The Islands of Unwisdom

by Robert Graves

  After matins the next morning, Matia went to Sebastian, where he sat at breakfast with his associates, and asked: ‘Is it true, soldier, that you wish to quit this place?’

  ‘Ah, welcome, comrade Matia! Will you sign our memorial?’

  ‘I’m no comrade of yours. I asked you a question and will have an answer: do you wish to quit?’

  ‘Why, certainly. What good can we accomplish here?’

  ‘The good we came to do; and if you dare to interfere with me or my friends, as God is my life, I’ll plunge my dagger into your heart! Keep your round robin to yourself, infamous washerwoman, or I’ll set a stinking seal on it.’

  Thenceforward they went after easier prey. One simple-minded soldier told me later: ‘They came into my tent and asked me whether I’d care to be back in Lima, drinking chicha with my sweetheart in the street behind the Cathedral. “Yes,” I said, “upon my word, so I would, comrades. I miss Teresa heartily.”

  ‘“Then sign your name to this paper,” said Federico Salas. “It’s a round robin.”

  ‘“What’s a round robin?” I asked.

  ‘“A circular charm,” he told me, “to give every man his heart’s desire.”

  ‘“I cannot write,” said I.

  ‘“That’s no odds,” he replied. “You can make your rubric at least.” So he signed my name for me and, to gain my heart’s desire, I scrawled my rubric underneath.

  ‘Federico then said: “Now that you have signed, my lad, you must keep your piece ready. And if trouble arises between the Colonel and the General’s kin, rally to the Colonel’s side like a good soldier. But you’re not to fire without orders.”

  ‘“When did I ever do that?” I asked. Then someone demanded whether my blood did not boil to see the General’s Lady carrying enough money on her fingers and around her neck to keep us merry and idle for two full years. I told him that I had never thought of it.

  ‘“Then think of it you must,” he said. “That woman was created for mischief. But our plans are ripening quickly. If anyone cares to stay here, he’s welcome. We’re eastward bound for Peru and liberty!”

  ‘“What does the Colonel say to all this?” I asked.

  ‘“Never mind about the Colonel,” said he. “You’ll be told what to do in good time. Are you with us, comrade?”

  ‘“If my officer gives me the order to embark and the Chief Pilot takes us,” I answered, “I’ll not lag behind.”

  ‘“To Hell with the Chief Pilot,” he said. “We don’t trust that hypocritical Portuguese. He’s in the General’s pocket. Martin Groc, the pilot of the galeot, is the man for us. He’ll run us ashore somewhere on the coast of Chile, and we’ll march inland to Potosi and make our fortunes there. No, we won’t risk touching a Peruvian port.”

  ‘“Then when shall I see my sweetheart again?” I asked.

  ‘“Oh, a pox on your sweetheart!” he cried. “You have signed the round robin, and that’s enough for one day.”’

  The whole affair was utterly confused. The Colonel knew nothing as yet of the memorial which, though demanding no more than the abandonment of the half-finished settlement, was generally interpreted in a much larger sense. The signatories expected that Don Alvaro would take it as a personal affront and come ashore to censure the Colonel for having connived at it. After an exchange of angry words and recriminations, the Barretos would try to arrest the Colonel; which would be the signal for their death. The General and his Lady, demanding vengeance, would then suffer the same fate; whereupon the Colonel, having no authority to found a colony, would be forced to lead the expedition home again.

  But all these were miscalculations, as will appear.

  Chapter 16

  THE COLONEL SPEAKS OUT

  Here my cart begins to stick fast, so clogged in the mire of intrigues, feuds, enmities and suspicions that I shall have a troublesome task to drive the wheels through to firm ground by heaving and hauling at the spokes.

  One afternoon the General suddenly decided to send the Chief Pilot back to Callao in the flagship; he was to carry the Viceroy a letter explaining why the Isles of Solomon had not yet been encountered—the reason Don Alvaro chose to give was that contrary winds had forced us off our course—and urgently imploring his help. If food, powder and tools were not sent us at once we must certainly perish, since without these we could neither maintain ourselves on Santa Cruz, nor continue our voyage to the Isles, nor even return to Peru. He dictated the despatch to me, very slowly to avoid errors, then signed and sealed it with trembling hands.

  ‘Do you wish me to summon the Chief Pilot?’ I asked.

  ‘There is no need,’ he replied. ‘I shall be conferring with him soon enough. Meanwhile you might do me the service of spreading the substance of this despatch. In particular I wish it to be known—for the sake of silencing jealous tongues—that not enough flour remains to keep us all at sea for more than a month at most, even on half-rations. Understand, I give you no authority to divulge secrets of state, but if you forget for once to keep your mouth shut, I shall be far from taking it amiss.’

  That evening I was seated in the Chart-room, when along came Ensign Tomás de Ampuero, who happened to be in command of the standing guard. ‘Do you keep any liquor hidden away, friend Andrés?’ he cried. ‘I haven’t a drop left to cheer my guts.’

  ‘Only a small bottle of aqua vitae,’ I replied, ‘laid by against sickness.’

  ‘Then for the love of the Virgin, open it,’ he said. ‘We’re all sick men here.’

  I poured him a noggin which he drank at a gulp. ‘More!’ he called, wiping his mouth. I poured him another, and he settled down to talk.

  ‘What’s new?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said I, ‘nothing whatever. All is old and threadbare. Except for one thing—but tell me, Don Tomás, can you keep a secret?’

  ‘There’s not a silenter man in the whole South Seas. You can take my word for that, Fat Cheeks.’

  ‘Well, then’, said I. ‘Strictly between you and me, the Chief Pilot is going back to Peru.’ I quoted a few phrases from the despatch.

  He flared up instantly, banging the table with his huge fist. ‘If your friend Pedro Fernandez thinks to play that game,’ he exclaimed with a foul oath, ‘the standing guard will give him checkmate. You may take it from me that he’ll never get the ship out of this bay; we would blow a hole in her bottom first. The General must be clean out of his wits. Aside from the folly of expecting fresh supplies of flour, beef and all the rest—his credit in Lima is more than exhausted—what in Satan’s name is the use of sending that crocodile to explain why the Isles haven’t been found? Who wants to find them now? From all I hear, they’re neither better nor worse than this God-forsaken land. And does the General really believe that Pedro Fernandez will take the ship to Callao, load her, turn her round, and bring her back again? By the blood of January, I wouldn’t, not if I were he: I’d never return to within a thousand leagues of this place. If he has the sense of a mouse, he’ll head east, not west, and join his Portuguese friends in the Moluccas. That’s what he was trying to do when we left the Marquesas Islands, until the General’s suspicions made him swing south again; and that’s how we sailed clear round the Isles of Solomon and came here instead.’

  I filled his cup again, though I grudged the waste of liquor. ‘Why, Don Tomás,’ I protested mildly, ‘you must not forget that our coming here is for the good of the natives. The King has ordered us to pacify and convert them, and it seems to me that we ought to obey. If Pedro Fernandez isn’t sent back—and he’s the only man capable of fulfilling the mission—how will the Viceroy ever learn of our straits and help us to carry on with our task?’

  His face went as red as a cinder. ‘The good of the natives!’ he spluttered. ‘Of those naked, black imbeciles! How can they be converted? You deceive yourself. Men who have once supped on human flesh are thrice damned and debarred for ever from the Eucharist; and the depraved taste persists. Like Saint George in the song: �
��As they were, so they are, and ever more shall be so.” Even if this were not so, why in Christ’s name should we be condemned to death for the sake of their salvation?’

  ‘Come, my friend,’ I said, a little sharply. ‘Every Christian who brings even a single soul to the font should count himself fortunate; and many of these Indians show a strong inclination to virtue—old Malope, for one.’

  ‘Malope, Malope, eh? I wish I could stuff as many good beefsteaks into my belly as that sly old wolf has stuffed whole men!’

  He put the bottle to his lips without so much as a ‘by your leave,’ and drained it. After he left me, I sat considering whether to report his words to the General. I had kept to the letter of my instructions, and come off the worse by nearly a pint of aqua vitae. I decided to tell only Pedro Fernandez, who had just come in.

  He heard me out calmly, but showed surprise both that the General had not yet informed him of his intentions, and that I had been so indiscreet as to broach them to the tall, tattling, Ensign.

  ‘You suspect me of an indiscretion?’ I asked, piqued in my pride.

  ‘Forgive me; I did not understand. But what can be the General’s object in spreading the news? We could never make that voyage, and he knows it.’

  ‘Don Alvaro has a very labyrinth of a mind,’ said I, ‘and sometimes, by taking one turn too many to the left or to the right, he loses himself in its dark corridors and comes to strange decisions.’

  He nodded agreement. ‘This is a bad business, Andrés Serrano, and what the end may be, God alone knows. But having allowed my resolution to weaken at Paita, when I had already taken my leave, I must now suffer the consequences. However, let me confess, that were the scene to be re-enacted, and had I fore-knowledge of all that has since happened, I should still be in two minds whether or not to repeat my error. Of late, Doña Ysabel has played the part of guardian angel with such gentleness and loving-kindness that it would be base ingratitude in me to regret that I am here to serve her.’

  He was blind to all her failings and schemings, and I had not the heart to disenchant him.

  Later that evening Don Alvaro told Pedro Fernandez in confidence of a warning which, he said, had just come in from a well-wisher: that a ship’s captain, he might not say which, was plotting to set sail one dark night and desert us. But lest it should be thought that any person in particular were suspected, all canvas, from the flagship as well as from the smaller vessels, must be unbent, taken ashore, and placed in the guard-house. Since Don Alvaro did not mention the despatch, Pedro Fernandez concluded that the Ensign’s drunken words had been overheard and reported, and that he himself, not Captain Corzo or Captain Leyva, was now under suspicion.

  ‘At your orders, Excellency,’ he answered, and glanced at Doña Ysabel, who darted him a covert smile of sympathy.

  The truth was that, not having been consulted about the despatch beforehand, she now pretended to Don Alvaro that she had doubts of Pedro Fernandez’s loyalty: an artifice which had the double object of disguising her passion for him and of holding him near her. I do not know what else she said: now that her design against the Colonel’s life was hampered by a fear of losing Pedro Fernandez’s good opinion, nobody could keep track of her lies, they were so many and devious. However, it was she who staged the set-piece in the camp which was intended to shock and startle Don Alvaro into taking summary vengeance on her enemy at last.

  At her insistence he went ashore next morning to restore order, and no sooner had he entered the camp gates than the three Barretos ran to meet him, sword in hand.

  ‘What does this mean, brothers?’ he asked in alarm.

  ‘What else but war?’ Don Lorenzo answered.

  ‘Yet I have been assured that the natives are in a fair way to pacification.’

  ‘That is so; those woolly black lambs hardly dare to bleat now, but the war is on our side of the picket-fence. Our lives are in danger.’

  ‘Explain yourself, pray!’

  ‘Not in the hearing of the soldiers. Question the Colonel if you will, not me; he is on his way here. He never cares what he says, or to whom, or in what company.’

  The Colonel sauntered up, and greeted Don Alvaro amiably with a magnificent sweep of his hat. ‘Welcome, your Excellency!’ said he. ‘It is well that you have at last deigned to visit your infant city which, though of swift and sturdy growth, has infinite trouble with its teething.’

  ‘So I am told: your company-officers even speak of civil war.’

  ‘Ha! So the geese are in that field?’ His hand went to his sword-hilt, ready to draw in a flash. ‘Then let me tell you that I know three rogues, three accursed, tale-bearing, lying rogues, who wish to involve me in a quarrel with you; and by God’s wounds, I’ll bear with them no longer! Pray, your Excellency, accept a warning, that if you either cannot or will not control them, one fine day they will be found hanging in a row from a branch, with purple faces and protruding tongues.’

  ‘To whom can you be referring, friend?’ asked Don Alvaro, feigning astonishment. He must have expected the Colonel to draw in his horns and say, as many another would have said in the circumstances: ‘I name no names, but by Our Lady, I have my suspicions, and I beg your Excellency to stop your ears against these calumnies’—which he would have countered with: ‘Pray keep your suspicions to yourself, Don Pedro Merino, until you can find just cause of complaint; when I shall give you the satisfaction that is your due.’

  Instead, the Colonel, with true Castilian candour, replied: ‘Very well, your Excellency, you force me to a public disclosure. I refer to that damned rogue, and that and that!’ And he pointed in turn at Don Lorenzo, Don Diego and Don Luis.

  The General was caught off his balance. ‘Alas, your lordship,’ he quavered. ‘You are mistaken, sadly mistaken.’ Though his lips continued to move, not another word came out and large tears ran down his cheeks and glistened in his beard. Had the Barretos then shown courage and leaped at the Colonel as one man, Doña Ysabel would have succeeded in her intentions, his murder passing for honest manslaughter in revenge for a triple insult; but Don Lorenzo looked to Don Luis, who in turn looked to Don Diego, who stood irresolute.

  The moment passed. Up ran the Colonel’s nephew who, seeing swords in the Barretos’ hands, drew his own and stepped in front of his uncle. The Colonel pulled him back by the collar of his coat. ‘Put up your blade, Jacinto, lad!’ he cried harshly. ‘That these Galician pot-boys have the ill manners to display naked steel in their General’s presence does not excuse the same in a person of birth and breeding.’

  Several other officers then approached, and he turned again to Don Alvaro. ‘Your Excellency does well to weep,’ he said. ‘By God, I should weep too, were I kin to such a mischievous crew of liars—cowards who would not dare steal a crumb from a cat, who seduce the common soldiery and go hand in glove with pirates and murderers.’ (Here he glowered at Captain Corzo, who stood beside the Barretos.) ‘With the sole exception of your Excellency, who towers head and shoulders above me, I care not a f—ted fig for any of your clan, from the greatest to the least. Henceforth, indeed, I shall treat them like the dirt under my feet, because they have not even had the spirit to uphold their honour like gentlemen. I shall say more: again with the exception of your Excellency and myself, there’s not an officer or soldier present who has the least desire or intention to stay in this island. It is I alone who keep them at their posts; and God knows that, but for me, your Excellency’s honour would lie in the dust. Who speaks of civil war? Criminals in the pay of your fine brothers-in-law have been peddling a memorial about the camp. Last night they tried to take revenge on certain old soldiers who would not sign it, by a dastardly raid on their quarters; but a dog gave the alarm and all took to their heels. At the same time three masked assassins’—and here he looked at the Barretos shrewdly up and down—‘tried to enter my house by way of the kitchen, but the negro came out against them with his axe and routed them. Well, what now, Sirrah?’

  He stood de
fiantly waiting for Don Alvaro’s reply; none came, but only more tears. The Barretos sheathed their swords with a single swish and snap, and led him away; while the Colonel returned with firm steps to supervise the troops who were raising an embankment beside the river.

  Don Alvaro presently recovered his spirits sufficiently to inspect the Church and the Residency, both nearly completed, also the kitchens, the work-shops, the guard-house, the store-huts and the other buildings. He praised the Barretos for their industry, awarding them all the credit for what had been well done and, after eating dinner in their hut, went with them to the embankment to watch the work.

  Sergeant Dimas saw him coming and ran forward to beg the favour of a private audience. The Colonel flamed up at this overt breach of discipline and yelled after him: ‘How dare you take such liberties, Sergeant? How dare you desert your post and wander off to address the General without my leave?’

  But he feigned deafness and stood bowing and scraping before the General.

  ‘Pray continue with the task you have in hand, Colonel,’ said Don Alvaro.

  The Colonel called his men to attention and doffed his hat, but complained in a loud aside to Captain Leyva who was with him: ‘Is this not an ugly sight? If any rascal may carry his complaints direct to the General, my men will lose all respect for me.’