To the Indies

by C. S. Forester

  “Yes, sir,” said Rich, feebly. His mind struggled with the details of the plan — with the expense of maintaining an army of fifty thousand men for three years, with the question as to whether such a force would attain any success against the most powerful military state in Europe, and, lastly, whether Their Highnesses were likely to set the whole Mediterranean into a turmoil and wage a bloody war at the instigation of a vassal whose power they suspected even on the other side of the ocean. The whole scheme seemed utterly wild; and yet — six years ago the Admiral had discovered the Indies, in face of the hostile criticism of all the world. Today his prediction of the presence of land in a place where no one could be certain land existed had been dramatically confirmed. Nothing he said could be dismissed casually as an old man’s maunderings.

  “Nazareth!” said the Admiral in a kind of ecstasy. His mind was evidently still running on the same subject, but presumably in a very different way from Rich’s. Yet his enthusiasm was infectious.

  “It is a glorious project,” said Rich, in spite of himself.

  “Yes,” replied the Admiral. “And we are approaching the country which will provide the means to realize it. The land of the Trinity!”

  There was dismissal in the gesture he made. His mind was wrapped now in lofty schemes, like a mountain among the clouds. Rich bowed and withdrew. He was glad enough, too, to do so, for he was excited and impatient for his first sight of the Indies. He hoisted himself up on the bulwark, but the approaching land was still below the horizon from there, and he set himself to make the unaccustomed climb up the main shrouds — the whole rigging of the ship was still thick with clusters of men, like fruit in a tree. At the masthead there were a dozen of the soldiers whom Bernardo de Tarpia commanded, and they grudgingly made room for him. Rich clung wildly to the yard, breathless and giddy. He was unaccustomed both to exercise and to heights, and up here the motion of the ship was greatly exaggerated. The horizon swooped round him for a few wild seconds until he regained his breath and his self-control. He wiped off the sweat which was streaming into his eyes and looked forward. There was the land; bright green slopes illuminated by the morning sun. The Indies! The most westerly and the most easterly limit of man’s knowledge of the world he lived in . . . It was raining there to the northward — the sun behind him was lighting up a dazzling rainbow at that extremity of the island. From there southward, there stretched luxuriant green hills; when the Holy Name rose on a wave he could see a line of white foam as the waves broke against the beach at their feet.

  The sun was beating on his back like a flail; he wiped the sweat from his face again and continued his observations. It looked a rich enough country — that vivid green spoke well for its fertility — but it seemed virgin. No axe had ever plied among those forests. His straining eyes could see no sign of human habitation. Trying to compel himself to think clearly, he came to admit that at that distance he could not expect to see individual houses. But a town would be visible enough, for all that, and there was not the slightest hint of the existence of a town. A busy and prosperous coast would be thick with shipping, and there was no shipping in sight at all, not even — what was the word the Indian islanders used? — not even a ‘canoe’ to make a speck on the flawless blue. Depression settled on him for a moment, which he told himself was unreasonable.

  But God had vouchsafed a sign — the Admiral had announced to them the sight of the triple peak from which he had already named this new island. Rich swept his gaze along the sky-line to identify the mountain. It was odd that he did not see it at once. He had looked from north to south; now he looked from south to north, more carefully. There was still no triple peak to be seen, and yet it ought to be obvious. The Admiral had been very positive about it indeed. It occurred to Rich that the explanation probably lay in the long interval which had elapsed since the Admiral had first seen the land. During that time the three peaks must have moved round into line relative to the new position of the ship.

  With this in mind, he looked again. It was puzzling, for the ship had been heading straight for the land ever since it had first come in sight, and the relative movement could not have been great. Nowhere was there any outstanding peak which might be resolved into three summits from another point of view. With a little sinking at heart he began to realize another possibility — that the Admiral had not seen any triple peak at all, and had merely imagined it, the wish being father to the thought. That at least was humanly possible, and as far as he could see was the only hypothesis which fitted the facts; in that case, his study of logic assured him, he should work on that hypothesis until either it was disproved or a better one presented itself.

  Nevertheless, it was disquieting, not merely because he might be at sea under an admiral who saw mountains that did not exist, but because — this was quite as disturbing — it tended to shake his faith in miracles. He had just disproved one for himself, and it was tempting to imagine that all miracles had a similar foundation in wishful thinking. That cut at the base of all religion, and led to doubt and heresy, and from that to polygamy and unsound theories on the distribution of property, to the fires of the Inquisition and the flames of hell. He shuddered at the thought of the damnation of his soul, and clung to the yard in front of him, a little sick. The soldiers beside him were joking coarsely — their words came faintly to his ears as if from another room — about the naked women who were, they hoped, looking out at the ship from the island and awaiting their arrival. He tried to shake off his depression as he set himself to descend the shrouds.

  As his feet touched the deck he found himself face to face with Rodrigo Acevedo, the elder of the two brothers.

  “Well, Doctor?” said Rodrigo. He was a tall wiry man, of a bitter humor; his high arched nose and his flashing black eyes hinted at his Moorish blood, and he bore himself with an easy athleticism which made Rich conscious of his own ungainly plumpness, and this despite the fact that Rich had been at some pains to acquire that plumpness as increasing the dignity of a young doctor of law.

  “Well?” said Rich, defensively.

  “What do you think of the promised land?”

  “It looks green and fertile enough,” answered Rich, still defensive.

  “Did you see the great city of Cambaluc?”

  “No. That must lie more to the north and west.”

  “Yes. More to the north and west. How far? A hundred leagues? A thousand?”

  Rich was silent.

  “Five thousand, then?” sneered Acevedo.

  “Not so far,” said Rich, hotly.

  “And did you see the Great Khan putting off to welcome us in his gilded galleon?”

  “No,” said Rich. “We have come this far south so as to avoid the Great Khan’s dominions.”

  “We have avoided them in all conscience,” said Acevedo. “Did you see any mountains of gold?”

  “No,” replied Rich.

  “None? You are quite sure? Did you see any mountain with a triple peak?”

  “I went up the mast a long time after land was sighted,” said Rich, uneasily. “The appearances had changed by then.”

  “Yes,” sneered Acevedo again. “Doubtless they had.”

  “What do you think, then?” asked Rich, his dignity reasserting itself. He was tired of being teased.

  “I? I think nothing.”

  Acevedo’s mouth was distorted in a lopsided smile. Rich remembered what he had heard about Acevedo’s past — of the Inquisition’s descent upon the family of his betrothed; his prospective father-in-law had been burned at the stake in Toledo, and his prospective bride had been paraded in a fool’s coat to make a solemn act of contrition before disappearing for life into a dungeon where the bread and water of affliction awaited her. The Holy Office must have questioned Acevedo closely enough. He was wise not to think; he was wise to come here to the Indies where the Holy Office would not have its attention called to him again so easily.

  “That is sensible of you,” said Rich.

&nbs
p; Their eyes met, with a gleam of understanding, before Acevedo was called away by a group clustered forward.

  The backgammon boards were out, and the dice were already rattling there. Half the ship’s company had already recovered from the excitement of sighting land and had plunged again into the diversions which had become habitual during the long voyage. These people were indifferent to their fates, careless as to where they were going; and that was only to be expected, seeing that three quarters of them at least were on board either against their will or, like Acevedo, because Spain had grown too hot to hold them.

  It was like the first voyage over again, when the ships had to be manned by criminals and ne’er-do-wells. For the second voyage there had been no lack of money or of volunteers. Seventeen tall ships had sailed, with full complements, and a score of stowaways had been found on board after sailing, so great had been the eagerness to join, as a result of the marvelous stories the Admiral had brought back of the wealth and the marvels of the newly discovered lands. But during the years that followed bad news had drifted back across the ocean. The original garrison left in Española were all dead by the time the second expedition arrived, and death had followed death in terrifying succession. Death by disease, death by poisonous serpents, death even from the pointed canes which were all the weapons the Indians possessed. Then death by famine, death by the gallows after mutiny. The stories told by the broken men who were lucky enough to make their way back to Spain had discouraged the nation. The adventurous spirits now followed Gonsalvo de Cordoba to the conquest of Italy. King Ferdinand, struggling in the whirlpool of European affairs, had naturally been dubious about expending further strength on chimerical conquests. Twenty ships from the Basque ports had been necessary to convey the Princess Katharine and a suitable train to her wedding with the Prince of Wales. It was not surprising that compulsion was necessary to man the ships for this present third expedition.

  Rich remembered the sullen evidence given by the wretched survivors whom he had examined. Every man had cherished a grievance, mainly against the Admiral. It was Rich’s digest of the evidence which had influenced His Highness to dispatch a lawyer to the Indies to investigate. Rich told himself that, like the eagle in the fable, it was he himself who had winged the arrow of his fate.

  Chapter 3

  “By order of the Admiral!” announced the harsh voice of Alonso Perez in the stifling ’tween-decks. “All gentlemen on board the Holy Name will wear half-armor and swords today. By order of the Admiral!”

  It was nearly dawn, and still comparatively dark. The harsh voice awakened Rich from a tumultuous sleep; the heat and the excitement had kept him awake most of the night. He sat up on his chaff mattress in his shift and listened to the yawns and groans around him. Someone pulled the deadlight away from the scuttle and let in a little more light and a whiff of fresher air, the sky visible through the hole was a rich dark blue. Twenty tousled men were stretching and rubbing their eyes, their hair and beards in disorder. Some were experimentally running their tongues over their palates, savoring the foul taste in their mouths resulting from a night in the poisonous atmosphere of the ’tween-decks.

  He got to his knees — the deck above was too low to admit of standing, with the ’tween-decks floored with chests — rolled up his mattress and straggled to open the chest beneath it. Cristobal García lay next to him, against the bulkhead; he was big and burly and bearded to the eyes and clearly in a bad temper, An unexpected movement of the ship caught Rich off his balance and rolled him against García, who growled like a wounded bear.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Rich, hastily.

  He tugged the heavy bundle of his armor out of the chest and allowed the lid to fall with a crash. García yelped at the noise in his ear.

  “God, what a devilish din!” he said. He got onto his elbow and eyed Rich sardonically. “So our little fat doctor of law becomes a soldier today?”

  “The Admiral’s orders,” said Rich.

  “The Admiral can work miracles by his orders, apparently,” growled García.

  Rich kept his mouth shut. It saved trouble, although he could have replied that he was entitled to wear the gentlemanly sword although he was merely a vintner’s son; half the artisans of Catalonia could do so — much to the amusement of fine gentlemen — thanks to the peculiar laws of the kingdom. He comforted himself with the thought that although not yet forty he already accumulated more wealth than was owned by all segundones — younger sons — in this crowded space put together. He had acquired it honestly, too, and with no advantage over them save a good education. In the whole fleet he was perhaps the only man who had not been driven by necessity to join, the only man save the Admiral who had already made a name for himself in his own walk of life.

  Yet it was cold comfort, all the same. He could not meet them in the lists, which was the only kind of argument they understood, he had never seen a battlefield, he could only just manage to sit a horse. More important still, they were completely convinced of their superiority over him in consequence of their ancestry. In their eyes he was hardly more of an equal than, say, an ape or a mule. Without one hundred and twenty-eight quarterings of nobility he could no more reckon himself their equal than he could reckon himself the equal of the archangels of God.

  It was quite an athletic feat to wriggle into clothes and armor under the low deck while crouched on his mattress. He was sweating profusely by the time the leather coat and breeches were on, and the back and breastplates buckled about him. He grabbed his sword and his helmet and scrambled out, bent double.

  There was the dull gleam of armor to be seen everywhere about the ship. He put on his helmet and felt its unaccustomed weight upon his forehead. He slung his sword by its broad leather belt over his shoulder and saw to it that its hilt was clear. The deck was crowded with crossbowmen in helmets and jerkins, and spearmen with helmets and leather shields. On the forecastle the bombardier and his two mates were cleaning the two swivel cannons ready for use. They had a barrel of gunpowder and a chest full of their enormous bullets, each nearly the size of a man’s fist. The six handgunmen were aft, by the taffrail, each with his ponderous weapon and his rest. Of a certainty, it was all extremely impressive, and grew more so each minute as the hidalgos came crawling out of the ’tween-decks in helmet and armor. No embassy from the shore could fail to be struck by all this display.

  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 th
ey 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?”