The Islands of Unwisdom Page 10

  ‘Why, of course, my love,’ Don Alvaro answered unhappily. ‘The sergeant is free as an uncaged bird.’

  Yet he was still anxious to pacify the Colonel. As soon as Doña Ysabel retired, he sent for Don Lorenzo and the Admiral, and begged them to go ashore and use whatever arguments they pleased to induce the prodigal to return. He pledged them his word of honour that, if they succeeded in their mission, he would never again permit the Colonel to exceed his authority; though for the time being he held the fate of the expedition in his hands, he would not be in the least formidable once they had fairly left Peru.

  They were ready enough to do as he asked, and though the Colonel had already sent the skiff back for his baggage, they followed him to his lodgings, to plead sweetly and submissively with him there; and the Admiral went so far as to say that the sergeant was being flogged at that very moment.

  The Colonel soon gave way. From what I heard later, he could hardly have done otherwise, because the Viceroy had been on the point of sending him to jail for similar drunken excesses and had appointed him to the Colonelcy of the expedition at the plea of the Warden of Callao, with a warning never to show his face again in Peru until the King should have appointed another viceroy. That he never intended to leave the ship was proved by his not having ordered his nephew, Ensign Jacinto de Merino, whose guardian he was, to come with him. This was a fantastical young man, as great a fop as his straitened means allowed, who loved to torture the Castilian tongue with tropes and conceits until his meaning often escaped us, but held his uncle in such awe that he stood stiff as a post in his presence, never uttering a word unless in answer to a question.

  Meanwhile, in the Chart-room the Chief Pilot took down his instruments and stored them again in his sea-chest. When he also removed the image of Our Lady of Solitude from the niche above the table, and wrapped her in a linen cloth, I asked him: ‘Don Pedro, what does this mean?’

  ‘I am throwing away a thousand pesos,’ he said, ‘and, who knows, saving my life. Since the Colonel is to be coaxed back, I am quitting, and no man’s plea, however eloquent, will alter my resolve. When a voyage begins in disorder, it ends in chaos.’

  I went straight to Don Alvaro. ‘Your Excellency,’ I said, ‘I am here to resume work on the dispatch. But first, with your permission, I wish to tell you that I must resign my post.’

  ‘You are resigning?’ he asked incredulously. ‘But why, little Andrés? Have I not treated you well?’

  ‘Like a father,’ I replied truthfully, ‘but now that the Chief Pilot is packing his sea-chest…’

  He leaped from the couch and ran into the Chart-room, where he threw his arms round Pedro Fernandez’s neck and implored him to desist. ‘Did I not earn the Colonel’s displeasure on your account, by releasing the sergeant?’ he asked.

  ‘That may be so, your Excellency, but now you have sent for him again, and since he witnessed my intervention, there can be no room for the two of us in the same ship.’

  ‘If you go ashore,’ the General said bitterly, ‘the whole crew will follow your example, and not even force will prevent them. Would you dash my hopes once more, at the last moment, merely for a private pique?’

  ‘I can dissuade them from going; I need only mention your own world-wide reputation as a navigator. With you to plot the course, and the Boatswain to sail the ship, my poor pilotage will not be needed. To be plain, your Excellency, the San Geronimo has become a mad-house; I have decided to forfeit my venture.’

  ‘Only an angel could please everyone in circumstances like these,’ wailed the General, ‘and I am a poor soul, full of faults, and wearied almost to death.’

  He pleaded and coaxed in a voice of honey, but the Chief Pilot’s mind was made up: he took his leave with courteous words of esteem and regret, and continued with his packing. When the chest was roped, he had it lowered into the skiff, climbed down the ladder, holding the sacred image under one arm, and waved his bonnet to us in farewell. I was sick to see him go, and though I had set my heart on this adventure, determined to abandon it also as soon as I had handed over my accounts to Miguel Llano.

  When the skiff passed under the bows, a buzz of dismay went up and a sailor shouted: ‘Ahoy, Pilot, where are you bound? Are you quitting the ship?’ And another: ‘To the Devil with all these comings and goings. Tell us fairly, Don Pedro, are you off for good? If so, not a man Jack will stay in this unlucky ship, though they hang us in a row from the main-yard.’

  ‘Do your duty, men!’ he shouted back. ‘The Boatswain will be master, and the General is a far better pilot than I!’

  ‘The General!’ the first sailor scoffed, and spat into the sea. ‘He may have been a good man in his day, but as anyone can see with half an eye, he’s breaking up like an old hulk whacked against a reef. I’d rather have the Chaplain as Master!’

  ‘Saint Nicholas be my witness,’ another put in, ‘Don Alvaro’s not capable of navigating a wooden shoe across a washtub!’

  The skiff reached the quay and Pedro Fernandez clambered ashore, when a procession of richly dressed personages wound across the cobbles, with smiling, affable faces. At the head, in red, gold and green, walked the Lieutenant of Paita, arm in arm with the Admiral; next came Captain Don Lorenzo and Don Luis, with the Harbour-master; behind them followed the Lieutenant’s suite and a group of Paita merchants who had come to give the flotilla a send-off with presents and prayers.

  The Admiral, when he saw the Chief Pilot on the quay, with cloak and blanket over his left arm, and the statue under the right, called out gaily: ‘Put down your burdens, friend, and pay your respects to his Excellency the Lieutenant. I have just been telling him that in you we have the boldest and most skilful pilot of either the New World or the Old, and that while you keep us on our course we have nothing whatever to fear.’

  Pedro Fernandez brushed the compliment aside, but made his bow to the Lieutenant. ‘I regret to report, your Excellency,’ he said, ‘that I have taken my leave of the General; should you have any use for my services in this port, they are freely at your disposal.’

  A chorus of protest arose, and the Admiral asked him to explain this cruel desertion. Without heat, and choosing words that would give as little offence as possible, he explained that because of bitter quarrels between certain persons of high standing in the flotilla he preferred to seek work elsewhere.

  ‘But, dear friend,’ cried Don Lope, embracing him, ‘thanks to his Excellency’s generous intervention those differences are now a thing of the past. We are all reconciled, and henceforth the San Geronimo will be as happy a ship, even, as the galleon which I command. Look, what comes here? Did you ever see greater love?’

  He pointed behind him, where Captain Corzo was assisting the Colonel’s tottering advance, with as much tenderness as if he had been his rich and childless uncle.

  ‘May it long continue,’ the Chief Pilot returned drily. ‘I shall not be present to applaud it.’

  The Colonel came closer and when he saw Pedro Fernandez standing beside his baggage, shouted: ‘What, Sir, are you deserting your ship? That is very bad, and ungenerous, too. Oh, the poor General, with all that he’s suffered! And now, at the last moment, the Chief Pilot skips off and leaves him.’

  ‘It is not desertion, my lord. I have cancelled my contract and forfeited my venture.’

  ‘Don’t chop logic with me, Sir. I have said that it’s desertion! Upon my word, the Devil seems to be loose among us, trying his infernal best to destroy the glorious work General Mendaña has in hand. Let’s all return to the flagship, and send the old goat-foot packing. By Saint Antony’s sow, I swear he’ll be sorely disappointed. He’ll plot revenge and devise new tricks for setting us by the ears again, but to Hell with him, I say, and there let him fry! It’s our duty now to hold aloft the standard of our Christian Faith, serving God and our King with extravagant deeds, though it cost us our heads.’ He raised his stick as if it were a banner, waved it wildly, and fell in a heap on the quay.

  Ever
yone but the Chief Pilot laughed; even the Colonel joined in the joke against himself. When the merriment had died down and he had been set on his feet again, Pedro Fernandez answered: ‘My lord, let us value moderation and forbearance above extravagant feats of daring. You have been far too ready to use stick and sword against the troops under your command, and to shower curses on my hardworking sailors. I well know the damage that has been done and cannot think of resuming my post unless you swear that it will be repaired.’

  The Colonel was content to answer with a grin: ‘But my dear Sir, you surely don’t expect forbearance and moderation from a Colonel?’

  ‘I expect both from him, and on every occasion,’ the Chief Pilot insisted, and then continued, using simple words, as if speaking to a child: ‘Your lordship is still in Peru, from where my men will soon take you and your soldiers to the far-off Isles of Solomon; and while you go ashore there, they will stay aboard and look after the ships. Do you follow me so far? Well, if it has pleased your lordship to treat them like dirt, it may please them to sail off and leave you there to your own devices. And even if they don’t play a bad joke on you, you mustn’t forget that later still they’ll be sailing back to Peru, for reinforcements and fresh stores. And the report that they take with them about our prospects will be no better and no worse than your lordship’s treatment of them.’

  ‘You speak clearly, Sir,’ said the Lieutenant of Paita, ‘but pray lower your voice, lest your ship-mates hear what is not meant for them. I am certain that our noble friend agrees with you in principle.’

  The Colonel, however, was wedded to his own point of view. ‘Not at all, your Excellency!’ he exclaimed. ‘This man pampers the crew, and unless he shows far greater firmness, he’ll soon find them laughing at him. He must make them jump to his orders, not amble—why, it would have disgusted your Excellency to see the lackadaisical show that they put up on Friday evening, before the very eyes of the Admiral-General, too! And how did he take it? With a weak shrug, like Eli in the fable.’

  Pedro Fernandez remained unsatisfied. ‘Your Excellency,’ he said, ‘I have given my word that no man will ever persuade me to sail with the Colonel, unless he shows a complete change of heart.’

  The Lieutenant was a shrewd and diplomatic man. ‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘if it is a matter of keeping your word, let us say no more! But at least have the kindness to wait here and do nothing to aggravate this affair, until I am with you again.’ He called for his barge and was soon drummed aboard the San Geronimo.

  In the flagship everyone had been leaning over the bulwarks, listening to this exchange, and my admiration for the Chief Pilot led me to suppose that the troops were ranged behind him as wholeheartedly as the crew; but while the Lieutenant was below in the Great Cabin, several soldiers were loud in the Colonel’s defence. The junta, lolling on the hatches at my back, spoke their minds with vigour.

  ‘I’m with the Colonel all the way,’ Matia said. ‘That Dimas is a jumped-up valet and no more a soldier than I’m a wet-nurse. The Colonel gave him an order, and he ought to have obeyed it without question, though it was to cut his own father’s throat. What did he do? Went whining to the Vicar. “Father, I have a tender conscience!” What right has a sergeant to a conscience? Let him leave such luxuries to his betters. “The Colonel has given me an order, and I fear for my immortal soul if I obey it!” Why didn’t he go to the Chaplain instead, who was one of us once? Father Antonio would have cut him short: “An order is an order, my son,” he’d have said, “and if the Colonel happens to be in error, what concern is that of yours? The confessional is always open to him. Do your duty, man!”’

  ‘Yes,’ said Juarez, ‘he would have used those very words, and Dimas again proved his ignorance of good soldiering when he interfered in a noblemen’s quarrel. Deaf ears, blind eyes, dumb lips, when officer falls out with officer: that’s the first lesson I was taught as a recruit. Dimas has earned the strappado.’

  ‘Hold hard, fellows,’ the water-steward interposed. ‘Maybe I’m only a seaman and can’t follow you in matters of military custom. But do you hold that the Colonel was right to kick and strike the orderly for doing what he’d been given permission to do?’

  ‘As to that, bully, has it never happened that a sailor got the rope-end for obeying a foolish order of his boatswain’s? Had he been a good soldier, he’d have shielded his officer: he’d have said: “No, your honor, nobody gave me permission. I pray your honour’s pardon; I’ve drunk a spoonful too much chicha.” Mind you, I’m not saying that the ribbons were planted on the orderly to catch the Colonel’s eye and make him snort and push up his tail; but he’s had trouble enough with certain high officers—I’ll not name them—and he intends to make himself respected. It all started with the General’s Lady giving him a dressing-down from the quarter-deck the very moment he reported—of course, you can’t muzzle a noblewoman; but that lady has a sharp tongue and the Colonel’s skin is tender.’

  ‘And then,’ said Matia, ‘then your knight-errant of a Chief Pilot took her part, and spoke up for the Boatswain, and I don’t say that he was wrong there, Jaume, because seamen, too, have their pride. But he rubbed the Colonel the wrong way, don’t you see? His lordship may be quick on the draw and a gay old dog, but his heart’s in the right place, his purse is always open to any poor man, and he sees to it that we’re well fed and armed, and never in his life has he offended a man without some provocation at least. If you ask me, those high officers should have known better that day than to offer the Chief Pilot their protection, and I honour the man for having refused it; to form a cabal against the Colonel is little short of mutiny and, for my part, I know where my duty lies. But when he pleaded for the sergeant just now, he committed trespass. The Colonel curses the Boatswain; very good, the Chief Pilot has a right to protest; but the Colonel kicks a soldier, runs him through, flays him, disembowels him, cuts him into steaks, and feeds him to the hounds, that’s none of the Chief Pilot’s business. He must be content to cross himself and pass on.’

  ‘Your hand on that, Matia!’ Juarez said. ‘And the moral of it is: put skirts in a ship and troubles breed like lice.’

  As he spoke, an ensign called the troops to attention, and the Lieutenant of Paita, with Doña Ysabel on his arm, returned to his barge. The General remained behind. On the quay, every hat was doffed to her, as she walked delicately over the rough pavement, and I have never before or since seen a woman look lovelier than Doña Ysabel did then, in the warm rays of the setting sun. Laying her hand lightly on the Chief Pilot’s arm, she murmured: ‘Come, my friend, we stand in need of you. Though no man will ever make you change your mind, I do not doubt that you will listen to a woman. I pledge you my word that the Colonel will cause no further scandal, either on the voyage or when we land in our Isles. Will you accept it?’

  What could Pedro Fernandez reply? He knelt and kissed her hand in silence. Then, after thanking the Lieutenant for his kindness, he returned to the flagship and reported for duty. The Colonel followed a little later, no further attempt being made to reconcile them.

  At Paita we filled eighteen hundred water-kegs and jars, and the Lieutenant handed over the remaining arquebuses, so that we now had two hundred in all. Of the three hundred and seventy-eight persons in the flotilla, no less than two hundred and eighty were capable of bearing arms; and the General contrived to find an officer willing to pay a couple of thousand pesos for a majority, to serve as second-in-command under the Colonel. His name was Don Luis Moran, and in my opinion it would have been wiser to let him stay ashore and keep his money—the grey, mean, spiritless creature, fitter to be an old lady’s coachman than to command good troops.

  Chapter 7

  ON THE HIGH SEAS

  Despite our urgent desire to be under way again, we found ourselves detained at Paita for nearly a month. The frigate was now-leaking so fast that Captain Leyva refused to sail in her until she had been completely overhauled but, knowing that he would get no satisfaction from Don Alvaro
, he went direct to the Lieutenant of Paita. Called to account, the General tried to brush the complaint aside as frivolous, and produced the Santa Catalina’s clearance certificate, issued by the Harbour-master of Callao. The Lieutenant gave it a cursory glance and ordered a fresh inspection by his Harbour-master, whose report proved so unfavourable—in places her timbers were as thin as shoe-leather, and her keel eaten away by teredo—that the General complained bitterly that the caulking and other repair-work done at Callao had been scamped, and asked leave to exchange her against another frigate in the port. This the Lieutenant would not do, unless the difference in value were paid at once in hard coin; but the pesos could not be found. Since the frigate was needed for navigation among the island reefs where the galleons could not be hazarded, we were compelled to stay in port while ‘The Holy Coffin’ was unloaded, careened and patched.

  Shore leave was granted to the officers, but neither to the crew nor the troops. A standing patrol of arquebusiers guarded the quay, who had orders to fire at anyone attempting to leave the ships. Even so, five young soldiers managed to desert by swimming across the harbour and one of them took with him an emigrant girl, towing her behind him on an inflated goat-skin. It was a wearisome and disagreeable time: the weather was torrid, no rain having yet fallen; the mosquitoes bit viciously, and we wasted a month’s provisions. However, all evil has its term: and on the Thursday before Ascension Day the frigate was repaired, reloaded, and we were free to sail, though one thing or another prevented us from quitting port until the following morning.

  On Friday the 12th of May, therefore, we stood out to sea, to the sound of clarions and drums, the General grieving loudly that two full months had passed since the day on which he had reckoned to leave Peru. Yet he promised that we should make our first landfall in eight weeks or less, if the winds were fair, and reach the Isles of Solomon three weeks later, that is to say, in the last week of July; and since the latitude of the Isles was well known to himself, it would be a case of: