A Singular Captain

by John Regan

  Chapter 13

  At the change of watch, Pigafetta picked his way around the men sprawled on deck. Most were too far gone to notice him but a few watched through glazed eyes. Some stirred and groaned and one appealed for water. Pigafetta’s gaze was fixed on the cook box forward of the foremast where three men squatted, staring into the embers and occasionally stirring them with their daggers. As Pigafetta approached, one of the men levelled a dagger at him and scowled.

  Pigafetta halted, sat on the searing deck and stared at the three men. The ringleader was a man named Medina, who wore only a cloth wrapped around his private part in the manner of heathens. Pigafetta saw how the skin clung to his ribs and the joints of his elbows seemed too big. On his torso were large purple bruises and his eyes stared out of sunken sockets like embers in a cave. His jaw moved slowly, with a chewing motion like a cow’s.

  From the purse at his belt, Pigafetta produced a gold coin, a solid gold ducat worth three months wages for these men. At the glint of gold Medina stopped chewing, his eyes fixed on the coin. Pigafetta held it out to him.

  “A rat,” he said.

  Medina made no reply and the others stared at the gentleman from the afterguard grovelling before them. Medina made a wolfish grin.

  “Two,” he said.

  Pigafetta hesitated only a moment before reaching in to his purse for another coin. He passed them over. Like a miser, Medina withdrew the body of a black rat from a cloth bag and passed it across, taking the coins. Without even pausing to skin it, Pigafetta tossed the rat on the embers, his hand resting on the hilt of his poniard. Tortured by the smell of roasting meat, he forced himself to wait until it was done, then speared it, lifted it from the coals and retreated back where he had come from, back to where his pet giant, Paul, was dying. He cut the rat in halves and offered one to Paul.

  He now had enough Patagonian words to carry on a conversation of sorts and understood a little more about his giant. He knew he had left behind a wife and two sons but it seemed to be a loose relationship. Once they reached manhood, sons became independent and food from the hunt was shared equally within the tribe. As far as Pigafetta could work out, Setebos was a combination of God and Satan, responsible for every mystery. Paul now associated Setebos with the crucifix and rosary beads from his baptism into the Christian church.

  “Mechicre,” Pigafetta said, meaning “eat.”

  With what elation had the captain general set his course nor-westerly upon achieving Balboa’s South Sea. By the Martellus map, it was only a short sail from El Paso to Xanadu, the Dragon’s anus, and as far as anyone could tell the course was roughly north west. Their destination, however, was not Xanadu but the Spice Isles. Paco had reliably informed the captain general that they straddled the equator. A couple of weeks or a month at most should bring them into sight but first they needed to escape the infernal storms, rain, sleet and fog of these waters. Soon they would be sailing in balmy tropic seas again.

  That was nearly four months ago. The tropic seas were indeed balmy, so much so that Magellan renamed them Pacific Ocean because in all that time no storm was encountered. The ships sailed on and on to infinity with a ring of cloud around the horizon never getting any closer like the pillar of cloud that led Moses through the desert, only it did not indicate any recommended course.

  In all that time, ever since leaving El Paso, a voyage three times the length of Columbus’s, they had sighted only two small, uninhabited and unapproachable islands. The salted fish was finished, and much of it went rotten; the biscuit was finished so they ate the crumbs and when the crumbs were finished they stripped the leather chafing gear off the yards, towed it behind in the sea to soften it until they could eat it, and when the leather was finished they ate sawdust. Occasionally, they were able to feast on rat, but many were unable to eat at all. Men had started dying about three weeks ago.

  Only then did Pigafetta come to understand what the captain general meant when he said no one knew how many leagues were in a degree of longitude. No one knew how big the world was and the captain general did not know how far were the Line of Demarcation and his old shipmate, who awaited them in the Spice Isles. All knew, however, that such a terrible voyage could never be undertaken again and a westwards route to the Spice Isles would never be possible. Even if the voyage achieved its objective, it would be a failure.

  Paul’s body had shrivelled, half his torso was purple and half his teeth had fallen out, the gums suppurating black blood. He was dying in the same way as many white sailors already had. Pigafetta took back the half-rat and cut it into little pieces. He did not know the word for ‘swallow’ but made swallowing motions and stroked his throat to indicate he did not need to chew. Paul managed to swallow one small piece but coughed it up. Pigafetta fetched him a ladle of water from the slimy green butt. Paul drank it but coughed that up too, along with blood. He stretched out flat on his back on the deck and looked up at the cloudless blue sky, or perhaps at the sails that billowed in a light breeze. Perhaps he thought the sails were clouds because then he sat up, pointed at the sky, made the sign of the cross and said, “Setebos.” Pigafetta had not managed to make him understand the difference between Setebos and God, if, indeed, there was a difference. Perhaps they were the same thing with different names, and neither Patagonian nor Christian would ever know. Perhaps there was no Line of Demarcation between good and evil in Heaven. Paul indicated by signs and a few guttural words that if he made the sign of the cross again, Setebos would enter his body and he would die. And so it happened, and Paul died peacefully, gazing up at the sky, and Pigafetta gently closed his eyelids. He went to find the chaplain so the giant could be given the last rites and be tossed over the side for the sharks. There was no consecrated ground here, unless the entire ocean could be considered sacred.

  Later that day, while Pigafetta was gazing into the ship’s wake, as he often did, Henriqué came to him and tugged his sleeve and said, “Tuan Antonio, please come.”

  He followed him to the great cabin, where Henriqué pulled aside the curtain to reveal the captain general on his knees beside his bunk, clasping his crucifix before him, sobbing fit to break his heart. He had saturated the ticking with his tears. Pigafetta ventured to lay a hand on his shoulder and he drew back as if he had seen a ghost or the Devil, but then he recognised him.

  “Pigafetta, it’s only you.”

  “Only me, Captain General.”

  “You take me unawares.”

  “Do you need the priest, Captain General?”

  “No more than I need the Devil.”

  He got up and sat on the edge of his bunk and wiped away the tears on his sleeve. Scattered around the cabin were scraps of parchment, which Pigafetta recognised as the remains of the Martellus map, torn to pieces by the captain general.

  “How many died today?” the captain general said.

  “Only one today, Captain General. My giant. Better than yesterday.”

  “It was three yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many will it be tomorrow?”

  “I know not, Captain General.”

  He stared at his crucifix, clicking the beads, and then he said, “God snatches victory away, not by storm or war but by disease. This is God’s punishment, like the punishment of Job.”

  “What for, Captain General?”

  “For my vanity. I was very proud in my youth. I was a wicked boy. I never could do God’s will properly.”

  “I think none of us can do God’s will properly, Captain General.”

  “Perhaps. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and there is nothing new under the sun. You are a good man, Pigafetta, but I have confronted evil and it wears a cassock.”

  “How do you mean, Captain General?”

  “Do you remember the boy, Ginovès?”

  “He who was found with the sodomite, Salomón?”

  “Yes. That was me. I have never told this to anyone, Pigafetta, but when I was about that age I was a page
in the court of Queen Leonor and our tutor was Friar Vitales, a Dominican. He took us to visit the Institute of Navigation at Sagres, which is where I first saw Ptolemy’s map of the world. We stayed in the monastery there and one night he took me to his cell and lifted his cassock and grabbed my head and forced it down upon his member and made me lick it. Then he lifted my robe and licked my member, which became erect and I could do nothing to stop it. And even now when I think of that night it becomes erect again and the filth will not go away.”

  The captain general stared at the bulkhead and the tears appeared again and Pigafetta knew it was not the right time to say anything.

  “Even now, many years later, my body is still wicked and that is why God punishes me and even now I cry like Job, ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Pray with me, Pigafetta.”

  The captain general went down on his knees and, although he was badly out of practice, Pigafetta joined him in begging God’s forgiveness.

  Pigafetta went back to staring at the ship’s wake. There was something curiously calming about the line of bubbles left behind, the occasional seabird riding the updraft from the waves and dolphins frolicking like playful puppies. You could believe that all was still well with the world. He was joined by an anxious Henrique.

  “Will he die, Tuan Antonio?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he’s indestructible.”

  “When he dies, I am to be set free and given ten thousand maravedis.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me.”

  “It’s true. I have seen his testament.”

  As well as the Patagonian vocabulary, Pigafetta had been working on Malay with Henriqué. The word for ‘thank you’ in that language was ‘tremacassi,’ and Henriqué said, ‘tremacassi,’ which Pigafetta thought odd, but why had Magellan been discussing his will with his slave?

  The captain general had long abandoned his practice of reducing sail or heaving to at night. To reduce the risk of running aground in the dark only increased the risk of death by scurvy, and drowning was preferable to that. A smudge of blue on the horizon, darker than the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky, could only be an illusion, for they had already proved there was no land in this ocean.

  Pigafetta had been trained in the role of officer of the watch and he dismissed the smudge as just a darker cloud. He was more concerned with estimating the ship’s speed so he could move the peg in the traverse board the right number of leagues, even though that was more or less pointless. Speed was estimated each hour by tossing a log over the side attached to a line marked with knots at intervals. The sandglass was turned at that instant and the number of knots run out in one minute allowed speed and hence distance run for the hour to be calculated.

  Returning to his watch-keeping duties after that exercise, he noticed the smudge on the horizon had grown bigger. It could mean rain. It was another several minutes before the lookout on the fo’c’sle raised the cry, “Land. Land ho!”

  Those among the invalids on deck who were able to get to their feet did so and peered ahead and soon set up a chorus of, “Land. Land ho!” The captain general emerged from his quarters, climbed to the poop and took over the watch, gripping the mizzen shrouds as he stared ahead.

  Not one but three islands rose out of the sea; high forested islands more likely to provide food and water than the low atolls sighted before. He ordered sail shortened, and there were still some sailors capable of climbing aloft to carry out his orders, so the ship’s speed was reduced. Sandy beaches became visible with palm trees along the shore and men lined the bulwarks gazing on what might be their salvation. The captain general anchored in a bay with reasonable shelter from the prevailing wind and swell.

  Within minutes, boats were launched off the beach but they were a different style of boat from those in Rìo. These had sails of matting shaped like a crab’s claw and two hulls that could go forward or backwards and they skimmed across the water at an amazing speed in such a light breeze. For a rudder they used a stick shaped like a shovel, with a cross-piece for a handle.

  The people were naked except for an apron of leaves or bark; with olive complexions and long black hair. They were not as big as the Patagonian giants and also different from the Guaranì of Rìo. They had obviously come not to trade but to steal. Like a swarm of locusts they climbed aboard and swept up everything they could lay their hands on: buckets, ladles, marlin spikes, ropes, hammers, hatchets and anything else not bolted down. Trinidad’s crew were too feeble to stop them.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Magellan cried, to no effect. “Espinosa, we have to stop them. Arm your men.”

  With slashing cutlasses, men-at-arms waded in among the thieves and forced them back. Others nocked bolts into deadly crossbows and let fly, which was astonishing to the natives, who had no weapons but lances with fishbone spearheads. Struck in the chest and flank, they wrenched the arrows from their flesh to inspect them, and so fell down dead. They retreated back into their boats, leaving behind a heap of bloody bodies and men in the throes of death, observed by Trinidad’s sailors suffering a slower form of death. Only then did the captain general notice that the pinnace, which had been tied astern, was gone. He buried his head in his hands in despair. Death, death, death everywhere is death.

  Native canoes darted back and forth among the ships like swallows or mosquitoes, against which there was no defence. The pinnace must be recovered and the crew must have food and water. First, the charnel house on deck had to be cleared and, before that, the souls of these benighted heathens had to be reconciled to God’s loving kindness.

  “Padre, a burial service for these pagans, but keep it brief.”

  Valderrama made the sign of the cross over the dead bodies and delivered a shortened version of the rites in Latin, then Punzarol detailed off a crew to pitch the bodies overboard where, to no one’s surprise, they floated face down. It was a well-known fact that Christian bodies float face up while those of infidels and pagans float face down, although sharks devour them all in equal time. Some of the dying, already on the edge of despair, pleaded with the captain general for the entrails of the dead to cure the scurvy.

  “Certainly not. We are Christian men, not cannibals,” Magellan said, the very idea repugnant, but dying men are not fastidious. So close to such a teasingly beautiful land, he was no nearer salvation of his men and he could see the stolen pinnace drawn up on the beach.

  “Master Andrew, prepare your guns,” he ordered. “Punzarol, heave away.”

  With the deck washed clean of slippery blood, emaciated men pushed feebly against capstan bars to break the anchor out of the ground while others climbed aloft to release the sails so recently furled, and slowly the ship got under way. He signalled for Victoria and Concepción to follow suit and form a line of battle in his wake. Although the natives were impossible targets in their canoes skimming across the sea, their villages along the beach behind the line of palms were not invulnerable.

  The three ships sailed along the beachfront, firing off broadsides of two salvoes each, demolishing the palm-thatch houses and much of the forest as well. They came back to anchor and launched their longboats with 40 armed men, landed on the beach, entered the town and killed the few natives who had survived and not fled. They found pigs, goats chickens and a variety of fruit, which they stuffed into their mouths while they looted. They found wicker baskets full of rice and urns full of water. The captain general ordered the village set on fire and it was utterly destroyed, the price paid for the theft of a pinnace which, in any case, was redeemed undamaged.

  The fleet sailed on while ravenous men gorged themselves. The captain general named those islands Ladrones, or Islands of Thieves, so that others who came afterwards might beware. Now they began to see birds and sometimes seaweed and coconuts floating in the water, which indicated more land not too far away. On the feast day of St Lazarus, they reached another high island and came to anchor in a bay with good shelter and could see more isl
ands to the west. Some wondered whether these were the Spice Isles, but no. These islands lay in about ten degrees of latitude and the Spice Isles were on the equator.

  “Captain General, why have we come to ten degrees of latitude when the Spice Isles lie on the Equinoctial Line?” Pigafetta asked.

  “Two reasons. One, Paco has written that although there are abundant spices in the Spice Isles, food is not so plentiful. We need to stock up on our food before we approach the Spice Isles.”

  “And the other reason?”

  “Many years ago, Paco and I captured a junk in the Andaman Sea. Chinese have always sailed these waters and traded among the islands. In this junk we found a scroll with Chinese writing and when we got back to Cochin I found a man who could translate it. It told of a rich kingdom where gold nuggets as big as a pigeon’s egg lie on the ground and the natives there are ignorant of the value of gold. It gave the latitude of the place and also the longitude according to the Chinese cosmography, which makes no sense to Christians; probably measured from Xanadu.”

  “And is this the place?”

  “It is the right latitude. I have no idea about the longitude. You must not mention this to anyone, Pigafetta.”

  “You did not mention it to the king.”

  “He didn’t ask. My contract with the king says that if more than six islands be discovered, I am entitled to the fifteenth part of all the king’s profits. There are only five Spice Isles: Ternate, Tidore, Mutir, Macchian and Bacchian, so I need at least another two.”

  Whatever might have been Magellan’s motivation for the voyage, Pigafetta never suspected gold. Even now, it did not ring true. There was surely something else driving the captain general’s obsession. Perhaps it was just the need to succeed where Columbus had failed; to correct a great error. Perhaps it was the need to reach accommodation with his God.

  Next morning, Pigafetta went ashore with a boatload of the sick and worked pitching tents for them under the palm trees beyond the beach, as the captain general instructed. Victoria and Concepción also brought their sick and it was the first chance since El Paso for men to share their stories. Of the 260 who had left Seville, 160 now survived. Padre Valderrama said mass and, although he lacked the accoutrements of his tabernacle in Port St Julian, he made up for it with the ambitiousness of his Te Deum, the ancient chant of thanksgiving in praise of God, sung in croaky voices by those who had been so close to death so recently. The captain general himself gave out fruit and milk of coconut, which had been found to bring about a rapid improvement, and disproved the theory that scurvy was caused by bad air. It was a curious fact that very few of the afterguard had fallen ill.

  They dug a pit and built a fire in it and when the flames died down cast a slaughtered pig into it and left it to roast. Resting in the shade of the palm trees and looking out over the panorama of tall islands and calm blue sea, they were free for the first time in many weeks from foreboding as to the future. The captain general named this island ‘New Providence,’ which signified a new beginning.

  “Well, brother-in-law; what next?” Duarte asked.

  “What is next is to replenish the food and water. We must make contact with the natives and trade for pigs and chickens and fruit.”

  “Let us hope they are more friendly than the last lot.”

  As Duarte spoke, a native canoe, a prau, appeared around the headland and the captain general got to his feet, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his body tense. Three men in the boat seemed as surprised as the Europeans. They dug their paddles into the water and, once offshore, set their crab-claw sails and skimmed away into the distance.

  “So, it seems we have company already,” Duarte said.

  “I expect they will be back,” the captain general said. “If they come to steal we must show restraint. Make sure there is nothing they can steal.”

  All hands attended mass ashore each morning, when the captain general inspected the sick to see how they progressed. For two days the natives left the invaders alone to lick their wounds, although more and more of them sailed by the little settlement on the shore. Then a boat, bigger than the rest, with nine men on board, came in towards the beach. It carried some kind of chief or rajah, not bare-chested like the fisherman but dressed in robes and seated under a three-tiered parasol in bright colours. As it came into the shallows over the sand, the boat seemed to float into the air, so perfectly clear was the water.

  “Let no one speak or make any movement without my leave,” the captain general said as he walked down the beach. “Henriqué, your services may be needed.”

  He halted ten paces short of the waterline and the chief halted knee-deep in water, having climbed out of the boat, and they stood there watching one another. Finally the chief said, “Selamat sore.”

  Pigafetta immediately recognised this phrase. It meant ‘good afternoon,’ as Henriqué translated for the captain general’s benefit.

  These two words, or the fact that they were understood by a native of Java, were of supreme importance. Pigafetta immediately realised they must be close to their destination. Although there were many dialects, Henriqué’s language, as he had explained, was understood throughout the islands and the Golden Chersonese; the common language of sailors and traders from Java to India and Cathay.

  “Good afternoon,” the captain general said in Portuguese.

  The conversation faltered as they eyed one another, and then the chief asked, “Who are you?”

  “We come as representatives of Don Carlos, the mightiest king of Europe. We come in peace and seek to trade for the benefit of all, and also to spread the word of God.”

  Although Pigafetta was by no means fluent in the language, he was astonished when Henriqué translated this as something like, ‘Beware, O Rajah, these white devils come to steal your gold, rape your women and destroy your cities.”

  “Yes, we have heard what the white devils have done in Malacca,” the rajah replied, “but they are few and we are many. We can trade if they want.”

  Henriqué translated this as, ‘News of your greatness has preceded you. If you wish to trade, we can trade.’

  “Tell the chief we need food and water, for which we can trade Turkish weavings, Venetian glass, fine linen from France and many other good things.”

  “We trade with Cathay and the King of Siam,” the rajah replied, “and we don’t need junk like that,” which Henriqué translated as, ‘All things have a fair price.’

  “We need food now,” the captain general said. “My men are sick for lack of food.”

  “We have fish. You can have fish. Tomorrow I will bring more things to eat.”

  The rajah spoke with the men in his boat and they unloaded three large fish onto the sand.

  “I thank you, Rajah,” Magellan said, “and may God go with you.”

  “Well, brother-in-law, it looks like we might be off to a better start than last time,” Duarte said, and even John Serrano added his opinion that this encounter with heathens was certainly better than the last.

  Pigafetta was about to expose the reality of this encounter but shut his mouth. Perhaps he had not properly understood Henriqué’s translations and, anyway, Henriqué had a point. He had been Magellan’s slave for about ten years, having been a prince, or datu, in his own land. He had no reason to love the despoilers of Malacca, where he had lost two brothers. In Port St Julian he had seen barbarism which, although not on the scale of Albuquerque’s, was an indication of what the local natives could expect. More recently, only two weeks before, dozens had been slaughtered and their village destroyed.

  Pigafetta found himself in a curious situation. Neither the captain general nor Henriqué knew how much of the native language he understood. He was a silent, although imperfect witness to these conversations and decided to keep his secret. Back aboard ship, he went to his journal and added a few words to the vocabulary he had been compiling over several months and realised that these words were a tool perhaps more powerful th
an sword or crossbow.

  Next day the rajah, whose name was Garas-garas, arrived alongside Trinidad in a carved and decorated state barge with a pair of eyes in the bows and a dragon’s head for a stem, paddled by no less than twenty bare-chested men while Garas-garas, dressed in long white robes and wearing golden earrings and bracelets, sat beneath a brightly coloured three-tiered parasol. These were obviously people from an advanced culture, neither Brasilian flesh eaters nor Patagonian giants, and the captain general ordered a trumpet flourish for the rajah as for a ship’s captain as he climbed aboard.

  Garas-garas brought gifts of pigs, fowl, fruit, vegetables, two large baskets of rice, a bamboo tube full of honey, jars of palm wine and a walking stick with a solid gold head as big as an egg.

  “I thank you for your valuable gifts, Rajah,” the captain general said, “but you should keep the stick with the gold head for yourself. In return I have a mantle of fine wool, Toledo knives, mirrors, hawks’ bells and silver buttons.”

  The rajah looked on the trade goods with disdain but did not object. Magellan invited him to sit with him on the poop in red velvet chairs to drink a cup of the palm wine, and his retinue squatted on the deck at their feet. Punzarol, the master, Carvalho the pilot and Pigafetta sat in blue velvet chairs, while Henriqué stood behind the captain general; such was the order of rank.

  “My king, Don Carlos, is the greatest king of Europe and Holy Roman Emperor, which means king of all Christendom. We are travelling to the Spice Isles, which you call Maluku, but we can trade anything.”

  In his translation, Henriqué tried to explain that Don Carlos was king of Spain and Dom Manuel king of Portugal. It was Dom Manuel’s general, Albuquerque, who had conquered Malacca but now Don Carlos was also seeking to trade in this region. The present voyage was meant to draw a line of demarcation between the two kingdoms according to certain rules too complicated to explain.

  Garas-garas understood perfectly. In these islands there were many rajahs and constant wars because lines of demarcation were not clear and forever shifting. It was always wise to choose one’s friends carefully.

  To show the superiority of Don Carlos over all other kings, the captain general called upon Espinosa to demonstrate how Spanish warriors were all but invincible. He had Espinosa dress in cuirass and helmet and three men-at-arms attacked him with swords and daggers, which merely skidded off the armour to no effect.

  “Observe that one of my men in armour is worth a hundred of yours without,” the captain general said, and Garas-garas agreed it was true.

  “And in my ships I have two hundred such men, equal to ten thousand of yours.”

  “Indeed, it is so,” the rajah said.

  “And just as the cuirass protects us from sword and lance, so the word of God and the Christian faith are our armour that makes us invincible against Satan.”

  The rajah was not quite so ready to accept this proposition, being unclear as to the meaning of Satan, which also seemed beyond Henriqué’s linguistic capabilities. Perhaps the word they wanted was Setebos, Pigafetta thought.

  “Even more powerful than my men in armour are my ships, which carry terrible weapons that cause great destruction and crush any enemy.”

  The captain general called for Master Andrew and instructed him to prepare his guns for a salvo of blank shot. When the gunner indicated he was ready, Magellan signalled with a sweep of his hand and six cannons roared in unison.

  Garas-garas fell out of his chair and attempted to crawl under it; his retinue rolled on the deck moaning and wailing with their hands over their ears, except for two of them, who jumped overboard. If Magellan was trying to frighten the natives, he had evidently succeeded.

  “You see?” the captain general said when the smoke cleared, “My king has powerful weapons but they are mild to our friends and cruel to our enemies, as, indeed, is the Lord our God. It is your choice whether you become my friend or my enemy, but be warned, I will not tolerate thievery.”

  The captain general described the unacceptable behaviour of the Ladrones Islanders and Garas-garas agreed they were wicked men on those islands. Their chief was named Tilic-mata and was not a friend. Garas-garas declared himself Magellan’s friend and a loyal subject of Don Carlos, the king across the sea. No one told him that Don Carlos was an eighteen-year-old boy.