SALVADOR ALEMAN: Not one of us will say no to that—if the General goes himself.
THE CHIEF PILOT: He cannot be expected to do so; his health is feeble and he dares not expose it to new risks. He and his Lady will stay here to animate you until the search vessel returns.
GIL MOZO, laughing loudly: Oh, isn’t he the cunning rogue? He persuades the General to load the galeot with our remaining stores and send him off to pilot her! Sailor, you stand self-convicted: tell me, if the wind blows fair for San Cristobal, how will you come back? With oars?
THE CHIEF PILOT, patiently: The General will send whom he pleases, and the search vessel, by continuous tacking, should be here again within a month. Whoever pilots the ship will, no doubt, be accompanied by some high officer—in whom the General trusts…
GIL MOZO: But who, being ignorant of navigation, can easily be hoodwinked!
A new crowd of soldiers arrive, released from night-guard. THE CHIEF PILOT calls for silence and delivers his speech with noble gestures: Gentlemen, hear me out! You are not the first subjects whom King Philip has sent on wearisome journeys to advance the frontiers of his vast realm. How often has a fistful of brave men held an entire province against the opposition of countless foes! Day and night they have defended lonely outposts against attack, thirsting, hungering and without rest: prepared to eat dogs and cats rather than disgrace the honour of Spain by surrender.
A VOICE: There are no dogs or cats here. Have we your honour’s permission to eat bats and rats instead? (Loud laughter.)
THE CHIEF PILOT, ignoring the interruption: They fought on with no hope of rewards—or none to equal those that here await us. There is no need to starve on Santa Cruz. The soil is rich, the seas teem with fish, the natives are generously inclined. We are the fortunate ones! How many thousands would give all they possess for the opportunity that is ours: to be pioneers in a rich, unknown land, to win fame and fortune by bold development of its resources! Let it never be said of us that we baulked at the ditch, or refused to leap the wall. Time is no matter. What odds, if we do not reach our destination before May?
FREDERICO SALAS: What odds, if we never do? What odds, if we choose to put to sea without waiting for next May?
THE CHIEF PILOT, with passion: Then we shall have earned infamy as traitors to God, to King Philip, to the General and, what will perhaps sting most, to ourselves!
Traitors to God: if on such tenuous grounds we abandon the lovely work of saving souls with which Our Saviour charged us, and leave in the clutches of the Devil those whom we set out to rescue.
Traitors to the King: if we desert a secure base from which we might stud his imperial crown with still richer jewels of discovery—for the vast Southern Continent of Austrialia lies at our doorstep.
Traitors to the General: who waited six-and-twenty years and sold all he had to equip this glorious enterprise.
Traitors to ourselves: because wherever we might sail we could not hope to escape the King’s vengeance. No civilized port within three thousand leagues acknowledges any sovereignty but his. If we forced the General to come with us, he would denounce us as mutineers to the nearest Royal Governor; if we marooned him here, news of his whereabouts would be demanded, and the truth exacted from us by the thumb-screw. We should be left to rot in prison for years, until the King had decided upon a punishment consonant with our treachery! (A hush.)
SERGEANT GALLARDO: Those are brave words, sailor. But it appears to me that the longer we stay, the worse our predicament. You admit that the ships’ rigging is two parts rotten. By May it will be wholly rotten, and the hulls so eaten away with teredo that they will founder at their moorings. We shall be trapped without hope of escape. And though, in God’s good time, His Majesty may graciously remember us and send a vessel to our rescue, what chance have we of being found? No one knows where to look for us, and it is plain that the General himself does not know where we are. There is nothing for it but to sail at once, taking all the ships and as many of the able-bodied men as our supplies permit.
THE CHIEF PILOT: Do you expect us to leave our women, children and old people behind?
SERGEANT GALLARDO: Yes, if need be. The priests can protect them until our return.
THE CHIEF PILOT: There speaks the careless bachelor! And where should we go? To New Spain? The General took that route on his first voyage but, as the survivors will tell you, he sailed early in August and did not make port until late January, suffering terrible hardships on the way and losing scores of men from starvation.
SERGEANT GALLARDO: No, not to any port of the New World. Let it be the Philippines. Martin Groc says that they are only half the distance away, and that the winds would favour us.
THE CHIEF PILOT: That voyage also has its difficulties. We cannot count on finding a chain of islands that will supply us with water and fresh food. And in any case we must wait until a last search has been made for the Santa Ysabel. If she is found, there will be no need to send for tools and powder.
SERGEANT GALLARDO: And if she isn’t found? What then? Our one hope is to make for the Philippines. For water, let us seize a few canoes, fill them, plank them over, and caulk them well.
THE CHIEF PILOT: How would you get them into the hold? On deck the water would soon rot.
SERGEANT GALLARDO: Then use coconuts or joints of cane.
THE CHIEF PILOT: So ho! Ten thousand coconuts and a thousand joints of cane; which the sailors would have to collect, trim and fill, because soldiers consider such tasks beneath their dignity! And what about provisions?
SERGEANT GALLARDO: We could make shift with native food—yam-biscuit and pork for the most part. There are still hundreds of villages where we haven’t yet foraged.
THE CHIEF PILOT: And what assurance have you that your biscuit will not corrupt as quickly as the pork?
SERGEANT GALLARDO: We will take that risk.
APPLAUSE and CRIES of: To the Philippines!
FEDERICO SALAS: The city of Manila is civilized!
THE CHIEF PILOT: Yes, thanks to the stout hearts who founded it two generations ago! But is it not far better to stay in Santa Cruz, and rival them in riches and honour, than trail off with sheathed sword and sloped arquebus?
FEDERICO SALAS: Where the King and the Pope live, there is honour; not in Manila, still less here.
THE CHIEF PILOT: We are wasting words. Come, gentlemen, reconsider your views, and if you have a petition to make, submit it in the proper manner through your officers. The General will not stop his ears to just complaints; but he has been greatly offended by news of a round robin that has been circulating…
A VOICE from behind a tree-fern: At the instigation of his double-dealing Lady and her cowardly brothers!
THE CHIEF PILOT: That is an infamous lie. Who dares to traduce Doña Ysabel?
THE VOICE again: Long live the Colonel! Death to the Barretos!
THE CHIEF PILOT: There speaks the tongue of mutiny.
SEBASTIAN LEJIA: Oh, leave the fool to his preaching, comrades! Anyone who cares to stay is welcome; but we’re resolved to go, and nobody shall stop us.
SEBASTIAN LEJIA, FEDERICO SALAS, SALVADOR ALEMAN, GIL MOZO and the other original signatories of the round robin run off to their huts and presently return with their swords, whispering fiercely together.
FEDERICO SALAS: There stands the man who brought us here, and by all the angels in Heaven, doesn’t he deserve to die?
SEBASTIAN LEJIA: I, for one, would gladly drink from his skull.
The veteran MATIA PINETO crouches down behind SEBASTIAN, whom his confederate JUAREZ MENDÉS suddenly pushes in the chest. He tumbles backwards. MATIA and JUAREZ quickly disarm him.
SEBASTIAN LEJIA: Help, comrades, help! God confound you, Matia! Give back my sword! I’ll be even with you one dark night!
MATIA PINETO: Steady, lads! The first fellow who interferes, I’ll stick him like a hog.
(They fall back sullenly.)
(To THE CHIEF PILOT): Pray forgive the interruption, yo
ur honour. It was only the washerwoman being sent about her business.
THE CHIEF PILOT: I thank you, soldier, but I have done. God save the King!
(A tucket sounds. Exeunt omnes with cheers and counter-cheers.)
Chapter 18
A FORAGE WITH MALOPE
When the Colonel heard that Pedro Fernandez had gone to the Churchyard to address the troops there, he was on the point of calling out the guard to disperse the meeting; but Juan de Buitrago dissuaded him. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘would that not be to play into the hands of your enemies? The Chief Pilot claims to be an emissary of Don Alvaro’s. With all respect, I counsel you to lodge your protest at the Great Cabin before you take action ashore.’
‘By God, you are right,’ said the Colonel. ‘I’ll go at once.’
‘May I be permitted to escort your lordship?’ asked the Ensign. ‘The Barretos might be lying in ambush.’
‘No, by your leave, I’ll take Carlotta. She’s a very terror to rats.’
I heard the sequel from one of the pages. Doña Ysabel ran to the Great Cabin, crying: ‘Good news! The Colonel is delivered into our hands. He’s on his way here in the skiff, alone, without even his negro to protect him. Quick, my lord, call for the Boatswain and tell him to tie a noose at the end of a long rope and have six men ready below the mizzen-mast!’
‘No, my lady, no!’ said Don Alvaro. ‘That would not agree with my honour. Had he brought his friends with him, the horse would be of a different colour. But since he comes alone, I dare not offer him violence: besides, I have not yet sufficient evidence that he is fomenting mutiny. Be patient only a little longer and let us hear what he has come to say.’
‘Have you so soon forgotten his threats against your life and mine, and the lives of my brothers? Leave the task to a Barreto, my lord, since you dare not despatch him yourself. I will strike him down myself.’ She snatched a chopper from its hook beside the fireplace.
‘Put that back, my lady,’ he said, ‘if you wish to keep my love.’
Almost at once the Colonel entered, and the conference took place behind closed doors. Here the strand of my story is broken; but it is known that he returned cheerfully to the camp, the bloody climax of the feud once more postponed.
He arrived at the gates as the meeting broke up. Disregarding the Chief Pilot, who offered him a courteous salute, he shouted to the troops: ‘Stand fast there, my lads, I have a message for you from the General!’
At the sound of his voice, the Ensign-Royal and Tomás de Ampuero came out of their tent. ‘Get the men into their ranks, Don Toribio,’ the Colonel ordered. ‘Christ save me, how my belly ached as I came up from the beach! The rogues were crowding around that sailor like women in the market-place haggling over a great codfish. And you, Don Tomás, pray fetch him back; I want him to hear what I say.’
Pedro Fernandez and I turned about and stood a little apart, while the troops were marshalled in threes and called to attention. The Colonel went down the lines, followed by the ensigns. Finding seven men armed with swords, which was against the standing orders of the camp, he swore roundly and sent them under escort to the guard-house, there to await a flogging.
He glanced scornfully at the Chief Pilot, as if to say: ‘Watch me, and learn how to address troops!’, and then began in a rasping voice:—
‘Gentlemen, I’ll not waste my time or yours with flatulent oratory, but give you the gist of the matter in three words. It has come to the General’s notice that you’re discontented, that you dislike this island, and that you want to go to a better. SILENCE IN THE RANKS THERE!’
He paused, glaring at them and, when all was quiet, proceeded:
‘The General accused you of being mutineers, but I defended you. I told him that you had neither mutinied nor shown signs of doing so. “Mutiny,” said I, “is when troops run amok with drawn swords, crying: ‘Death to the rogues!’ That will never happen while Pedro Merino is in command,” I said. “Thank you, my lord,” he replied. “I love those who come out frankly on my side.” “And I thank your Excellency,” said I, “for your declaration of trust.” Then he informed me that you had written down your grievances, and that if the document were presented to him in the proper way, namely through your company officers and myself, he would give it his earnest consideration—as was his duty.
‘Well, gentlemen, let your officers have the paper, and if it is drawn up in suitable terms, I shall transmit it to him. Meanwhile, let no soldier under my command, whatever his rank, utter a single word that smells of disrespect or, by God’s bones, I’ll hang him higher than Haman, though he were my dearest friend; the General’s honour, and with it that of our good King, has been entrusted to me. But, hark ye to a word of warning! Spies and tale-bearers abound—I need not name them—who call me traitor because I speak up for you and swear that you’re honest men. Some, whispering behind their hands, even charge me with inciting you to rebel—as though I would stoop to so nasty a crime, or as though you would listen if I did. Beware of the sneaking rascals!
‘One last thing: before we can consider leaving these shores, all the islands near by must be searched for the Admiral’s ship. To do otherwise would be cowardly, her commander being a bold and much-maligned nobleman, and her men our comrades and brothers.
‘Now, if you have any questions prepared, out with them!’
One shouted one thing; another shouted another. He silenced them with a roar, swearing that he had not a hundred tongues to answer a hundred foolish questions thrown at him simultaneously.
Don Tomás then stepped forward to ask whether he might speak first. The request being granted, he said: ‘Some of us, your lordship, don’t trust the Chief Pilot to go in search of the Santa Ysabel. If I undertook the mission myself, could I count on your lordship’s support?’
The Colonel looked him quizzically up and down. ‘It is comical enough,’ he said at last, ‘when a sailor harangues the troops like Alexander his Macedonians—but when a soldier plays the sailor…’ The rest was lost in general laughter.
‘Let the Colonel go himself!’ cried Sergeant Gallardo.
‘What? I?’ he exclaimed with a grimace. ‘I cannot tell port from starboard, and the very sight of an astrolabe makes my head spin round. Yet someone must go; and whoever is chosen must be a man of confidence.’
At this, Pedro Fernandez asked leave to speak to the Colonel in private; the Ensign-Royal searched his clothes for concealed weapons and finding none, brought him forward. ‘Don Pedro,’ he said, ‘being no less loyal to our King than your lordship is, and as ready to lay down my life for him, I have listened to you with joy. Yet I take it ill that you have permitted Don Tomás to speak of me as though I were a traitor.’
The Colonel apologized handsomely and in the hearing of all. ‘I thank you, Sir, for your goodwill, and beg pardon for the injury of which you complain. We have had our differences, but though I often question your prudence, your loyalty I have never doubted. You say you are ready to die for King Philip; why, so am I, by the bowels of Christ! Your hand on that, Don Pedro! So long as I serve His Majesty, I care not a snap of my fingers what my end may be.’ They clasped hands, and the troops cheered.
Thus the rift between the two services was at last repaired, and had it not been for Doña Ysabel’s unappeasable rancour, all might yet have gone well with us. The unrest of the troops sprang solely from their sense of discord in high places, but for which Sebastian Lejia and his rascally friends would never have made a single convert to their way of thinking.
We took leave of the Colonel and returned to the flagship, where Pedro Fernandez happily assured Don Alvaro that the troops were now amenable to discipline and that the Colonel, though vexed at what had been said against him, showed no disloyalty.
Doña Ysabel, seeing that her position had sensibly weakened, resolved that it must be now or never. She followed Pedro Fernandez to the Chart-room and said in the sweetest manner imaginable: ‘Dear friend, you have done Don Alvaro and me a servi
ce today for which we will always be grateful. Would you do me another?’
‘I am your devoted servant,’ said he, with visible emotion, kissing the hand she held out. ‘Only command me!’
‘Then ask my husband’s permission to take the long-boat in the morning and collect food from the villages beyond the usual range of forage. If you can bring back half a boat-load of pork, nuts, biscuit and the like, it will smooth his path when he goes ashore to arrange matters to his liking—which will be in two days’ time, if God wills.’
‘I am always at your call,’ he answered.
‘Ah!’ she sighed. ‘Had I but more friends of your mettle, I should be happy indeed…. And Andrés shall go with you. The General is taking a purge tonight and will not need him tomorrow.’
‘Am I to be given troops?’
‘As many as you ask.’
Her plan was to keep him out of the way—and myself too, as the chronicler of the expedition—while she took her revenge on the Colonel.
The General gave Pedro Fernandez his consent, the Colonel accommodated him with a sergeant and twenty men, and we embarked next day, about an hour after breakfast. We rowed past Malope’s village, waving in salutation, and continued for another half-league until we came to a group of canoe-houses. There we hailed some men who were building a war-canoe, but they ran off shouting. After a short deliberation we landed and entered the village that lay near, from which the inhabitants had fled, leaving behind only one lame man and a child disfigured with ringworm. The pen before the Chieftain’s house was empty of pigs, and though we might have climbed into the cock-lofts and helped ourselves to the villagers’ yams and coconuts, it was pork that we most needed. Setting four arquebusiers to guard our boat, the Chief Pilot led the way up a path that, winding inland, promised to bring us to the yam-gardens. He warned the soldiers to carry their pieces at the ready.
This was my first passage through virgin forest, and its grandeur overawed me. The older trees were immensely thick and tall, their tops arching one hundred and fifty feet above our heads and shutting out the sun, their boles smothered with ferns and creepers. Not a breath of wind stirred as we went forward, but all was damp and oppressive, smelling of decay, and the green light sicklied our cheeks. Some trees had flung out drooping branches at the height of a house, which took instant root where they touched the earth and formed substantial buttresses. Others were set about, half-way up, with pendant fronds of fern. Fearing snakes, we stamped the ground as we walked, to scare them; but saw none. No fruit offered itself for the plucking, and no flowers bloomed, except at one blessed spot where a towering almond-tree had fallen and, bringing down others in its ruin, had let in the sunshine. Here a small herd of pigs crossed our path, crashing into the undergrowth before we had time to fire. Otherwise the forest seemed untenanted, though we heard countless pigeons cooing unseen in the branches high aloft. When we had marched for ten minutes or more, daylight shone at last at the end of our leafy tunnel and we came upon the gardens, laid out on the slope of a hill. These also were deserted, and we stood at a loss, wondering where to try next, until presently we heard the report of an arquebus, and then another, whereupon we returned at a run, cursing and gasping for breath.
The Islands of Unwisdom Page 28
