The Seven Serpents Trilogy (11 page)

In midmorning, as I stood beside the after hatch, with a crash that seemed to come from all directions at once, I was enveloped in a torrent of air. Sails, large and small, blew out with the roar of cannon shot. They in stantly became streaming ribbons that pointed in the direction we now were driven, which was headlong into the west.

On hands and knees I clawed my way across the deck, certain that the next moment I would be swept away.

I reached the railing at the head of the companionway, hung there until I got my breath and my bearings, then, with a lurch of the ship, fell sprawling into the hold. I landed in the midst of the crew and Don Luis's servants, who were huddled at the foot of the ladder. In the dim light, silent with fear, they looked like statues.

Captain Roa, who had called them down from mast and deck moments before the hurricane struck, helped me to my feet.

“The ship is helpless,” he said calmly. “And we are helpless. Only God, if He mercifully chooses, can save us all.”

His words brought us to life.

Pedro Esquivel, the caulker, tore open his shirt and, placing his hand upon his bare chest, swore that if God did save him he would crawl like a worm to the nearest shrine. Bustamente, a soldier, cried out that he would go naked as the day he was born through the crowded streets of Seville to the great cathedral.

I prayed for all our company. At Captain Roa's bid ding I quoted the passage in the Bible about the tempest of Capernaum, which ends with “It is I; be not afraid.” I prayed especially for the Indians hidden away in the stalls.

Captain Roa put three men on the pump, since water now sloshed around us, ankle-deep. The animals, held in slings, were pawing their stalls, so he sent men to give them fodder that had been taken from the island. Those at the rudder he relieved and had the oaken tiller lashed down, for it could not be handled. To Señor Guzmán and five of the crew he gave the task of transporting the gold from the deck to the hold, which was done by dropping it down the companionway.

Two of the men were drowned at the task, and the shifting of the gold made no difference in the motion of the ship. She staggered and rolled just the same from beam end to beam end.

Without sails, under bare poles, she drove westward through the afternoon while the wind roared and rain fell and thunderous waves pounded her hull. She seemed, I swear, to move in circles, yet at nightfall we faced a setting sun that eerily and unexpectedly appeared from under the scudding clouds. To a band of silent men I sang the Salve Regina.

Soon after sunset the rudder jumped its gudgeons.

But as if nothing had happened, the ship drove onward into the west.

It was an hour or so later, during a lull in the wind, that I heard an unusual sound. At first I thought it came from the hold, where the animals were stabled. But af ter a moment when the sound was repeated I felt certain that it came from the forecastle and that it was the cry of a child in distress.

Toward midnight the wind no longer roared. It now came upon us in shrieks, pausing, then often on a higher note, shrieking again. Sebastián Lomas of the midnight watch reported that the Indians had left the hold and gone. He had seen them climb the forecastle companionway and, one by one, silently hurl them selves into the sea.

Just before dawn, Guzmán ventured above and re turned with the news that the masts still stood, the wind had lessened and changed direction, and land lay both on our port and starboard. Captain Roa sent men to repair the rudder and chose a watch to set two small sails as soon as dawn broke.

While the crew huddled at the companionway, waiting to go on deck, I led them in prayer. Afterward, I prayed for the Indians, closing my heart and thoughts to the pain they must have endured, to the cries of the child in distress, to the despair that drove them into the sea.

It was soon after that the caravel rose by the bow, as if lifted by a monstrous hand. At the same moment a tu multuous blow knocked us all from our feet, and through a gaping hole amidships, raging water rushed in upon us.

Those who were not drowned by the rushing water escaped to the main deck. There were six of us. The sky was dark, but eastward the first light shone.

I found myself in the sea, gasping for breath, in a trough between two waves. One wave left me and the other lifted me high. There could have been other men around me, but I saw only two—the pinched face of Juan Pacheco and the bushy red hair of Don Luis.

Luis was clinging to a length of timber, which looked to be a piece of the mainmast. It was not big enough to support both men, and as the barber reached out to grasp it, Don Luis pushed his hand away.

From the crest of the wave that bore me upward, I saw in one direction the outline of what seemed to be a rocky, continuous coast. Somewhat to the south was an island fringed by jungle and a palely gleaming beach. The coast was almost a league away; the island not that far, perhaps half the distance.

Out of instinct I set off for the island, lost now in drifting spray. Having been raised by the banks of the Guadalquivir, I was a good swimmer, but a river is not a gale-whipped sea, and I was forced to the limits of my strength.

I had gone no farther than halfway toward the beach when I heard a scream behind me. It came from one of our horses, the black stallion Bravo. He was pawing the air, head reared high and his long mane streaming in the wind.

For a moment, as a wave lifted us heavenward, I thought that he was about to swim back toward the place the ship had gone down, now marked by the top part of her mainmast. I shouted his name, shouted it twice, shouted it a third time. Whether he heard my voice or not, the stallion turned his head away from the wreck.

He swam after me as I struggled toward the island, over towering waves that sped me along, through shal lows, and at last tumbled me upon the shining beach.

 

B
RUISED AND BELABORED,
I
LAY THERE
I
KNOW NOT HOW LONG
, awakening at last with a brilliant sun in my eyes.

I got to my feet and searched myself for injuries. Finding none, I climbed to a jutting rock, the shoulder of the reef upon which the
Santa Margarita
had foun dered, and whose height offered a chance to survey my surroundings.

I reached this flat eminence with difficulty and once there sat for a long time before having the desire to look about me. A blinding glare rose from the sea, so I was unable to make out the wreck or the coast or anything that stood to the east. I turned my back to the rising sun and, feature by feature, took in all that lay immediately around, to the south and north and the west.

The beach was crescent shaped, the far point of the crescent ending in a high, jutting rock similar to the one I stood upon, flat on top and whitened by a myriad of sea fowl, many of whom now sailed above my head. Not protesting my presence, they seemed, on the con trary, bent upon welcoming me to their island home with soft cries.

Southward of the rock I stood upon stretched a blue green jungle, as solid seeming as if carved from stone. In the distance, two or three leagues northward, I made out the shape of a lone mountain. It was heavily wooded for two-thirds of its height, and from this point upward was rust colored and treeless. From its summit issued a plume of gray smoke that trailed away on the wind. I had never seen one before, but judging from what I had read, this mountain that towered into the sky was a live volcano.

Beyond it the jungle stretched, as far as I could see, for several leagues in one unbroken wave of trees and brush. To the west, except for an expanse of meadow, there lay country in no way different from that to the north and south.

The shelving beach below me led to a broad band of marsh grass. This band bordered on the seaward side a meadow that must have been half a league in circum ference, round in shape as if someone had so arranged it, and cut by a stream that meandered out of the jungle and, in a series of shallow loops, reached the shore. Here it fanned out into a broad estuary and the sea.

The edges of the meadow where it met the jungle were spotted with spiky plants that sent up shafts of scarlet flowers. The rest was lush grass, light green in color, which came to the stallion's belly as he stood grazing.

With the wide sea at my back and faced on three sides by unbroken jungle, I felt completely lost, a prisoner in a world that, awake or asleep, I had never dreamed of. Was there the smallest hope that a passing ship might rescue me? A remote chance, since the island was far to the west of the lane taken by our caravels, or so Captain Roa had said at the first signs of the hurricane. Could I somehow build a canoe or a small boat that would take me eastward, an island at a time, to Hispaniola? A bleak prospect, since I lacked the tools and was not a carpenter.

The important fact was that, by some miracle, I still lived. But why, of all the caravel's men, had I been cast, apparently alone, upon this island? Was it purposeful or by chance? One or the other, it did not matter, I told myself, and as I did so the words spoken to the eleven disciples went through my mind:

“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

I had no way of knowing whether anyone lived upon the island or not. But just silently saying Christ's words lifted my spirits.

The stallion, his coat ashine with salt from the sea, raised his head and neighed, happy to be on land after the ordeal on the ship, content in the abundant grass. I climbed down off the rock, went to where he was graz ing, and patted his black muzzle. I spoke to him affec tionately in words I had heard Don Luis use.

The sun was now far down in the west. As I walked along the edge of the meadow, I happened upon the trunk of a tree, fallen many years before. It was a good ten strides in length, hollow for half its length, wide enough for me to crawl into, and tinder dry. I would have preferred a modest hut with a palm-thatched roof, such as those on Isla del Oro, but the timber and palm fronds for the undertaking I lacked at the moment.

Satisfied that the hoary log was the best I could do for the night, and that I was fortunate to have it, I went in search of my supper.

I found a small opening in what seemed to be a solid wall of trees and, entering it for a short way, managed to collect some pieces of fruit. Each was somewhat larger than my fist, and when the green skin was peeled away a pale white core was revealed that melted in the mouth.

While I stood eating the last of my supper, I heard a soft rustling sound, the barest movement of leaves above my head. Looking upward toward the tops of the trees, where the last faint light of day still lingered, I met the downward gaze of eyes that were at once hu man and inhuman. The face staring down at me was the color of soot, of the deepest black, bordered beneath with an enormous red beard.

I had seen this animal before in the jungles of Isla del Oro. It was an araguato, or howling monkey, a long-limbed creature quick in its actions, making great leaps with ease, yet capable of sitting for hours without move ment other than that of scratching itself or its neighbor.

The araguato presented no danger to me, but danger did lurk in the jungle, as I knew from my days on Isla del Oro. It came upon padded feet, swift and quick as the wind, in the shape of the black-spotted jaguar. There were snakes the size of a twig, the exact color of a leaf, whose bite left one dead within the hour.

And this was on my mind as I crawled into the hollow log and tried to make myself comfortable for the night. If the log had had a door, I would have closed and bolted it securely.

I was sinking into sleep when I felt something crawl ing along my legs. Not a snake, as I first thought, but something with four feet. Thinking to win its favor, I lay still while it trod the length of my back, daintily stepped on my face, and quietly launched forth into the night. It proved to be a coatimundi, an omnivorous animal with a tail that was long and ringed, a shy and gentle crea ture that in time became my friend, but who, unlike the stallion, remained wild at heart. I gave him the name Valiente.

 

I
AWAKENED WITH THE SUN WELL LAUNCHED IN A DEEP BLUE SKY
. Scrambling out of my home, stiff in every joint, I stood facing the new day, my second day on the island.

The sea was calm, the mountainous coast clear against the far horizon. The stream made no sound as it wandered out of the jungle and lost itself in the tides of the estuary. Small waves slid in upon the beach. Gulls were circling in search of food.

Standing beside my log home, I looked out at the meadow ablaze in the morning light, at the vaulting sky without a cloud, and thought:

This is the way the world must have looked on the first day of creation. This was the Garden, and I the first man to enter its gates.

On my knees I gave thanks to God for the day and for all the days to come, whatever they might bring. I resolved, kneeling there, that I would not live from one breath to the next, hoping to be rescued or planning to escape, as if I were a forlorn prisoner held by some evil power. I would not live in fear. I would shape my life with what things possessed, as if I were to spend all the rest of it here, on a nameless island.

During the night the tides had strewn the shore with wreckage from the
Santa Margarita.
None of it could I use, except for some pieces of wood and one of my boots, which I had kicked off when I swam ashore. In my search I came upon a length of balsa, a very light wood much favored on the island of gold. It was large enough to support my weight, but of a shape that would tend to roll in the water, so I fastened pieces of timber on either side of it, like fins, using strands of kelp to bind them together.

With a makeshift paddle I set off for the wreck, marked only by the mainmast, hoping that I would find a piece of metal that I could fashion into some sort of ax. The Indians of Isla del Oro used obsidian to face their tools, but there was no sign of this flintlike stone anywhere on the shore.