Chapter 32 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
MARTIN ALONSO
Whatever else Martin Alonso Pinzon may have gathered from his Lucayans in addition to the error by which he would have misled Colon, it was something that abruptly took him off on a quest of his own without the Admiral’s leave.
This happened in late November when, meeting with contrary winds and a rough sea, Colon, conquering impatience, decided to put back to Cuba. Going about, he fired a gun, and signalled to the other two vessels to follow. Vicente Pinzon was prompt to obey him with the Niña. But the Pinta, ignoring his repeated signals, held to her course. Even after night had fallen, and the Santa Maria lay hove to, the Admiral continued to signal with lights from the masthead. Nevertheless, when day broke, the Pinta had vanished completely from the sea.
So deliberate a departure in disobedience to clear command made Colon uneasy. It revived in him all those old misgivings and mistrusts of Martin Alonso, which necessity alone had compelled him to stifle. He had read this wealthy, experienced merchant-mariner for a man as domineering and ambitious as he was undoubtedly able, whence came that reluctance to admit him to a share in an enterprise of which he might take undue advantage whenever the chance offered. Had he now, Colon asked himself, perceived the chance, and seized it? Had he gone off on an independent search for Zipangu, to enrich himself with the treasures of it, and perhaps return at once thereafter to Spain, to claim for himself the credit of the discovery? It was an ugly suspicion as well as a disquieting one; but Colon accounted himself justified of it by the unscrupulous craft with which Pinzon had intrigued in Palos to obtain for himself the coveted part in the enterprise.
Whatever Martin Alonso’s aim, however, it would have been idle in view of the superior sailing speed of the Pinta, to attempt to overtake him even if the Admiral could have been sure of the course that he was steering. So, despite his indignation and misgivings, which he did not even trouble to communicate to Vicente Pinzon, Colon pursued his eastward voyage in a manner leisurely enough to permit him to continue the survey and charting in that direction of the coast of Cuba. Thus they were in the first week of December before he reached the easternmost end of the island, which if Martin Alonso’s inferences had been correct, would be the eastern end of Asia.
He sailed on without determined course until they sighted the loom of mountains to the south-east, and then headed for a land that once again surpassed in beauty all those that he had yet discovered. Well might he account it so, for this was Hayti, one of the most beautiful islands of the Earth.
He went ashore, took possession with the usual ritual, named the island Hispaniola, and on a headland above the harbour in which he had cast anchor, which he named Port Concepcion, he erected the usual cross.
It was at once apparent that he had come to a land more populous than any yet visited, a land not only of extensive villages but of connecting roads and other signs of social systems. As in Cuba, incipient civilization appeared to have introduced fear amongst the natives, for, again, the appearance of the ships was as a signal to the Indians to forsake their coastal dwellings and seek safety in the interior.
The Spaniards had been exploring the land for close upon a week without being able to approach any native, when one day, in giving chase to a party of islanders who fled before them, they captured a young woman and brought her to the Admiral.
Such civilization as the inhabitants of Hayti had developed had not yet reached the point of imposing even rudimentary garments, and this girl, who was beautifully made and no darker than would be a Spanish woman who had similarly exposed her skin to the sun, was completely naked.
In her terror she struggled wildly in the arms of her captors using tooth and claw, and struggling she was brought aboard and taken before the Admiral. She was by then approaching exhaustion, and she cowered panting at Colon’s feet, where her captors deposited her.
He beckoned forward one of the Lucayans, and bade him convey to her that they were good people and intended her no hurt.
Taking courage from this assurance from a man of her own race, and seeing other Indians apparently on friendly terms with these pale hairy strangers, she dared at last to look up at the splendid, strangely bedizened being who stood over her. She must have found his aspect benevolent, gentle the smile on his white handsome face, and soothing the voice in which he addressed her, for all that his language might remain incomprehensible. Gradually her fears were allayed, and she sat up with her legs tucked under her, and took stock of her strange surroundings. Even the grinning bearded men who stood about ceased to frighten her. She was induced to go with Colon and the Lucayan interpreter to the Admiral’s cabin, where he spread for her a little feast of bread and honey. Whilst she ate with relish, her large, dark, liquid eyes gazed in wonder at each of the cabin’s queer furnishings. The Lucayan youth, squatting on his hams on the stern locker, jabbered gaily, conveying to her the Admiral’s assurances that presently she would be set ashore again.
On her side there was no longer any anxious haste, and having eaten she moved in childish innocence about the cabin, peering at and fingering everything that she saw.
In dismissing her at last, Colon delighted her with a gift of coloured beads strung into a necklace, and hung a hawk-bell in each of her ears. She departed in laughing, childish glee, rowed ashore by Spanish sailors and accompanied by two Lucayans who, under her aegis, were to go as ambassadors to the people of Hayti. Colon’s best ambassador, however, was the girl herself. Her account of the marvels seen and the entertainment received brought the inhabitants in their thousands to the beach upon the morrow, to pay their homage to these beneficent beings from the skies.
They led Colon and a party of Spaniards inland, through a vast luxuriant forest, to a great village of upwards of a thousand houses, and there they spread a feast for them of fish, cassava bread and the strange succulent fruits of a land so bountiful that it required little cultivation.
Having in this fashion, at once shrewd and happy, set afoot relations with the inhabitants of Hayti, Colon extended them widely in the course of the next fortnight. He spent the time cruising along the coast of that great island of enchantment, and wherever he put in it was to be courted by the islanders, who flocked about the ships in their canoes, some of which were dug out of enormous trunks of the great mahogany trees. The Indians came laden with offerings of provisions and fruits, and in the course of that progress the Admiral collected no little store of gold. Ornaments of the precious metal were here so common as to proclaim its abundance in the land. With these ornaments the Haytians parted freely, and whilst seeking nothing in return—for, as elsewhere in these blessed lands in which all things were enjoyed in common, they were without any notion of traffic—they were overjoyed if they received a few beads or hawk-bells.
Various caciques were among those who came to pay homage to the superhuman strangers. One of them, borne in state in a rude litter on the shoulders of four men, became the Admiral’s guest to dinner on board the Santa Maria, his attendants seated at his feet, his manners gravely ceremonial. At parting he presented the Admiral with a belt and two plates of gold.
Elsewhere the flagship was visited by an embassy from a still greater cacique, named Guacanagari, who brought a curiously wrought belt and a great wooden mask, the eyes, tongue and nose of which were of solid gold. These he followed up by gifts of pieces of gold and two tame parrots. He was ruler of the greatest city they had yet seen, in the north-west of Hayti, and not only was a more advanced art displayed here in the construction of the houses and an ubiquity of carved statues, but the inhabitants possessed some notion of clothing themselves, and whilst the majority still went naked, many, including the cacique himself, wore rudimentary garments woven of cotton.
To satisfy the interest in gold displayed by the Spaniards, the Haytians in their propitiatory eagerness let it be known that there was abundance of it in the island, especially in an eastern region which they named Cibao, whose cacique’s banners were wrought of that metal.
It took no more than this to convince the Admiral that Cibao was merely a corruption of Zipangu, and that in this eastern region he would find the treasures of which Marco Polo spoke. In quest of them he weighed anchor on Christmas Eve, steering eastward. But the goal was never reached, for that night he was overtaken by a disaster destined to arrest at this stage for the present the extent of his discovery.
They were lying hove to, a league or so from land, and because the night was calm and the sea as smooth as silk, not only did the men of the watch, but the helmsman with them, careless of Colon’s standing orders, lie down to sleep, leaving the helm in charge of a mere boy.
The sea, however, was not so motionless as appeared. An unsuspected current bore the Santa Maria imperceptibly landwards, nor was the boy warned by the boom of the surf. Suddenly with a thudding scrape the caravel was aground, and held fast in a tumult of swirling waters.
It awakened the Admiral, who came in haste from his cabin, and might yet have saved the ship had he been better served.
He ordered the watch into the boat, to carry an anchor astern, by which to warp the vessel off. Cosa commanded that boat-crew, but in his extreme anxiety, instead of implicitly obeying Colon, he rowed off to the Niña, a mile away, so as to enlist her added assistance. The delay was fatal. By the time help came the Santa Maria was beyond helping. The thrust of the current had set her farther upon the bank and had swung her partly across the flow, there to be helplessly pounded by the breakers. Her seams were opening under the strain, and she listed gradually until her larboard gunwale was awash and the sea pouring into her.
There was no more to be done until daylight, and, as it proved, nothing to be done then. The little caravel that had carried Colon across the Atlantic was irretrievably lost. It remained only to salvage what they could, and in this work they spent that Christmas Day, stoutly assisted by the friendly Haytians with their canoes, and availing themselves of the huts ashore that the Haytians placed at their disposal.
They began by unloading all the gear, weapons and other movables from the ship. Later on, when they came to consider their future, and how it was affected by the shipwreck, and to perceive that it was impossible that all should return home in the little Niña, it was decided to build a fort that should house those who must be left here on Hispaniola until another expedition should come out from Spain.
They built solidly, using the timbers of the wrecked ship, and for protection against, all-comers they erected emplacements for the guns which had been salvaged. Of the need for these, however, there seemed little likelihood in a land over which peace and amity held such absolute sway.
They had the assistance of the Haytians, and Guacanagari himself did all to promote not only the work but their general well-being, signifying his regard for Colon in daily gifts amongst which there were gold plates and gold coronets and another of those wooden masks, of which in this instance the eyes and ears were of gold.
Every day new offerings of gold in the form of plates or in dust came as tokens to the Admiral of the island’s great wealth. But he was no longer impatient to trace it to its source. Of its plentiful existence he had proof and that for the moment must suffice. His impatience was to be gone. At the root of it lay the continued absence of Martin Alonso and the daily strengthening suspicion that this self-seeking collaborator had perhaps already set out to recross the ocean with the news, so that by forestalling Colon he might garner for himself the glory of the achievement.
Nor was this really the end of Colon’s anxieties. The return voyage of the Niña alone, the smallest of the ships that had sailed from Palos, was fraught with more peril than for all his maritime audacity he could face with calm. If he were lost, his log, his charts, his elaborate journal would be lost with him, and if, as might well befall, Martin Alonso too, sailing alone, should be lost, nothing would ever be known in Spain of the discovery; it would be assumed that the fate prophesied by the wiseacres had overtaken the expedition and that Colon had been destroyed by the unchallengeable forces of an ocean that marked the confines of the habitable world. His name, instead of blazing in the lustre that would await it once he were safely ashore in Spain, would remain the synonym of a foolish dreamer, a presumptuous charlatan; and the men he was compelled to leave on Hispaniola, these first colonists of this New World of his discovery, would also be the last. They would live out their little lives in this pleasant land of plenty, and so pass out of all human knowledge.
Among his followers, however, with no disturbing vision of this, there was no lack of those who were willing to remain and devote some portion of a lotus-eating existence to the exploration of the island and the discovery and perhaps the working of the gold-mines that must indubitably exist upon it.
Despite his deep reluctance to part with him, he appointed Vasco Aranda to the command and government of the two score men he was leaving at La Navidad, as he had named the fort, in commemoration of the fact that he had suffered shipwreck there on Christmas Day, the Feast of the Nativity. As Aranda’s lieutenant he appointed Ximenes, and with them he left Escovedo as the representative of the royal treasury, to receive and keep account of the gold that might be mined or collected. Among the others were craftsmen, necessary to that embryo colony: a carpenter, a cooper, a smith, a tailor and a gunner, as well as a surgeon who had sailed in the Niña.
By the first days of January all arrangements were completed, and on Friday the 4th, Colon weighed anchor and stood eastward towards a towering promontory that he named Monte Christi. A strong head-wind, however, retarded progress, and they had not sailed far along the coast of Hispaniola when on the 6th they sighted the missing Pinta.
If her unexpected reappearance surprised Colon and at the same time allayed his worst misgivings, both at the fear of being forestalled by Martin Alonso and of having to cross the ocean in only one, small and none too seaworthy vessel, it did not suffice to appease his indignation at the insubordinate manner in which Pinzon had left him.
The Pinta, riding before the wind with a full spread of sail, swept upon them at speed; and in order to receive explanations, Colon ordered the Niña to be put about and ran with the Pinta back to the bay under the headland of Monte Christi, where there was safe anchorage.
At the head of the short entrance ladder Colon was waiting for Martin Alonso when he came aboard the Niña. Vicente Yanez Pinzon, suspecting perhaps that his brother would need support in his rendering of accounts, had placed himself at the Admiral’s elbow.
Martin Alonso stepped aboard with a lift of the hand and a smiling greeting. “God save you, Admiral, and you, Vicente.”
Colon’s countenance remained sternly set. “Well returned at last,” he answered, coldly formal. “It will be well to know where you have tarried, and why.”
Pinzon maintained a boisterous joviality. “We’ll begin with the why, which was outside my wishes or responsibility. The Pinta was driven by stress of weather.”
“Driven to windward. That is something new in sailing.”
“I accounted the coast dangerous. The booming and frothing of the surf announced reefs. We knew nothing of the currents, which together with the wind might have borne us to disaster. So I held to windward, away from the land, as you yourself were doing when last I saw you.”
“Only so that I might continue my signals to you to go about. Why did you not obey them?”
“Your signals? May I die if I saw them.”
“What ailed your eyesight, and that of your crew?”
“You forget that the daylight was fading and that it was misty.”
“Aye, aye, so it was,” interjected Vicente.
“And your ears? Were you deaf as well? I fired a gun to warn you.”
“You did?” Martin Alonso’s eyes widened in surprise. “The sound must have been lost in the booming of the surf.”
“You’ve an answer for everything,” Colon told him.
“I hope so, Admiral.” Pinzon smiled insolently into the stern face. “And as I gather that the Santa Maria is lost I would seem to be justified of my greater caution.”
“It was not through going about then that I lost my ship. She was piled up on a reef at night in calm weather by the carelessness of a helmsman.”
“In calm weather! There’s proof of how right was my judgment that the coast is dangerous. But we are wasting words, Admiral. You’ve no cause to repine. The voyage I made was not unprofitable. I discovered a bay farther to the east, and a river which I have named the Martin Alonso. I took formal possession of the land, and I collected there a good store of gold in earnest of all that it may yield.”
Darker grew the Admiral’s brow at this usurpation of his own prerogatives.
“What do you tell me, sir? You took possession of lands on Hispaniola when I had already taken possession of the entire island in the name of the Sovereigns? That is of no effect. There is nothing to record. And then you bestow your own name upon a river! That also is of no effect. A singular presumption. I’ll say no more of it.”
But now at last Martin Alonso’s manner changed. The colour darkened in his face. “Where is the presumption?”
“Indeed, where?” Vicente supported him. “If he discovered it, was he not within his rights to name it?”
“With his own name? Where in all this New World of my discovery do you find a single piece of land or water that I have named Cristobal Colon?”
Martin Alonso stood silent, aloof, whilst his brother continued the argument. “It was yours to do so, Admiral, had you wished.”
“Had I wished! Should it be my wish to brand myself an impudent fool?”
“Sir!” cried Martin Alonso, stung to the quick.
“Are there not our princes to supply names for these new lands, and when these are used have we not the Lord and His Saints to keep us in names for ever? Enough! You shall chart me this river, and we will name it suitably. You found good store of gold, you say. What have you done with it?”
Less and less at their ease were the Pinzons.
“The half of it I bestowed upon my men. The other half I have retained, and this I am ready to share with you. It’s a share,” he added, as if thereby he hoped to tempt Colon, “that will come to close upon a thousand pesos.”
Colon was not deceived into supposing the offer other than made on a sudden inspiration, so as to propitiate him by a bribe into a more amiable attitude. He did not, however, incline to amiability. He smiled crookedly upon Martin Alonso.
“You had not heard, then, my enactment that all gold shall be regarded as the property of the crown.”
“Oh, yes. But then I, too, have an interest in this property. You are not to forget that my contribution to the expedition entitles me to one-eighth of the profits.”
“And so you help yourself to what you please, without waiting until the profit is ascertained. A humorous notion of trade, sir.”
Martin Alonso sought to save his face by sarcasm. “I am grieved to merit your censure.”
“I am grieved that you do. As for the gold, that may wait until we reach Spain, when I shall trouble you for a strict account of it. We are now bound thither. But first we’ll take a look at this river of your discovery.” He was sarcastic in his turn. “This River of Martin Alonso.”
They reached it on the morrow without further acrimony in the meantime, Martin Alonso having returned to the Pinta, and Vicente preserving a sulky submission to the Admiral.
Colon went ashore to make an exploration, in the course of which he announced that the river should be known as the Rio de la Gracia. That was a small matter, however wounding to Martin Alonso’s pride. It was on a graver one that the Admiral went aboard the Pinta later in the day.
The natives here had proved unusually shy on the approach of the ships, as shy as they had been on the first appearance of the Spaniards off Hispaniola and before word of their benignity had spread through the land. From one of his Lucayans Colon was to learn that this was because Pinzon had violently seized and carried off four men and two girls. It was this that took him aboard the Pinta.
His tone was uncompromising. “What is this they tell me of violence to six islanders, seized and held here by you against their will?”
Pinzon’s simmering resentment boiled over. “What then? Do you presume to question even my right to take a few slaves?”
“To whom have I conceded such a right?”
“To whom? God of Heaven! Have you not a dozen Indians even now aboard the Niña?”
“Not as slaves. Not taken by force. All have come willingly. Throughout I have studied, as I have enjoined and as you should know, to treat the Indians with gentleness, so that they may consider us their friends. Because of this I have been able to leave forty men behind at La Navidad without misgivings. But you by your violence teach them that all Christians are not good. You teach them not to trust us, but to beware of us. A mischievous folly, for which, with your other insubordinations, I should be justified in hanging you out of hand.”
There was a sneer on Martin Alonso’s livid face. “It is what I deserve for having raised you to the honour in which you now stand.”
The retort robbed the Admiral of breath for a moment. Then his words came in a rush. “You have raised me to honour! You! St. Mary! I thought the summit of impudence was reached when you gave your name to a river in Hispaniola. I did not think you could exceed it. But it seems you can. Enough!” He was sharp and peremptory. “Bring me these captive Indians of yours.”
Martin Alonso stood squarely before him in defiance. His broad proportions seemed to swell. “To what purpose?” he demanded.
“Bring them.” Colon’s eyes as coldly menacing as they were steady met Pinzon’s glance and held it during a long moment in which the master of the Pinta’s hesitation was reflected in the deepening malignity of his countenance. He could depend upon the support of his brothers, and fully half the men aboard the ships were men of theirs, who would stand by the Pinzons if it came to a trial of strength. Caution, however, reminded him in time that if he were to lead a mutiny against the Lord Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy of the Indies, a grim account would be asked of him once they were back in Spain.
So in the end with a contemptuous shrug he lowered his glance and yielded. “The reckoning will follow later,” he said.
“Depend upon it,” Colon answered him, his voice hard.
He, too, recognized a stalemate between them. He no more dared provoke a complete rupture because of its immediate consequences than Martin Alonso dared provoke it because of the ultimate ones.
The six youthful captives were brought from the hold. They cowered under the glance of the tall Admiral in a piteous fear before which his sternness was instantly cast aside.
They could not understand what he said, but he spoke so gently, his hand was so caressing as it stroked their dark heads that they were partly reassured. Under the malevolent glance of Martin Alonso, he took them over the side to his boat, and so aboard the Niña. There he gave them bread and honey and a little wine, as he had given it to other Indians whom he desired to comfort. He found a couple of shirts as garments for the girls, hung beads on their necks, and sent them happily ashore restored to liberty, to spread a tale of Spanish benevolence.