1492 by Mary Johnston (short books for teens .txt) 📕
I liked his spirit. "One day we shall be lions and eagles and bold prophets! Then our tongue shall taste much beside India and Cathay!"
"Well, I hope it," he said. "Mice running under the headlands."
He fell silent, cherishing his knees and staring into the fire. It was not Juan Lepe's place to talk when master merchant talked not. I, too, regarded the fire, and the herded mountains robed in night, and the half-moon like a sail rising from an invisible boat.
The night went peacefully by. It was followed by a hard day's travel and the incident of the road. At evening we saw the walls of Zarafa in a sunset glory. The merchants and their train passed through the gate and found their customary inn. With others, Juan Lepe worked hard, unlading and storing. All done, he and the bully slept almost in each other's arms, under the arches of the court, dreamlessly.
The next day and the next were still days of labor. It was not until the third that Juan Lepe considered that
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We had several killed, and the Adelantado was hurt in the breast, and many others had their wounds. But we thundered with our cannon and we loosed two bloodhounds and we charged. For a time the brown, naked foe fought desperately, but at last he broke. Far streamed five hundred fleeing particles into the gloomy, the deep, the matted forest. Up the river came a long boat, and we found it to hold Diego Tristan and eight men sent by the Admiral with a forgotten word for the Adelantado. Much we rejoiced that the ships were not clean gone!
Diego Tristan took our news. The Adelantado—his hurt was slight—wrote again to the Admiral. Again we said farewell to Diego Tristan. The long boat passed a turn in the Bethlehem; out of our sight. Once we thought we heard a faint and distant shouting, but there was no telling. But in five hours there staggered into fort Juan de Noya who alone lived of that boatful, set upon by Quibian. Diego Tristan dead, and seven men.
All that night we heard in the wood those throbbing Indian drums and wild-blowing shells.
They were Caribs, now we were sure, and Quibian lived and preached a holy war. Though we had driven them off, we heard them mustering again. If we could not get food —perhaps not water?
Sixty of ours came to the Adelantado. In truth, all might have come, for massacre, slow or swift, was certain if we stayed in Veragua. I read that the Adelantado, who was never accused of cowardice or fickleness, was himself determined. The settlement below the golden mines of golden Veragua must wait a little.
We took our wounded and with the Adelantado, turned Mars in these three days, came down to the Bethlehem, to a pebbly shore from which the water had shrunken. Here at least was our ship with us, and the river that bore to the sea. Here, for the weather was ferocious and Quibian howling around us, we built what shelter we might. Here in much misery we waited days for the long and wild storm to cease. We hoped the Admiral was yet at the mouth of the Bethlehem, but could not do more than hope.
Then came through every peril that might be Pedro Ledesma, from the ships. They waited! Break through— come down!
The Margarita could never pass the bar that now the falling water left exposed. We made rafts, we dismantled her and took what we could; we left her in Veragua for Quibian to walk her deck and sail her if he might. Through danger in multitude, with our rafts and two boats, with the loss of six men, we went down the Bethlehem. Some of ours wept when they saw the ships, and the Admiral wept when he and the Adelantado met.
Away from Veragua!
Is it only the Spaniards who suffer, and for what at the last, not at the first, did Quibian fight? In that strong raid when we thought Quibian perished had been taken captive brothers and kinsmen of that cacique. These were prisoned upon the Juana, to be taken to Spain, shown, made Christian, perhaps sold, perhaps—who knows?—returned to their land, but never to freedom.
While the Juana tossed where Bethlehem met the sea, these Indians broke in the night time up through hatchway and made for the side to throw themselves over. But the watch gave a great cry and sprang upon them, and other Spaniards came instantly. All but two were retaken. These two, wrenching themselves free, sprang away into rough water and dark night, and it is most likely that they drowned, being a mile from shore. But the others were thrust back and down under hatch which then was chained so that they might not again lift it. But in the morning when the captain of the Juana went to look, all, all were dead, having hanged themselves.
WE left one of our ships in the Bethlehem and we lost another upon this disastrous coast ere we got clear for Jamaica.
We were sea specters. We had saved our men from the San Sebastian as from the Margarita. Now all were upon the Consolacion and the Juana. Fifty fewer were we than when we had sailed from Cadiz, yet the two ships crept over-full. And they were like creatures overcome with eld. Beaten, crazed, falling apart.
On the Eve of Saint John we came to Jamaica.
The ships were riddled by the teredo. We could not keep afloat to go to Hispaniola. At Santa Gloria we ran them in quiet water side by side upon the sand. They partly filled, they settled down, only forecastle and poop above the blue mirror. We built shelters upon them and bridged the space between. The ocean wanderers were turned into a fort.
Jamaica, we thanked all the saints, was a friendly land. They brought us cassava and fruit, these Indians; they swarmed about us in their canoes. The gods in trouble, yet still the gods!
We were forty leagues from Hispaniola, and we had no ship!
Again there volunteered Diego Mendez. We ourselves had now but one Christian boat. But there existed canoes a-plenty. Chose one, with six Indians to row! Leave Diego Mendez with one other Spaniard of his choice to cross the sea between us and Hispaniola, get to San Domingo, rouse all Christian men, even Don Nicholas de Ovanda, procure a large ship or two smaller ones, return with rescue!
We sent off Diego Mendez with strong farewells and blessings. The vast blue sea and air withdrew and covered from sight the canoe.
A week—two weeks. Grew out of the azure a single canoe, and approached. “Diego Mendez—Diego Mendez!”
It was he alone, with a tale to tell of storm and putting ashore and capture after battle by Jamaicans no longer friendly, and of escape alone. But he would go again if so be he might have with him Bartholomew Fiesco. They went, with heavily paid Indians to row the staunchest canoe we could find. This time the Adelantado with twenty kept them company along the shore to end of the island, where the canoe shot forth into clear sea, and the blue curtain came down between the stranded and the going for help. The Adelantado returned to us, and we waited. The weeks crept by.
Great heat and sickness, and the Indians no longer prompt to bring us supplies. Sooner or later, each of these dark peoples found a Quibian or Caonabo.
The most of us determined that Diego Mendez and Fiesco and their canoe were lost. Hispaniola knew nothing of us —nothing, nothing! Suddenly the two Porras brothers led a mad mutiny. “Leave these rotting ships—seize the canoes we need—all of us row or swim to Hispaniola!”
There were fifty who thought thus. The Admiral withstood them with strong words, with the reasoning of a master seaman, and the counsel now—his white and long hair, and eld upon him—of Jacob or Isaac or Abraham. But they would not, and they would not, and at last they departed from us, taking—but the Admiral gave them freely —the dozen canoes that we had purchased, crowding into these, rowing away with cries from that sea fortress, melancholy indeed, in the blinding light.
They vanished. The next day fair, the next a mad storm. Two weeks, and news came of them. They were not nigh to Hispaniola; wrecked, they lost five men, but got, the rest of them, to land, where they now roved from village to village. Another week, and the Indians who came to us and whom we kept friendly, related with passionate and eloquent word and gesture evils that that band was working. Pedro Margarite—Roldan—over and over again!
After much of up and down those mutineers came back to us. They could not do without us; they could not get to Hispaniola in Indian canoes. The Admiral received them fatherly.
No sail—no sail. Long months and no sail. Surely Diego Mendez and Bartholomew Fiesco were drowned! Hispaniola, if it thought of us at all, might think us now by Ganges. Or as lost at sea.
Christopherus Columbus dreamed again, or had a vision again. “I was hopeless. I wept alone on a desert shore. My name had faded, and all that I had done was broken into sand and swept away. I repined, and cried, `Why is it thus?’ Then came a ship not like ours, and One stepped from it in light and thunder. `O man of little faith, I will cover thy eyes of to-day!’ He covered them, and I saw.— And now, Juan Lepe, I care not! We will all come Home, whether or no the wave covers us here.”
To mariners and adventurers he said at no time any word of despair. He said, “A ship will come! For if—which the saints forfend—Bartholomew Fiesco and Diego Mendez have not reached San Domingo, yet come at last will some craft to Jamaica! From our island or from Spain. How many times since ‘92 has there been touching here? Of need now it will be oftener and oftener!”
But still many pined with hope deferred.—And then, out of the blue, arose first Diego de Escobar’s small ship, and later the two good ships sent by Don Nicholas de Ovando.
The Admiral of the Ocean-Sea lodged in the Governor’s house in San Domingo. Who so courteous as Don Nicholas, saving only Don Cristoval?
Juan Lepe found certain ones and his own eyes to tell him of island fortunes. Here was Sancho, a bearded man, and yet looked out the youth who had walked from Fishertown to Palos strand. “Oh, aye! San Domingo’s growing! It’s to be as great as Seville, with cathedral and fortress and palace. White men build fast, though not so fast as the Lord!”
“The Governor?”
“Oh, he makes things spin! He’s hard on the Indians— but then they’ve surely given us trouble!”
He told of new forts and projected towns and an increasing stream of ships, from Spain to Spain again. “We’re here to stay—as long as there’s a rock of gold or anything that can be turned into gold! The old bad times are over—and that old, first simple joy, too, Doctor!— Maybe we’ll all ship for Ciguarre.”
But no. The colony now was firm, with thousands of Spaniards where once had stood fivescore. Luis Torres sat with me and he told me of Indian war,—of Anacaona hanged and Cotubanama hanged, of eighty caciques burned or hanged, of peace at last. Now the Indians worked the mines, and scraped the sands of every stream, and likewise planted cotton and maize for the conquerors. They were gathered in repartimentios, encomiendas, parceled out, so many to every Spaniard with power. The old word “gods” had gone out of use. “Master” was now the plain and accurate term.
The Governor was a shrewd, political, strong man,—not without his generosities to white men. But no dreamer! He put down faction, but there was now less faction to put down. All had been united in mastering the Indian, and now with peace the getting of wealth was regularized. He had absolutely the ear of King Ferdinand, and help from Spain whenever he called for it. Yes, he was fairly liked by the generality. And had I noticed the growth in cowls and processions? Mother Church was moving in.
The next day I met again Bartolome de Las Casas.
September now—and a ship from Spain, bringing the news that the Queen was ill. There was another who was ill, and that was the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea:
“I must go—and we quarrel here, this
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