided to take him back to Portugal as another informant for the king.

  The São Rafael had still not been careened, but there was no time to lose. By now the Arab fleets from Jeddah, Aden, and Hormuz had already arrived in India, and if the new intelligence was to be believed, a mass attack was imminent. The last piece of business was to break up the captured vessel for spares. From the mainland its captain had been watching in the hope of recovering his ship when the foreigners left. As he saw it disappearing piece by piece, he shot over and offered a large sum of money for its return. It was not for sale, Gama peremptorily replied; as it belonged to the enemy he preferred to burn it, and so he did.

  The fleet set sail on Friday, October 5. When the ships were far enough out that it was clear they would not return, the prisoner finally came clean. Perhaps he had had enough of being chained up in the forecastle, where a captive’s confinement was made triply uncomfortable by the salt water that washed over him, the lowering and raising of the anchors around him, and the men who went there to do their necessities. The time for dissembling was past, he declared. He was, indeed, employed by the ruler of Goa, and he had been at court when news had arrived that the foreigners were lost on the coast and had no idea how to get home. His lord was aware that many boats had been sent to capture them, and he was loath to see the booty end up in his rivals’ hands. He had sent his servant to entice the strangers to his country, where they would have been completely in his power. The Chri
stians, he had heard, were brave and belligerent, and he was in need of men like them in the endless wars he waged against his neighboring kings.

  GAMA HAD NOT been able to leave India at the moment of his choosing, and his men would pay a terrible price.

  The steady breeze of the winter monsoon had not yet arrived at the latitude the explorers had haltingly reached. Again and again the ships were swept up by cyclones, then deposited in dead calms. October turned to November, November to December, and still there was no sign of land. The heat was insufferable, food was running low, and the water turned foul and began to run out, too. Soon the dreaded scurvy returned to ravage the sailors’ gaunt frames. A later passenger on a Portuguese ship vividly described the speedy onset of the disease and the panic that ensued. His knees, he recorded, were so shrunken that he was unable to bend them, his legs and thighs were black as gangrene, and he repeatedly had to pierce his skin to draw off his treacly, putrefied blood. Every day he swung on the rigging over the side and, looking in a little mirror, he took a knife to his rotten gums, which had ballooned over his teeth and made it impossible to eat. When he had cut away the flesh he washed his mouth with urine, but the next morning the swelling was just as bad. With dozens similarly afflicted, he found himself adrift on a ship of death:

  Great numbers Died every day thereof, and there was nothing to be seen but Bodies a flinging over-board, and the most part Died without help, some behind Chests, having their Eyes and the Soles of their Feet eaten up with Rats. Others were found dead in their Beds, after having been let Blood and moving their Arms, the veins opened, and their Blood ran out: Oftentimes after having received their Allowance, which might be about a Pint of Water, and putting it near them to Drink, when a-dry, their Companions rob’d these poor Sick Wretches of this little Water, they being asleep, or turned to the other side. Sometimes being under Deck in a dark place, not seeing one another, they would fight among themselves, and strike one another, if they caught any about to Steal their Water; and thus, oftentimes were they deprived of Water, and for want of a little Draught they miserably died, without any one offering to help them to never so little, no not the Father the Son, nor the Brother the Brother, so much did every Man’s particular Thirst compel him to Rob his Companions.

  Racked by pain and far from home, dozens of simple, zealous men died fearful, lonely deaths within days of their symptoms appearing. The end came as a release. As Crusaders for Christ, they had been told they would pass away without the stain of sin. Their eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light, the softer life of a place free from suffering beckoned them on. Their comrades threw their bodies into the sea, with less and less ceremony as more and more succumbed.

  In the tropical heat, new diseases assaulted the weakened survivors. Fevers left them shivering and delirious. Abscesses and tumors grew on infected skin. A toxic fungus infected the bread and brought on vomiting and diarrhea, followed by painful spasms, hallucinations, and mania, and finally dry gangrene, dropsy, and death. Among the most terrifying afflictions was one that, a sailor reported, “breaks out at the Fundament like an Ulcer, and is presently full of Worms, which Gnaw as far as the Belly, and so they die in great misery and torment: There hath been no better remedy found for this Disease,” he added, “than the Juyce of Lymon, in washing therewith the Fundament; for that obstructs the worms breeding there.” There was no privacy on board a ship; now there was no dignity, either.

  As Christmas approached, only seven or eight sailors were left fit to man each vessel. Few believed they would survive much longer, and the iron discipline that Vasco da Gama had rigorously enforced utterly broke down. The men shouted out to the saints, vowing to reform their ways if they were saved and begging them to spare their lives. They demanded that the captain-major return to Calicut to submit to God’s will rather than let them rot away on the open sea. Gama and his fellow captains had lost all track of where they were, and in desperation they finally agreed to turn back, if a favorable wind allowed.

  At the last possible moment the weather changed, and with it the mission’s fortunes. “It pleased God in his mercy,” recorded the Chronicler, “to send us a wind which, in the course of six days, carried us within sight of land, and at this we rejoiced as much as if the land we saw had been Portugal.”

  The date was January 2, 1499. A few more days, a couple of weeks at most, and three ghost ships would have been cast adrift on the pitiless ocean blue.

  BY THE TIME the ragged fleet neared the coast of Africa it was already night. They lay to, and the next morning they reconnoitered the shore, “so as to find out whither the Lord had taken us, for there was not a pilot on board, nor any other man who could tell on the chart in what place we were.” As far as they could see, an unvarying thin green ribbon of vegetation stretched between the vastness of the sea and the sky.

  A debate ensued. Some of the men were certain they were still three hundred leagues from the mainland, among some islands off Mozambique; one of the prisoners they had taken there had told them the islands were very unhealthy and rife with scurvy, which made all too much sense.

  While the argument was still raging, the watchkeepers sighted a city. It turned out to be the ancient Somali port of Mogadishu, which had once been the dominant Muslim entrepôt on the East African coast. Tall houses surrounded a magnificent palace, and four castles defended the perimeter walls. In their perilous state the explorers did not dare try their luck, and after making their feelings known by firing off repeated rounds from the bombards, they continued south along the shore.

  Two days later the ships were drifting in a calm when a thunderstorm blew up from nowhere and tore the ties of the São Rafael. More trouble was in store: while the few able-bodied men were making repairs, a pirate spotted the stricken fleet and launched a raid from a nearby island. Eight packed boats bore down on the Portuguese, but the gunners leapt to their stations and a barrage sent the pirates flying back to their town. Perhaps to the crews’ relief, there was no wind and they were not ordered to give chase.

  Finally, on January 7, the lookouts spotted the familiar bay of Malindi. Even—especially—in such dire straits, Gama would not risk mooring in the port, and the ships anchored off the city. The sultan immediately sent out a large welcoming committee with an offering of sheep and a message of peace and friendship. The captain-major had been expected for a long time, the Africans affably said.

  Gama sent the ever-reliable Fernão Martins to shore in the sultan’s boat with urgent instructions to procure as many oranges as possible. They arrived the next day, along with an assortment of different fruits and plenty of water. The sultan ordered his Muslim merchants to visit the foreigners and offer them chickens and eggs. It was too late for the worst afflicted: many of the sick died off Malindi and were buried there.

  The horrors of the journey had softened Gama, and he was struck by the kindness the sultan showed him and his men when they desperately needed help. He sent him a gift and begged him, through his Arabic translators, to give him an ivory tusk to present to the king of Portugal. As a sign of the friendship between the two nations—one that would be clearly visible to their enemies—he also asked permission to place a pillar and cross on the shore. The sultan replied that he would do everything he was asked out of love for King Manuel. He had a prime spot prepared for the pillar, in front of the town and next to his palace, and as well as the requested tusk, he sent over a Muslim boy who dutifully declared that he wanted nothing more in life than to go to Portugal.

  The Portuguese stayed at Malindi for five days, enjoying more of the sultan’s entertainments as best they could, “and reposing,” recorded the Chronicler, “from the hardships endured during a passage in the course of which all of us had been face to face with death.” They left on the morning of January 11, and the next day they sailed as quickly as possible past Mombasa.

  When they were safely out of sight of the city they anchored in a bay, unloaded the goods from the São Rafael, and set fire
to it. There were not enough hands left to sail three ships, and in any case the Rafael, which had not been repaired for many months, was on its last legs. The whole process took fifteen days, during which numerous Africans came out and bartered chickens for the sailors’ last few shirts and bracelets.

  Two days after they resumed their journey, the two remaining ships passed a large island, six leagues from the mainland, that they had missed on the outward voyage. This, the boy from Malindi explained, was Zanzibar, one of the most important trading centers of the Swahili Coast. The explorers had never heard of it: there was a great deal more exploring left to do.

  On February 1 the ships reached Mozambique during a heavy downpour. They avoided the town and anchored off the island where they had celebrated mass almost a year earlier. They said mass this time, too, and Gama decided to erect another pillar. The rain fell so hard that the landing party could not light a fire to melt the lead that was used to fix the cross on top, and the pillar stayed crossless.

  A few days later the survivors left East Africa for the voyage around the Cape. For all the rumors that large communities of Christians lived there, they had stayed frustratingly out of sight. Prester John remained as stubbornly elusive as ever. The Swahili Coast still guarded its secrets; only on another voyage would it yield up its greatest treasures.

  A month later the Portuguese reached the bay where the captain-major had been shot in the leg. They stayed for more than a week, catching and salting anchovies, seals, and penguins and replenishing their water for the Atlantic passage. On March 12 they set out for home, but they made it only a dozen leagues before a fierce westerly wind sent them pitching back into the bay. As soon as the wind dropped they started again, and on March 20 they doubled the Cape of Good Hope. By now, the Chronicler recorded, “those who had come so far were in good health and quite robust, although at times nearly dead from the cold winds which we experienced.” After the tropical heat, the southern Atlantic felt like the chills that accompany a fever.