The Islands of Unwisdom Read online

  ‘I think,’ her sister answered modestly, ‘such a request would come better from my husband; the General would hardly listen to a woman.’

  ‘Oh, that can easily be arranged, my child,’ said Doña Ysabel.

  Pedro Fernandez kept silent. He was in two minds: to commandeer the vessel would be high-handed in the extreme and might well ruin the owners; but he himself would have hesitated to sail so crank and rotten a ship as the Santa Ysabel even from Callao to Cherrepé; and he thought it little short of murder to embark in her more than one hundred and twenty trusting settlers, to say nothing of the crew and the slaves, for a voyage of two months and upwards in tropical waters.

  Towards evening, sure enough, Admiral Don Lope de Vega presented a formal petition to the General that the Tres Reyes Magos should be commandeered for the King’s service, and her owners offered the Santa Ysabel in exchange. Don Alvaro was shocked by this proposal, and replied that the Admiral’s ship, though admittedly not handsome, was well found and fit enough in every way for the arduous service required of her. When he rejected the petition with virtuous firmness, Don Lope returned to his ship and ordered the boatswain to go below with an auger and secretly bore a number of holes in her bottom. It is said that Doña Ysabel had suggested this stratagem to the Admiral, promising to shield him from the General’s displeasure should he ever come to hear of it; and I can vouch for this much, that she and Doña Mariana sat together on the poop, with their eyes fixed on the Santa Ysabel, whispering and giggling behind their hands like naughty little girls.

  Presently we heard discordant shouts from the Admiral’s ship: the cry was raised that she was settling, and that part of her cargo was already awash. ‘Man the pumps, brave hearts!’ her master sang out, and gave urgent orders to find the leaks at once and stop them. At this the Admiral’s officers came to him with a plain refusal to sail another league in so rotten a vessel, and pressed him to make the exchange before it should be too late. The master and pilot ardently supported them, and together they drew up a memorial, which all signed: to the effect that since the Santa Ysabel leaked at every seam, she was unfit for the long and dangerous voyage contemplated, and that they begged his Excellency ‘to apply the remedy that lay so close at hand.’

  Don Alvaro saw that their concerted resistance was not to be overcome; but rather than admit defeat, or go against his conscience, he pleaded a sudden attack of the quinsy and referred the matter to the Colonel, giving him full authority to do whatever seemed right and just in the circumstances. The Colonel, who had few scruples on such occasions, then told Don Lope in everybody’s hearing: ‘My lord Admiral, you did well to force matters. Pray bore a few more holes in her bottom for good measure, so I may truthfully report to the General that she leaks like a sieve. And now we must seize the Tres Reyes Magos before she can slip away; already her crew show signs of suspicion and alarm.’

  He hastened back to the flagship with his report and, at the General’s request, set it down in writing. Don Alvaro read the document carefully, comparing it with the other, and then authorized him to commandeer the Tres Reyes Magos, but not before carpenters had been sent aboard both ships to estimate the difference in their values.

  ‘Mark you, my lord,’ said he, ‘I will have nothing done in an irregular way, nor anything against the laws of God.’

  The carpenters informed the Colonel that the merchantman, though of the same tonnage as the Santa Ysabel, was worth some nine thousand six hundred pesos more; but from this estimate he knocked off three thousand pesos out of kindness to the General and the Admiral, her joint-owners.

  Now, as ill-luck would have it, the Tres Reyes Magos was also jointly owned, by a merchant and a Canon from Panama. The Canon had been ashore during these proceedings and when, strolling down to the quay, he saw negroes and sailors discharging the cargo that he had been at such pains to stow aboard, and soldiers stalking about with fire-arms, he raised an anguished yell, and charged into the midst of them. He called them bandits and infidels and worse names still, and forbade them to touch another sack or barrel, if they hoped for salvation, because all was the property of the Church and they were committing a heinous sacrilege. The boatswain of the Santa Ysabel, an impatient man and no great lover of priests, told him curtly to be off and take his complaint to the Admiral; he himself, he said, was acting under orders and doing nothing for his own gain. The men continued at their task with set faces, fearing the boatswain’s rope-end far more than a priest’s threats and objurgations; until finally the Canon, who was young and of noble family, was driven to an ecstasy of anger. He rushed at his adversary as if to tear him in pieces, but the boatswain stepped aside, and he would have fallen into the harbour if a soldier, posted at the edge of the quay, had not given him a timely push. ‘Do you want a ducking, Father,’ he shouted gruffly, ‘in three fathoms of salt water?’

  The Canon’s fury was now turned against this soldier, whom he promised a vile death and eternal damnation; but the man hid his face to avoid being recognized again, and ran off. The Canon then went from one seaman to another, threatening them with all the torments of Hell, until the boatswain said in exasperation: ‘As you wish, Father. If you don’t want us to take out the rest of the cargo, let it stay in the hold. We can make good use of it and I assure your reverence that, in heat like this, my men don’t lug barrels and baulks of timber merely for pleasure.’ And he ordered the sailors to take a spell.

  The Canon and his partner, a merchant of Cherrepé, jumped into their skiff and rowed awkwardly out to the flagship, where they demanded an immediate interview with the General. The Colonel was waiting for them on deck and greeted the Canon courteously enough, but gave him little satisfaction. He said that Don Alvaro was indisposed and had delegated plenary powers to himself and that, for his part, he greatly regretted the necessity that had forced him to make this exchange of ships.

  The young priest burst into another torrent of invective, declaring that he had not only been robbed of his entire fortune, but buffeted by a common soldier and threatened with drowning in three fathoms of water; that he would carry his complaint to Rome itself, if need be, and ensure for those guilty of this outrage nothing but pain and sorrow in this world, and perpetual torment in the next.

  ‘Calm yourself, calm yourself, reverend Father!’ said the Colonel and, beckoning to Juan de Buitrago, gave him whispered orders to prevent the Vicar and the Chaplain from coming on deck; he could stand up to one priest, he said, but three was too great odds.

  ‘You dare ask me to calm myself, you godless wretch?’ shouted the Canon. ‘You, who are in the direct line and descent of those Roman soldiers who played at dice for Our Lord’s stolen vestment while He hung upon the Cross!’

  ‘No one has stolen anything from your Reverence! With the authority of King Philip we are making a legal exchange of ships, and you stand to lose nothing by this transaction, but rather to gain. The General is an open-hearted and considerate nobleman, a true son of the Church, who would sooner think of robbing his mother than a priest.’ He added, thoughtlessly: ‘—even a priest of Panama. He will pay you for your own interest in the vessel, deducting only the value of the ship we shall give you instead of it, which will serve your purpose well enough; and no one will lay a finger on your cargo.’

  But the Canon, clenching his fists and setting his teeth, hissed at him: ‘Those sons of Satan have not even troubled to remove the whole cargo, but threaten to keep for their own use what is left. I warn you, my lord, that every matins and vespers, when I offer my prayers to Our Saviour Jesus Christ, I shall not fail to carry this crime to His judgment seat, and implore Him to prevent my stolen ship from ever reaching port in safety. Our Lord’s ears are always open to the prayers of His injured priests—even those of Panama!’

  Upon my soul, I felt sorry for the Canon, but even more so for his partner, who could expect neither favour nor redress. This poor merchant pleaded his case with tears running down his cheeks, and protested that the loss would
beggar him; but the Colonel told him coldly that he should thank God that he had not been robbed by English freebooters, but was permitted to show his loyalty to King Philip by a small, though useful, loan to one of his most distinguished commanders; and that in God’s good time he, too, would be repaid in full.

  Meanwhile, Juan de Buitrago had no difficulty with the task assigned to him, because the Vicar was prostrated by seasickness—there was a strong swell even in the harbour—and in no state to intervene in the dispute, and the Chaplain was busy attending to his needs. As for Father Joaquin, who sailed in the Santa Ysabel, he was timid and unworldly and kept well out of the way of trouble. At last the Canon persuaded the Colonel to order the unloading to be completed, which was done with the help of Indian serfs whom, at Don Alvaro’s request, the District Officer had sent down from Santiago de Miraflores to water our ships. The whole cargo was laid out on the quay, and the Canon, having carefully separated his half-share from the merchant’s, sat down in the middle on a pile of sacks and kept a watch all night, until he had seen us safely under way again. None of our people was hardy enough to remove the least thing from his heap.

  When Don Alvaro learned what had been arranged, he sent the Canon a signed and sealed letter in which he engaged himself to pay the partners the sum of six thousand six hundred pesos—within two years, or as soon as he returned to Peru—and meanwhile mortgaged them the flagship in bottomry, generously throwing in his third-interest in the frigate. This document would not have satisfied the Canon, even if he had thought the valuation a just one; for short of sailing with the expedition he saw no means of securing payment within the period specified, or indeed afterwards.

  The General complained bitterly to Doña Ysabel of the false position into which the Colonel had placed him, saying that the affair had been mishandled. ‘Yes, husband,’ she agreed, ‘it is a pity that you did not face the Canon yourself, instead of delegating your authority to the Colonel, who has a quick tongue and a heavy hand. However, God be praised for this much at least, that my sister’s husband now commands a ship not altogether unworthy of his new rank.’

  ‘Whatever will the Vicar say,’ he mourned, ‘when he learns what has been done?’

  ‘Tell him at once yourself,’ she replied lightly, ‘before he has had time to recover from his retching and vomiting, and he will say no more than “Ugh!”, and “Ai, ai, Mother of God!”, and “It is God’s will that man should suffer for his sins.”’

  The provisions bought by the Admiral were distributed among the ships; but they proved neither of good quality nor of sufficient quantity and the Colonel, who had somehow learned that Don Alvaro had not yet supplied his quota of the venture, grew restive. He swore that, as a conscientious officer, he would see that his troops did not go short because of any man’s negligence or avarice; and that night, when the General had retired, he commandeered the provisions unloaded from the Tres Reyes Magos, except the Canon’s share, and had them taken aboard the flagship. He then broke into a warehouse containing foodstuffs brought down from the neighbouring valleys for sale to coastal traders, and had these shipped as well. The warehouseman, who slept on the premises with his wife and two young sons, was utterly dismayed; not all the goods were his, and the Colonel, who had been drinking heavily again, held out no hope of repayment. At last, in desperation, he agreed to a suggestion made by the Purser: namely, that he and his family should join the expedition and that what had been seized from him should be regarded as his venture; and to this the Colonel offered no objection.

  The difficulty now was to find accommodation for the warehouseman, but the Purser, always resourceful, overcame it. He went to the Great Cabin at midnight, when the General was in the habit of rising for his devotions, and complained of scandalous behaviour among a small group of settlers recruited at Callao—an old cooper with two sons and three daughters. The men, he said, were very jackdaws, stealing everything that was not under lock and key, and the women were openly accosting the sailors.

  ‘Turn them out, Don Gaspar, turn them out at once!’ cried the General zealously. ‘But search their baggage first!’ So they were put ashore, protesting vociferously, and their quarters given to the warehouseman’s family. I might add that had Don Alvaro turned out the whole body of Callao settlers this would have been little loss, though as it proved, the Purser should certainly have thought twice before parting with a family of skilled coopers.

  As dawn was breaking, the Colonel, who had taken frequent pulls at his bottle while supervising the removal of stores, ran into the Admiral and, being more than usually drunk, gave him an extravagant salute. ‘Good morning, your Excellency!’ he said. ‘May I convey my sincerest condolences?’

  ‘You are very kind,’ said the Admiral, ‘but I do not know that I stand in need of any.’

  ‘Is it nothing to spend your bridal night working like a negro slave on the quay-side of such a piddling port as this, instead of proving your mettle between scented sheets, while the fiddles play and bride-men cheer outside your chamber door? They tell me that Doña Mariana is withheld from you by the sanctimonious orders of I need not say whom. But, by God’s thunders, if I were you, I should resent that at the point of my sword.’

  Don Lope was the more vexed because this was said in the hearing of the soldiers who escorted him; but answered mildly enough that he had lived unmarried so many years that two more months of bachelordom were no great penalty, and that he respected Don Alvaro’s pious motives.

  However, it is seldom easy to shake off a drunkard before he has had his say. The Colonel followed him and bawled: ‘Stay a little, Don Lope, my fine cock, I have thought of something to please you. There’s a pretty little Callao whore named Dolores, a cooper’s daughter, whom the General has turned out for plying her trade too openly. She’s neat and clean and a splendid little worker—I’ll vouch for that with my life—and just now she came to me in tears, begging me to find accommodation for herself and her father in one of the smaller ships. Now, Admiral mine, why not take her with you as a consolation for your ill treatment? I warrant she’ll show you gratitude in any position you desire. Let You-know-whom go hang with his ventose sermons on marital chastity. What’s a wife for, but to sleep with her husband?’

  The Admiral, greatly provoked, though the Colonel’s offer had been prompted by true pity for all concerned, put his hand to his sword; but thought better of it and passed on, not deigning to reply. At the time, it seemed an incident of little importance, but if ever the Devil finds a small ember of resentment, he blows it patiently into a conflagration; and when Don Lope went aboard his new ship, rechristened with the same name as the old, and hoisted the royal banners and his own pendant, he told his officers that he held the General greatly to blame ‘for not keeping that old Momus under better control.’

  Yet though the Colonel had been ill-advised to offer the Admiral a whore in public he had not over-rated his virtue, as the sequel will show. About breakfast time Don Lope called upon the General and asked permission to make an example of a sergeant who had defrauded a countryman of the price of a sucking pig; and the General granted this with alacrity, pleased that at least one high officer shared his zeal for fair dealing. At once, without ceremony, the sergeant was hoisted, maimed and put ashore; but his young and lively wife remained in the Santa Ysabel, protesting that, for all she knew, the friar who married them had been but a soldier in masquerade, and that her sergeant was reported to have another wife in Quito. Thereafter she spent part of her days and all her nights in the Admiral’s cabin, caring for his clothes and smoothing his pillow; and nothing that Father Joaquin said could keep her out of it. The soldiers in the Admiral’s ship, who had valued their sergeant, were not slow to say that his one fault had been to marry a woman with a slim waist and fine round breasts, and that Don Alvaro must be held responsible for this affair because he had kept Doña Mariana out of her legitimate bed. It would have been better for all, they declared, if Don Lope had taken the Colonel’s advice
and shown charity to the cooper’s daughter. Others blamed Doña Ysabel, swearing that it was she who had made this chastity a condition, for fear that her sister might be got with child before the voyage was over, and so out-do her in womanly repute.

  Our departure from Cherrepé was postponed until the evening because we had not yet taken on water; and when the District Officer, Don Bartolomé de Villavicencio, rode down to the port and found that the Indian serfs whom he had sent for that purpose were used instead to transfer the cargo of the old Santa Ysabel to the new, and to carry the contents of the warehouse aboard the flagship, he displayed anger and vowed that we were killing his men by overwork. He called them off at once, with their ponies and carts, and sent them back to Santiago de Miraflores.

  Their departure was the occasion of a fresh dispute, this time between Don Alvaro and the Chief Pilot. The General ordered him to set sail for the Isles without further delay, but he objected that it would be madness to cross the widest and most perilous gulf in the world, with no more water than was in the kegs and jars which he himself had taken aboard at Callao for the use of his crew. ‘What of the soldiers?’ he asked. ‘What of the settlers and their families?’

  Don Alvaro grew restless and stammered that his officers were urging him not to visit another port, but to stand out to sea, because their men were already getting out of hand; and that, if need be, everyone could be put on half-allowance. ‘Do as I say, friend,’ he cried.

  ‘But tell me, your Excellency,’ demanded the Chief Pilot, ‘even if we could do without water, are we not to call at Paita to collect arquebuses with powder, match and ball? Surely, your officers are not so negligent as to have forgotten these arms, which you yourself were at pains to secure?’

  The General bent his head, not caring to meet the Chief Pilot’s eye. ‘Our soldiers have their fire-arms,’ he said, ‘also swords, halberds and targes, enough for our needs. The Indians use no weapons worth the name, and experience has taught me that it is far better to go among them with gifts than with guns. We have no time to waste at Paita.’