EXCERPT 5: (from CHAPTER 11)
Out
in the bay on Sarmiento’s ship the men waved slowly. Many of them sensed the
gloom ashore and shivered. The abyss that they were sliding into suddenly became
apparent. A murkiness that spread. Sarmiento perceived the damage and screamed
to one of the African slaves who was a trumpeter:
“Blow ! Blow !”
The slave took a deep breath, filled his cheeks and
his horn blurted. Then cannons were let off. Sarmiento ordered other crew
members to raise their own standards and pennants and signal back to the snaking
flags ashore. A ceremony which made even the cynics clap. It was a slow dribble
at first, but with a steady increase of momentum, until they all erupted with a
stirring cheer. Rational despair was mitigated and the harbour-prophets-of-doom
began to dance and scream while, on the ship, sailors assumed a hero’s role,
racing to and fro, tugging at ropes, yelling, waving, becoming monkey-men
clambering up stiff masts:
“Let out the top-sail!”
Hunched figures in rufous coats mopped the worn and
wrinkled decks:
“Heigh my hearties, get to’t lads!”
And the Gemini-fleet slapped the sea...
I
flung myself outwards to get an objective look. There the ships became more
decrepit than inspiring. Dark, egg-shaped hulls, stained and draped with green,
furry folds. And the design of them seemed hopeless. Tiny, rough and rounded
vessels, bulging, pregnant bellies that were ample in width but short on length.
Bobbing eggs, they were, difficult to manage and manoeuvre, so easy to crack and
break apart. Tall towers fore and aft threatened to tip the ships over rather
than guarantee any stability. They advanced clumsily, only as well as such egg-ships
could, according to the winds, which were always encouraged:
“Blow!” the crew yelled, to either their
African trumpeter or some invisible cherubim angels: “Blow!...”
EXCERPT 6: (from CHAPTER 11)
The
sea was calm except for the occasional swell, pushing a wave into the
cutting bow, or thumping the hull’s belly and splashing over the side. The sky
was cloudless - a mid-afternoon sun, scorching hot. The slight breeze was hardly
refreshing. Most of the crew were in an empty-bellied siesta attitude, bemoaning
the famished nature of their laziness. It was too hot and they were too weak to
work. So they waited for the sun to drop.
In direct contrast - a group of tireless cabin-boys, animated by adult
weakness, were out to play, chasing each other. Running legs and little slapping
feet drew a dull echo from the hull. It was a shouting, squealing game, a
desperate pursuit and escape. A jumping, swinging, climbing, hiding joy. Reality
for those boys revolved around a wonderful-terrible fear-lust of the tag. The
ship itself became immaterial. The slaps or kicks received from grizzly sailors
were irrelevant.
Then with the dropping sun the shadows rose, the game stopped and the
boys and men were put to work. Scrubbing, hauling. But with the sun’s retreat
the slight breeze also choked, until each breath died away and everything became
deathly still. Arms slowed and legs moved as if weighted with bricks of lead.
And the dusk brought a strange and ruddy cloud that seemed to pull all attention
as it rolled toward them. The slow, hardly discernible unfolding of a mist
spreading from south to north, girding the whole western horizon. It was a
turbid strip of vapour that looked like a long line of salebrous coast. When the
full-moon rose, veiled by that fog, it became a crimson orb hanging to starboard,
reflecting a bloody hue over the dead-calm ocean which was more transparent than
usual. Gallego thought that he could actually see the bottom, and he dropped the
lead in again and again, searching for an impossible sounding.
Mendaña struggled aboard the Capitana,
arriving for the scheduled meeting. He was glad this time to have changed ships,
Gregorio Gonzalez and Don Pedro Ortega had been driving him crazy with their
barbarisms. But once he had lifted
himself he became transfixed by the glowing sea and eerie atmosphere, and
instead of going to Sarmiento’s cabin he went up to the poop, to Catoira, who
was staring silently at the hardly functional flicker of a fading candle. The
writer gasped, ignorant of Mendaña’s presence. Sarmiento was also on deck and
riveted: - The Terra Incognita - he recalled - has the form of a dream – and he felt his soul shudder.
The whole ship was lulled into a silent trance. But this was suddenly
broken by a splash of grim reality - a cabin-boy running, then slipping on the
mist-moistened half-deck, fell on his arse, slid, and, as the ship rolled with a
sudden swell, he was propelled under the rail and vomited into the ocean.
Hernán Gallego saw the sliding blur and heard the plop:
“Man overboard !” he yelled, holding up a lantern and pointing
to starboard.
Everyone picked themselves up, shook a dream out of their heads and
scurried to the rails, leaning out to stare into what had suddenly become a
pitch black sea. No sooner had he fallen than the encroaching fog smothered the
ship, blinding them to all trace. No moon-light penetrated anymore, their own
lanterns only managed to illuminate a feeble radius beyond which there was
absolutely no visibility. Perception of the exterior was reduced to a shrill and
tremulous:
“Help me...”
The crew murmured:
“Who is it ?”
Then another child’s voice:
“It’s Ceballos, señor.”
And one of the officers:
“My boy !”
But it was like looking into a black wall.
“Put out the lights !” someone shouted: “Perhaps we’ll see
better,” and all flames went quickly out.
The desperate voice in the sea persisted and they used their ears to
perceive direction of motion:
“Towards the stern !”
Some candles were lit again, briefly, to locate lines and hawsers, hurl
them overboard in order to fish for the invisible lad.
“Hang on boy !” but none of the ropes had reached him. Then
someone threw a chicken-coop full of birds:
“Swim !” they yelled: “Swim to the chickens.” But the
boy’s voice faded:
“Help me...” and the chickens’ squawks also suddenly stopped. The Capitana
filled with a murmuring hum:
“We’re drifting away from him.”
Until another noise, a creek, a splash, and light. Horror - Mendaña:
“My ship !”
It was lit up like a Christmas-tree. Lanterns hanging from bowsprit and
yardarms. Each light with a double halo, one orange, one blue. Caught in a
current or pushed by a freak breeze, the contrast with their own stillness made
it seem to be flying straight at them:
“Our lights !” they shouted: “They can’t see us !”
and the ocean filled with their roars, roars which came back from the Almiranta:
“There’s a ship there ! Fie lads ! We’re gonna hit !”
A mighty groan as the Almiranta’s
hull lifted sharply. A sudden swell grabbed, pushing it, so that it seemed to
fly directly in front of them. The boys on board screamed. Riggings were reached
for. Rope, burning the fingers and palms of desperate hands:
“We’re done !”
The ship lurched, they fell. The Almiranta
had nudged the Capitana’s bowsprit.
An ominous scraping sound. Timber creaked, cracked:
“Hang on, lads !”
Men staggered as both ships righted themselves. At first their relief
seemed to blow across each boat like a sigh. This dissipated into a silent
stillness, broken by Gregorio Gonzalez’s rasping voice from the Almiranta’s poop:
“Where’s yer lights!? Fie!!”
Mendaña yelled back to his pilot:
“We’ve lost a boy!”
And the rest of the Capitana’s
crew forgot about the fear of collision and rushed to the rails again. Hands
were cupped over ears, gradually discerning faint shouts coming back to them:
“I can’t hear you...” it whined: “Where are you ?”
“Turn the ship,” screamed Gallego, and then, clambering into a dinghy:
“I need two oarsmen and a steersman... Come on ! Move lads !” and
finally: “Lower the dinghy !”
Arms tugged and the little boat went down onto the liquid surface. Oars
were out, pushing away from the hull, rowing into the pitch heart of
blackness, disappearing into - a miracle.
The watch at the beak was the first to sight it, and screamed. Unbearably
uncanny. Some of them actually ran when they saw it and hid themselves in the
ship’s hull. Catoira reached out for Sarmiento’s hand:
“Am I mad !”
Sarmiento took the hand and squeezed it:
“If you are, we are both. Mad - or damned.”
It was as if a spirit had been born in the blackness. A bright, glowing
teardrop of light, like the flame of a massive candle, fulgent through the
dense, opaque gloom that enshrouded them. Emitting a noise - a high-pitched
ringing. The brilliance of it increased until they were all squinting, their
flat hands shading their eyes. A unified gasp until it dimmed again and the
blackness returned.
The boy was unconscious, but alive. Hands reached for him. They wrapped
him in a blanket, carried him to Sarmiento’s bunk. Then a circle gathered
around Gallego, as he prepared to tell his tale - how the light had appeared,
through the fog, directly over the floundering youth, its powerful beam
revealing the lad slumped over the bobbing chicken-coop:
“If that was not a supernatural emanation, then God don’t exist.”
The audience gaped as the boy spluttered back into brine-vomiting
consciousness, and while the ocean spluttered out of his lungs and splattered on
the deck the priests fell to their knees, to pray. Sarmiento pinched himself:
“Am I awake ? Or are we all dead ?”