“I have the Admiral’s order,” said Rich, “to spend four days if necessary seeking a passage.”
“We will need every minute of four days,” said Osorio, in an elaborately neutral tone. “Four weeks, or four months. You do not find rivers this size on a small island.”
“I am afraid so,” said Rich. “But we can at least report to the Admiral whether it is possible for a force to get up into the interior of the island this way.”
“Yes, sir,” Osorio, noncommittally, and they plodded on in silence.
The rapid when they reached it was clearly a difficult one. Flat grey rocks showed everywhere above the surface of the water, which swirled sullenly round them. Upstream, as far as their vision extended, the rocks were to be seen scattered over the river. Here and there they were so thick that the water came tumbling through the gaps in cataracts.
“M’m,” said Osorio. “A league of broken water. I can tell you this, sir. It would take the twenty men we have with us now a week at least to drag the longboat up there.”
“Thank you,” said Rich. “That was what I had to find out. We must go back and look for another passage.”
“We must,” said Osorio.
Yet Rich lingered for a while longer beside the rushing water, reluctant to turn back; he was surprised at himself, both for this unexpected yearning to push on, to explore, to make discoveries, and at his disappointment at having to retrace his steps. Osorio waited patiently until at last he made up his mind to return to the boat. Rich was silent as they walked back, puzzling over this unexpected development in himself, and Osorio’s sudden remark roused him with a jerk.
“The gentlemen are hunting again,” Osorio said.
Halfway between them and the boat lay three bulky shapes sunning themselves on the sand — iguanas, like the ones they had disturbed on their passage up the river in the boat. Half a dozen gentlemen were stealthily approaching them over the sand, García, conspicuous in his glittering helmet, in the lead. Their cautious movements brought them to within a score of yards of the creatures while Rich and Osorio were still a hundred yards away, in the opposite direction. Rich watched one of the men kneel and aim with a crossbow; the faint clatter of the released steel reached Rich’s ears over the heated sand.
From then on events moved rapidly. Two of the creatures vanished into the river; García, leaping forward with a rope, noosed the third before it could escape. A whirl of the brute’s tail sent him flying, but the others grabbed the end of the rope and hauled manfully, while the one with the crossbow was frantically working his windlass. The iguana, oddly agile for a thing so deformed, made at the prostrate García with open mouth, but the drag of the rope just deflected him and García was barely able to roll out of reach of the snapping jaws.
Rich and Osorio came running up to see the fun, but Rich stopped appalled at the spectacle of mad ferocity exhibited by the iguana. This was no harmless tree lizard to fall a victim to the sticks and stones of naked savages; it was a ton weight of hideous strength. Its jaws were frightening and its lashing tail a formidable weapon. Coursing through Rich’s mind, like a river in spate, came a torrent of recollections of what he had heard and read of the crocodile of the Nile. This was more like a crocodile than anything he had imagined. Its left foreleg was crippled by the crossbow bolt driven deeply into it, to which fact perhaps García owed his life, but it was still lively enough and fierce enough to face eight men with every chance of success despite the noose round its neck.
With a whirl of oaths Osorio snatched the knife from his belt and sprang forward into the fray while Rich stood rooted to the sand, his hand clutching the hilt of his undrawn sword. As he slowly pulled out the weapon a sudden swerve on the lizard’s part swept off their feet the men at the end of the rope. They tumbled in the sand, and the beast, after a futile snap at the rope, caught sight of Rich and rushed straight at him. Rich still stood fascinated for a second by its little dead eyes, which yet were so malignant; the shouts of the others reached his ears so faintly that he hardly heard them. Yet his mind was racing; he knew in that moment that if he ran away, as his every instinct dictated, he would forfeit any regard which the others, thanks to Acevedo, might feel for him. He changed his movement for flight into a clumsy evasion of the rush, and swung his sword frantically at the brute’s head; he felt and heard the blade ring loudly on the bone. Three times he slashed; it seemed like a long minute that he was at grips with the thing. A crossbow bolt whizzed harshly past him — apparently the gentleman with the crossbow had taken a hurried and ineffective aim for his second shot.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly the brute, as it swung round, turned over onto its back, revealing its whitish belly; the others had grabbed the rope again, which, passing under its body, had twisted round its right foreleg. The thing squirmed insanely for a second or two while Rich slashed again; García was beside him now, slashing too. Rich saw the pale green-grey belly gape widely in a red wound. As it righted itself, the creature’s tail knocked García violently against him, but in an instant of time, as he reeled, he saw a hind leg within the sweep of his sword, and he slashed once more. There was a thrill as the blade bit deep; Rich had the gratifying feeling that the muscles of his back and loins — all his strength — had been behind that blow. Red blood spouted in a dark trail over the sand from beneath the animal. The rush the thing was about to make at Osorio was crippled and disjointed, and a fresh drag upon the rope flung it on its side.
Moret was here now, sword in hand too. He plunged the weapon deep into the thing’s side behind the foreleg, and the other men dropped the rope and came running in, plucking out their swords. The thing died under the sword blades, its huge jaws still snapping together with a ringing sound, and the mad yelling — they had all apparently been shouting at the tops of their voices — died away as they looked at each other across the corpse.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Osorio solemnly. He stood dagger in hand and looked round at the sweating gentlemen, at the torn-up sand with its bloodstains, and the dead lizard.
“Did you say the Indians kill these things?” asked João de Setubal of García; the latter was cautiously feeling the bruises on his thigh.
“Smaller ones. I said smaller ones, before we attacked it.”
“I should well think so,” said João.
“And you say you have eaten their flesh?” asked another. “Jesus, how the thing stinks!”
It stank indeed; their nostrils were assailed with the foul musky stench which arose from the corpse.
“This is more like a crocodile of the Nile,” said Rich, and there was a murmur of agreement as they recognized the likeness.
“The brute is armored with scales,” said García by way of diversion. “Is the armor proof against a sword blade?”
He thrust with all his strength at the armored back; the sword point pierced the hide with difficulty and sank into the flesh below. At the prick of the steel the dead thing twitched convulsively, causing a roar of laughter. They all hastened to prick at the brute with their swords, but the life of the thing — the half life of the dead organism — was ebbing fast and hardly a movement rewarded their efforts. Alfonso de Avila came up with the crossbow, and shot it off into the soft underpart of the tail, but the only response was a languid flap.
“That’s a better shot than your last one,” said García, rounding on him. “I’ll swear it went within a yard of me — and Don Narciso here, it must have gone past his ear. It did, Don Narciso, did it not?”
“Maybe so,” said Rich as indifferently as he could manage. He had no wish to be involved in any controversy.
“I hit the brute well enough with my first shot,” retorted Avila hotly. “Look, you can see the bolt still in the bone. I was the first of us to wound it.”
There might have been a quarrel if Moret had not intervened.
“It was Don Narciso who first struck it with steel,” he said.
“By God, that is so!” said Osorio. “I hea
rd the sword ring against the thing’s head.”
“It is for Don Narciso to claim the kill, then,” said Moret.
In the tradition of the chase, the honor of the kill in the case of dangerous game went to the man who first set steel in the quarry.
“Yes,” said João de Setubal in his half-intelligible Portuguese. “And look at that hind leg! I saw him strike that blow myself.”
The creature’s left hind leg was cut nearly through close to the body, hanging merely by a bit of hide.
“A good blow, that,” said Osorio.
They all looked at Rich; he felt himself blushing in the hot sunlight.
“Gentlemen,” he said feebly, and then experience in court loosened his tongue and found him words to say, despite his embarrassment. “It was the efforts of all of us that killed this crocodile. There was the crossbow bolt which crippled its foreleg. There was the skill and courage of Don Cristobal, who dropped the noose over its head. There was our worthy boatswain, who came rushing into battle with no more than a dagger. There were the intelligent men who dragged at the rope at exactly the right moment. Why, gentlemen, there is no need for us to dispute for honor.”
They murmured in pleased agreement at that; they all had a better opinion of themselves now, and there were no hard feelings. It was odd, the influence trifles had over the hot-blooded gentlemen.
Chapter 9
A fresh distraction came when one of the seamen cried out that a canoe was approaching. Every eye turned down the river; they could see the canoe paddling briskly against the current towards them. The sun flashed on the paddle blades. Rich walked to the water’s edge and waved a welcome, and the canoe came steadily on towards them until it grated on the sand and the five Indians in it stepped out and lifted it — it was a tiny, cranky thing — beyond the water. The Indians wore cloaks of white cotton, and aprons of the same material. They were handsome, of the palest copper color, and with long straight hair hanging to their shoulders.
What Rich noticed specially was their lack of surprise at finding the white men here; he decided immediately that they had been watching them for some time, probably from across the river. The initial shyness displayed by the Indians of Trinidad was wanting; immediately after salutations with raised hands they came forward and examined the Spaniards as curiously as the Spaniards examined them. The Spaniards’ clothing and armor and beards came in for specially close study; the two older Indians displayed a curious tendency to smell at the things that excited their curiosity, lifting the sleeve of Rich’s coat to their noses in turn. They all fingered García’s polished steel helmet — Rich guessed that the sight of it, glittering across the water, had been the cause of considerable argument among them. They stood in a group and admired the longboat, marveling at its size and its accessories and at the cunning way in which the planks were joined together — their own wretched boat was made of a single piece of wood and had hardly three inches of freeboard.
Three of them wore thin metal collars — half the Spaniards hurriedly called Rich’s attention to them — which seemed to be of pale gold, but Rich forbore, to offer to barter for them until their curiosity might be satisfied. With inquiring looks and beckoning gestures they walked away from the longboat towards the dead lizard, confirming Rich’s theory that they had been studying the Spaniards’ actions from across the water, and they stood and stared at the dead body with ejaculations of wonder. García approached them and pointed to it.
“Iguana?” he said inquiringly, and, when they only looked puzzled, he repeated the word, varying the intonation. “Iguana? Iguana?”
A look of understanding came over their faces and they made emphatic gestures of negation.
“Caiman,” said one, and then, pointing to the trees, “Iguana.”
He helped his meaning out with more gestures; clearly the iguanas who lived in trees were vastly different creatures from the caimans who lived in rivers.
“Eat caiman?” asked García. He pointed to the body and then to his mouth and then rubbed his belly.
The gestures of dissent were still more emphatic now; they made wry faces and held their noses. One of them, too, made all the gestures of fear, pretending to run away, and holding his hands to represent the snapping jaws of the caiman. That brought them back to their wonder that this ferocious animal had been killed at all. They marveled loudly at the severed hind leg, and one of them turned to García in an attempt to discover the magic means by which such a blow had been dealt. Politely he put out his hand to García’s sword hilt — he must have seen swords drawn already. García pulled the weapon from its sheath.
“Hey! Careful!” said García; the Indian had grasped the blade with his bare hand. García’s involuntary gesture and the Indian’s withdrawal between them gashed the palm — fortunately not deeply; the Indian looked with amazement at the blood, while García was voluble in apology and prodigal of gesture. But the Indian only smiled and shut his fist upon the cut; from the chattering that went on it was apparent that they were explaining to each other that a weapon which could cut at a touch could sever a caiman’s leg at a blow.
Rich judged it to be as well to be conciliatory. He produced some of the trade goods with which the longboat had been supplied, and jingled a hawk’s-bell enticingly. There was just the same awe and delight displayed at the gifts as Rich had seen on the first occasion. He tapped at one of the collars of gold, and without a moment’s hesitation the Indian unsnapped it from his neck and thrust it into his hand. It was harder and tougher than pure gold would have been; it was clearly an alloy, but its weight demonstrated that it must contain a large proportion of gold. Rich tried to display in dumb show great affection for the gold, and pointed inquiringly to the horizon. Instantly the Indian pointed south, with many words and gestures. Rich caught one word — “Guanin.”
“Guanin?” he said.
“Guanin,” said the Indian, tapping the collar.
They knew now the Indian word for ‘gold’. The two other collars were put into Rich’s hands without his even asking for them. These uncultured folk clearly were possessed of the instinct to present strangers with whatever they desired. One of them began a new pantomime, pointing to his mouth, pointing to the whole group of Spaniards, and then, in a wide gesture, away across the river.
“He’s inviting us to dinner,” said García.
“I fancy so,” said Rich. “He wants to take us to his village.”
He nodded in acceptance, and with little more ado the matter was settled satisfactorily. They pushed the longboat out from its mooring place and pulled after the canoe, which preceded them down the river with the Indian in the stern looking anxiously back at them and calling to see that they understood what they had to do. His gesture towards the setting sun indicated his wish to arrive at their destination before nightfall.
The current bore them down the river, while they quartered steadily across. Down where the delta began, the canoe turned abruptly into a side channel, which led them into a broader arm again, where trees grew with their feet in the water. It was not very far up here; the forest receded from the riverbank leaving a wide clearing. Four more canoes floated moored to the bank, and a little crowd of Indians stood at the landing place to welcome them, men, women, and children, some in cotton aprons, many of them naked, and all of them chattering and laughing with pleasure at the success of their embassy in inducing these strangers to visit them.
Everything was on a much larger scale here than in Trinidad, as Rich saw when he mounted the bank with the others bustling like schoolboys behind him. The clearing was wider, and there were obvious patches of cultivated crops; Rich’s attention was caught by the yellow hue of corn — presumably that strange golden Indian corn which he had heard about from Spaniards returned from Española. The Indians were laughing and chattering around them, leading them towards the leaf-built huts grouped to one side. It was a sort of triumphal procession, the naked children scampering in front of them, the adults leading the
Spaniards by the hand, while the original party which had found them talked loudly to everyone, apparently telling of all the extraordinary things these strangers could do. There was plenty of laughter, shouts of it — while the Indians had to stop in their progress more than once while they all clasped their midriffs and doubled up with mirth.
“You left no guard on the boat, sir,” muttered Osorio to Rich. He made a strange spectacle when Rich looked at him, his hat pulled awry and a naked girl clasping each arm; they had stuffed a handful of scarlet flowers into the breast of his leather coat. It was with a shock that Rich remembered that he had indeed neglected the precaution suggested by Osorio — nothing of the sort had occurred to him at all.
“No guard is necessary,” he said; he meant it, and yet he would have posted a guard if it had occurred to him.
“They might steal the boat’s gear,” suggested Osorio.
“No,” said Rich. “Oh, no.”
He was absolutely certain that these people would not steal; when the matter was presented to him as bluntly as that he realized that there was certainly no need to leave a guard with the boat.
To the Indies Page 10
