The Islands of Unwisdom

by Robert Graves

  Yet Damian had the last word. ‘Your worship,’ he said, ‘even a landsman can see at a glance that we are loyal subjects of King Philip: the patched and cobbled state of our ship is eloquent of duty laboriously performed, and this despite the negligence and cruelty of our betters in the aftercastle.’

  For lack of evidence, he and the Boatswain were discharged with a reprimand. Pedro Fernandez, however, was marched off to Cavite gaol, where the Warden on hearing from the Duty-officer, with whom he was acquainted, that his prisoner was the most deserving of men fed him at his own table and freely supplied him with clothes, shoes and all other necessities.

  As Doña Ysabel disembarked, walking queenly between two high clerics, another salute of guns greeted her. She was invited to a banquet at the town hall and in the evening conveyed by state-barge to Manila, splendidly illuminated in her honour; there the ailing Governor-General and his Lady entertained her in their mansion as though she were of royal blood.

  Her position being now assured, and her reputation further enhanced by the wonderful story which Don Diego had put about, how she had brought the ship safely into port despite a disobedient pilot and a mutinous crew, only one anxiety remained: she feared that Doña Mariana’s letter might be conveyed to the Governor-General and prove her undoing. With a pretence of magnanimity, she therefore obtained an order for Pedro Fernandez’s release; but the Warden himself escorted him to the Convent of San Domingo in Manila, lest he should meet with an accident by the way, as happened to the luckless Captain Lopez on the Galban road.

  I alone knew the whereabouts of the letter and, having recovered a little strength, I walked out from the house of my generous cousin, the Advocate Don Esteban Serrano, with whom I was lodged, and arranged a meeting between Doña Ysabel and Pedro Fernandez in the cloisters of San Domingo. I could count on Myn’s attendance: he accompanied her everywhere, axe on shoulder, like a dark shadow and foil to her beauty.

  The meeting was agreed for noon, and when I arrived Pedro Fernandez was composedly waiting for me. Fray Diego de Soria, the Prior and an old acquaintance, stood by his side; but Doña Ysabel came above half an hour late, which was her privilege as a noblewoman.

  When civilities had been exchanged, I wasted no time and spoke up plainly: ‘My lady,’ said I, ‘Sergeant Dimas, before he died of hunger among the Barbudos, made me promise to do him a service as soon as might be convenient after our safe landing here. Pray, Myn, lend me your axe!’

  With my dagger I pried a stopper of wood from the butt, then a good deal of wax, and finally shook out a thin roll of parchment, addressed to the Chief Pilot, which I handed to him.

  The negro’s eyes rolled in wonder, and he cried: ‘By the Virgin of Guadelupe! To think that Myn’s own axe could play him such a trick! Have you anything else in your belly, axe?’

  Doña Ysabel snatched at the parchment and read it furtively. Then, handing it to the Prior with a sigh of profound relief, she murmured: ‘This is a last message from my sister Mariana, who died unconfessed.’

  It was short enough: ‘God’s mercy never fails! Repent before it is too late, and pray for the soul of your loving Mariana.’

  The good Prior stared at the letter. ‘Those are sweet words; yet why should she have concealed them in the haft of an axe?’

  ‘My poor sister suffered from strange delusions before her death,’ said Doña Ysabel. Touched by the unexpected kindness of the message, she drew the Chief Pilot aside, and told him incontinently: ‘The Devil was in my heart, friend, but God has punished me. At Cobos I miscarried. How can I win your forgiveness for all the cruelties that I did you?’ She offered him her hand, glancing away as though in fear to be spurned, but he took and pressed it to his lips.

  ‘May God forgive us all!’ he said. ‘My lady, I am still your honest servitor; but our ways should now part, lest we be pained by remembrance of things best forgotten.’

  ‘Is this venerable Prior in your confidence?’ she asked. ‘I stand in great need of a confessor.’

  ***

  The next day I sought out Don Fernando de Castro, whom Doña Mariana had appointed her executor and legatee. I found a handsome young gallant, who five years before had been royal page to his uncle, Don Gomez Perez de las Marinas, the Governor-Elect of the Philippines. When Don Gomez sailed across the Pacific from New Spain to assume office, Ensign de Castro commanded the troops in a galleon of the same convoy, which had the ill-luck to strike a reef off the Island of Marinduque; but he leaped into the waves, her flag wound about his middle and a line in his hand, and swam ashore. Though the ship was lost, all his men were drawn to safety, and he was rewarded with high rank for this heroic deed. Don Fernando had since performed other meritorious services and was now Brevet-General and a Knight of the Order of Saint James, yet not older than five-and-twenty years; he was lately returned from Cochin China, where he had exacted vengeance on his uncle’s murderers who sought refuge there.

  When I brought the young General the news that he was the sole beneficiary under Doña Mariana’s Will, he expressed great astonishment. He convinced himself that, gifted on her death-bed with prophetic insight, she had envisaged him as her brother-in-law, for his bequest of jewels should by rights have gone to her loving sister; and Doña Ysabel did not disabuse him of this fanciful notion. They had already fallen deeply in love with each other; and that same autumn, on the very day that her year of widowhood came to an end, they were married in Manila Cathedral. All her property thereby passed to him, including the rights in the Isles of Solomon, which she had inherited from Don Alvaro. His own possessions were large, his cousin, Governor-General Don Luis Perez, having meanwhile died and left him a respectable sum of money, and the good people of Manila who danced and feasted at their wedding agreed that no handsomer couple had ever before been seen in their City.

  Not long after our arrival news came of the galeot. She had reached the Philippines, but there lost her bearings. Passing close to an islet named Camiguin, off the northern coast of Mindanao, the crew had seen a dog on the shore and were reduced to such dire extremity that a sailor sprang overboard, crying that he would kill it and eat it raw, like a loyal subject of King Philip. Some natives came up as he was drinking the blood from its throat and, filled with amazement, took him back to the galeot in a baranguay laden with food; and afterwards guided Captain Corzo to the Jesuit mission at Layavan. The good Fathers, having entertained them well, brought them before the Provincial Magistrate who, at the Captain’s request, arrested five sailors and sent them to Manila under escort.

  The secretary of Dr. Antonio Morga, our Deputy-Governor, was kind enough to show me the Magistrate’s letter which referred to these prisoners. It ran:

  Your Excellency:

  The San Felipe galeot, flying the Royal Standard, has just entered our port, under the command of a certain Captain Corzo, whose conduct and language are equally reckless, but whom I have received with the respect due to his rank. He alleges that the galeot was separated by a storm from the flotilla of General Alvaro de Mendaña, which left Peru a year ago in search of the mythical Isles of Solomon. If the other ships should have arrived in Manila, your Excellency will know more about the matter than I. The five sailors I now send you are charged by their Captain with mutiny; I have however taken no disciplinary action, since they plead that their sole offence was to protest against his deliberate desertion of the flagship.

  Captain Corzo eventually sailed the San Felipe to Manila, where she was refitted and fetched a high price.

  Strangely enough, the Santa Catalina frigate also reached the Philippines in God’s good time: she was discovered aground on the coast of Leyte, her sails set, her bulwarks nearly awash, and all her crew dead and rotten. But from that day to this, nothing has ever been heard of the Santa Ysabel galleon.

  ***

  Most of the survivors of our expedition settled in the islands, all the widows marrying again because of the great scarcity of Spanish women there. Doña Luisa became the wife of
an ivory-merchant; I am a frequent guest at her house on the banks of the River Pasig, and her daughter by Juan de Buitrago calls me uncle. Damian chose Pancha for his bride, but she whored him sadly and he cast her off. Jaume married Elvira, who has proved a good wife though her tongue is never still. Juarez died in the lazar-house at Cavite, and Matia, much grieved by his death, elected to join a religious Order; as also did Sergeant Andrada, and the gunner’s mate, and Federico. They were sent out, after a period of instruction, to one or other of the remote missions in these islands, where the friar is the only Spaniard for many leagues around and acts as a benevolent despot among the untamed natives.

  I am now a Provincial Magistrate with a comfortable home and no dearth of silver coin to jingle in my pockets. This country pleases me better than either Peru or New Spain, because its pacification was achieved by priests rather than by soldiers, and its inhabitants are paternally governed. Here we have no silver-mines, tombs of the living dead, and the friars are diligent in their work, though much jealousy exists between the Orders. The danger of invasion from Japan appears to have passed.

  In the following year, Pedro Fernandez conveyed Doña Ysabel and her husband across the Pacific to New Spain. Doubtless, she would have preferred another pilot in the master’s cabin, and he another General’s Lady in the Great Cabin, and both another ship than the San Geronimo, in which they embarked; but necessity compelled them. Because traffic between the Philippines and New Spain had, for reasons of economy, lately been reduced by Royal decree to two vessels a year in each direction, and it was therefore not easy to obtain a passage, even at great expense, and because Doña Ysabel’s royal letters patent entitled her to despatch one ship a year to the New World from her Prefecture, Don Fernando had decided to refit the San Geronimo, load her with spices and China merchandise, and sail her; and Pedro Fernandez was the only skilled pilot who would make the voyage so late in the season—for they were delayed until August. After almost incredible new hardships and adversities he brought them safe to the port of Acapulco, where he stepped ashore on the nth of December, 1597, taking leave of Don Fernando and his Lady, who made a profit from their cargo of close on fifty thousand pesos. Don Marcos had sailed with them as Boatswain, but was washed overboard towards the end of the voyage; God rest his honest soul!

  On Pedro Fernandez’s arrival at Lima in May, 1598, he found his wife and son in good health, and a daughter, born shortly after our departure, already able to walk and talk; but soon he left them again and sailed for Rome on a pilgrimage. I have heard it rumoured that Doña Ana made him wear horns, in revenge for his long absence and hasty departure; discontented alike by her poverty and by the religious excuses he offered.

  I never saw him again. Of his subsequent expedition to the South Seas, many contradictory accounts are extant, and here I cannot write with authority. It seems that he sought to avoid the errors of the former voyage; but it was not enough to carry several Franciscan friars and no women on board his two small, well-provisioned ships, nor to install in each an ingenious machine of his own invention for distilling fresh water from salt, nor to obtain a special dispensation from the Holy Father,5 by which any member of the expedition, dying without a priest, might confess himself directly to God. He had still to contend with the spirit of bellicose pride, jealousy and cruelty among his troops; moreover, delays at Callao had lost him more than two months of good sailing weather; and he fell sick in the newly discovered Island of Espiritu Santo, at a time when his authority was most needed to quell disorders. The enterprise miscarried, his efforts to renew it were discouraged by the Indies Council, and he died in Peru two years ago, a broken man. I have often wondered how far it was vainglorious thirst for discovery that animated him, rather than a Catholic desire for saving souls; but when a man slings at two birds on the same bough, his bolt is apt to fly between them.

  Let me write lastly of Doña Ysabel. It is marvellous to relate that, once she was married to General Don Fernando, her character wholly altered: she became generous, trustworthy, truly pious and beloved by all her friends and servants. This transformation must be ascribed to God’s infinite mercy, and to the affectionate love of a lusty, fortunate husband, who fathered on her the children she had so long desired, opposed manly firmness to childish caprice, and weaned her away from the society of Don Luis, her only surviving brother. Don Diego had long since died in a tavern brawl, at the hands of an angry Indian girl who, armed with a pair of shears, first lopped off one ear and the tip of his nose and then drove the blades deep into his belly.

  HISTORICAL EPILOGUE

  In 1606, Pedro Fernandez, now usually known as Pedro de Quiros, was forced by foul winds and a mutiny to retire from Espiritu Santo, an island in the New Hebrides which he was colonizing under the impression that it formed part of the northern coast of ‘Australia.’ On his way home to Acapulco in Mexico he again passed within a few hours’ sail of the Solomons but, perhaps because General Fernando de Castro and Doña Ysabel had warned him not to infringe their rights, he sheered off. Torres, his second-in-command, whom he had left in the lurch, sailed west to the Philippines by the strait that now bears his name, discovered the eastern end of New Guinea, and sighted the Cape York peninsula of Australia, which he took for an island.

  The era of Spanish expansion now ended in national bankruptcy, and though Pedro Fernandez sent memorial after memorial to the new King, imploring him to finance still another missionary expedition, he never realized his hopes.

  The Solomons were lost for almost exactly two centuries after their first discovery by Alvaro de Mendaña. In 1767, Captain Carteret of the Swallow sighted them on his way across the Pacific, having just rediscovered Santa Cruz, but did not recognize the group because Gallego’s hopelessly inaccurate log had placed them more than twelve hundred miles farther to the east; neither did the Frenchmen Bougainville and Surville, who arrived there in 1768 and 1769 respectively. It was left to the geographer Buache to identify them with Mendaña’s islands, in a memoir published in 1781.

  No attempt was made to convert their inhabitants until 1845, when a Catholic bishop, Mgr. Épalle, landed with eighteen Marist Fathers; but he was murdered and despoiled of his crucifix, ring and vestments on the very first day, and in 1848 the mission was abandoned. The Anglican Bishops of Melanesia have had more success, though some of the villages still remain pagan, and both the Solomons and the South Solomons, which include Santa Cruz, are now under the British flag.

  The position of the Marquesas was long kept secret by the Spanish, to prevent their falling into English hands, but Captain Cook rediscovered them in 1774. Since their annexation by the French in 1842, the population has declined by four persons in five; Herman Melville gives an idyllic but trustworthy account of primitive native life on Dominica in his ‘Typee,’ or, A Narrative of a four months’ residence among the natives of a valley in the Marquesas Islands.

  Endnotes

  1 It was still unusual for a woman to adopt her husband’s surname. Cervantes mentions as a novelty in Don Quixote (1605) that Sancho Panza’s wife Teresa had done so, the custom having recently spread to La Mancha from France. Ysabel Barreto did not tack on a descriptive ‘de Mendaña’ to her signature even in official documents.

  2 32 copper maravedis = 1 silver real

  8 reals (or ‘pieces of eight’) = 1 gold peso (worth about 4 shillings in English money of the period)

  3 Seventeen-and-a-half Spanish leagues were reckoned to one degree.

  4 Do ye lack a pilot? What cheer, bullies?

  5 Clement VIII.

 

 

 
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