Lord of Darkness Read online

  When we were within three or four degrees of the equinoctial line we fell in with the Cape de las Palmas, a happy place far down the side of Africa where it has its grand curving to the eastward. The people of this cape made much of us, saying that they would trade with us; but it was but to betray us, for they are very treacherous, and were like to have taken our boat, and hurt some of our men.

  From this cape we lay south-west off; but the current and calms deceived us, so that we were driven down to the isle of São Tomé, believing that we had been farther out to the sea than we were. I knew we were astray badly, and at night I often lay awake in the heat thinking of my Anne Katherine’s fair white breasts with their little delicate pink tips that grew so hard under my hands. I was getting no closer to Anne Katherine in this journey past the African shore, and getting no closer either to the Spanish gold that was to be my marriage-money. So I felt sadness and sometimes a choking rage. And when I thought of her breasts growing hard I grew hard myself, elsewhere, and rolled myself on my belly and eased myself with my hand, as sailors must do.

  Yet for the heat and my sorrowful loneliness and the scurvy and the wearisome salt cod and all the rest, still would I not have traded places with a landsman for anything. For this was the great adventure of my life that I was embarked upon.

  Being in distress for wood and water, we went in between São Tomé and a smaller island called Las Rolas, a mile off the southern tip. With our light horseman we went on shore at this small and high and densely wooded island, thinking to fill our casks with sweet water. Here we found a village of blacks, for the Portugals of São Tomé are accustomed to sending their sick or weak slaves to this island to let them recover their strength. We took from them a great store of oranges, and also the fruit known as plantain, which is long and yellow, and starchy in the mouth. Beynonas is what the Portugals call this fruit. But of water we got none, since there are no springs on this island and all their supply comes from the rainfall, which is not often. They drink also the wine of the palm-trees in place of fresh water. We sampled that, but for all its virtue it was no substitute for water. Having refreshed ourselves with the fruit of this island, we burned the village. And running on the east side of São Tomé we came before the town there, which is a slave-depot for the Portugals. But we dared not go close to it, for the castle was well fortified with heavy guns, and they fired at us until we were far beyond range.

  Then we lay east and by south toward the mainland, and after a time swung about back toward the island of São Tomé, for our casks held only rusty dregs now and our need of water was pressing. On the west side of the island we came to a little river which runs out of the mountains, and we went on shore with our light horseman, with six or seven butts to fill with water.

  But the Portugals were waiting for us with one hundred men lying in ambush. When we reached shore they came upon us, and killed one of our men and hurt another. The dead man was a boy of Southgate whose name I forget, with exceeding pale fine hair, almost like flax. A Portuguese ball caught him high on the forehead and I remember the brightness of the blood staining that fair hair, though his name is gone from me. He could have been no more than seventeen, and in that moment all the beauties of the world were lost to him forever. It was the first time I had ever seen sudden death, though not, God wot, the last. We fled to our boat and got aboard, and afterward we stole ashore at another place and took the water we wanted.

  Now at last commenced our westward journey.

  We lay west-south-west into the sea: and being some fifty leagues off, we fell into a shoal of dolphins, which did greatly relieve us, for they did follow our ship all the way till we fell in with the land on the other side. There was joy in seeing these great fishes sporting and leaping in the sun, and seeming almost to laugh, or perhaps to smile, at their own agility. But the crossing had many hardships for us. During the long passage on the vast gulf, where nothing but sea beneath us and air above us was to be seen, we often met with adverse winds, unwelcome storms, and even less welcome calms, and being as it were in the bosom of the burning zone, we felt the effects of sultry heat, not without the frights of flashing lightnings, and terrifyings of frequent claps of thunder. These were the horse latitudes we were in, or the doldrums. No breezes blew and the ships were often stilled and idle. One awful day we were given the other side of the Devil’s hand, when terrible gales abruptly struck us, and we dipped so far to our sides that the yardarms touched the waves. On the masts danced a weird blue glow, blinding in its brilliance, that gave me terror. But a sailor calmed me, saying, “It is Saint Elmo’s fire, that speaks of divine protection.” He dropped to his knees and prayed. As did I, and the sea grew calm, and we went onward at a good pace.

  The heat was great and the deck was like an oven, and the tar melted in the seams. We slept poorly. We had little to do, and that was a trial. And yet there was no anguish in this crossing for me. I felt gratitude that I was strong and healthy and able to do my sailing, into a realm of dolphins and blue fire and even the pale and glistening flying fishes of which my brother had told me when I was a boy, and which I now saw with mine own eyes as they soared above the breast of the sea.

  In thirty days we sighted land. The dark line before us was Brazil. I looked toward that place and a kind of dizziness came over me, and such ecstasy as I think the poets must feel. For in the eye of my mind I saw the lands west of Brazil sweeping on and on toward the sunset, over to Peru, and I knew from my brother Henry’s tales that the great South Sea lay beyond, and on the far side of that sea such places as Cathay and India and the Japans, and then Africa. In brief, I had a vision of the whole world as a single ball, league upon league of miracles, God’s own fullness of marvel. And I had another vision of England’s sturdy men sailing on those seas to all corners of the globe, and planting the flag and making themselves homes and increasing our wealth and pride. How wondrous to be alive at this time, in so great an adventure!

  And then I remembered that I was only a penniless man of Essex who wanted nothing more than a wife and a farm, and that I had come to this strange place to take from the Spaniards and the Portugals the gold they in turn had taken from the Indians. And I laughed at my own swollen grandeurs and set about mending a sail, which was my task for that day.

  We ran along the coast of Brazil until we came to Ilha Grande, southward of the Line. This is a fine lofty island most green and lavish with trees. We put in on the mainland side and haled our ships on shore, and washed them and shoveled out the ballast so we might scrub the bilges, a foul job but a needful one. We refreshed ourselves and took in fresh water. No inhabitants did we see in this part of the island, but it is very fruitful. When we had been there some twelve days there came in a little pinnace heading south, to water and to get some refreshments. We surprised it in our harbor and took it prisoner, and brought from it a Portugal merchant, who seemed in fear for his life.

  Abraham Cocke sent for me and said, “You speak the Portuguese tongue. Ask him when the treasure-ships come.”

  Now such Portuguese as I knew had years of rust upon it, and this Portugal was in such terror he all but beshit his pants and he chattered in the teeth when he tried to speak. So our conversation was like that of blind men discussing whether the sky be red or green. But the words returned to me, enough to comfort him that he would not be slain by us, if only he dealt honestly with us. Even then he only shivered and prayed and named all the saints a hundred times each.

  “He is out of his wits in fright,” I told Cocke.

  The captain nodded his head. “It is because he knows what would happen if matters were the other way round, and one Englishman were taken by a ship of Portugals. Tell him we gave up burning Papists long ago, and want only information from him, not his soul.”

  I spoke as I could and finally the man grew calm and said two treasure-ships would leave Buenos Aires within two months to sail to Bahia, near this Ilha Grande. He also said without being asked that on the other side of this isl
and lived a degradado, a banished man, with a plantation full of fruits that would nourish us. Since our bread and our victuals were almost all spent, we allowed the Portugal to lead us there. And indeed we found the plantation and its owner, and took from him great stores of plantains, and a few hogs and hens and other things.

  Captain Cocke now divided our party, putting some of the men of the Dolphin aboard our May-Morning, and leaving the Dolphin behind at Ilha Grande while the rest of us went south to meet the treasure-ships at the Rio de la Plata. That seemed foolish generalship to me at the time, as had so many other of Cocke’s doings. We had few enough men as it was, and to split our number was hard to understand. I have had more than twenty years to reflect on that, and still I have no answer to the mystery, and I know I never shall. What became of the Dolphin and her men I also do not know, though I think they stayed only a few days more at Ilha Grande and went home to England. At any rate we filled our hold with the degradado’s plantains and departed from his island. Cocke spoke long and loudly of the gold that soon would replace the plantains belowdecks. When you looked at his face—which was not easy, since that his eyes went in different ways and would not meet yours—you saw in it a glow of avarice, as if he were staring at mountains of doubloons. So it was; yet there is a good old English saying, “A crowing cock lays no eggs,” and thus it was with this our good Cocke. For in my life I saw as many cock’s eggs as I did doubloons out of that voyage.

  THREE

  A LONG bleak time we had of it going down that fertile coast.

  The third night, or the fourth, there was such a strong south-easterly wind and squalls that it threw us awry, and we sought a sheltered spot to anchor in. But where we came to shore there were a dozen Indians waiting. They were dark brown and naked, and had no covering for their private parts, and they carried bows and arrows in their hands.

  They all came with determination toward our boat. Nicholas Parker, the second mate, made a sign to them to put down their bows, and they held them down. But he could not speak to them or make himself understood in any other way because of the waves which were breaking on the shore. He merely threw them some baubles and a little cap, which pleased them, and one of them threw him a hat of large feathers with a small crown of red and gray feathers, like a parrot’s. I think they perceived that we were not Portugals and therefore would not harm them.

  These Indians had holes in their lower lips and a bone in them as broad as the knuckles of a hand and as thick as a cotton spindle and sharp at one end like a bodkin. Some were covered in a motley way with stripes of paint of a bluish black. We made gestures to them and they to us, and then four or five girls appeared out of the woods. They were very young and most pretty, especially to men who had not touched soft skin in many months. They had abundant long hair down their backs, and their private parts (of which they made no privacy) were tightly knit and almost without hair, and so comely that many women in our country would be ashamed, if they saw such perfection, that theirs were not equally perfect. “I will buy one or two maidens from them,” said Nicholas Parker, laughing broadly, and we encouraged him in this, for these girls were well made and rounded. “What price will they have? Something shiny, I think,” he said.

  But then the Devil took a hand in the dealings. A sailor from Portsmouth, a huge clumsy lout or ox, chose to stumble forward to put his hands on one of the Indian maids. That was bad enough; but as he lumbered toward her a vine in the sand caught his boot and he fell headlong. His musket began to fly from his hand. He seized it as he dropped, but such was his position that it appeared to the timid Indians that he was getting ready to fire. They fled in an instant and favored us with a shower of arrows from afar, which did no harm but put an end to our parley, and we purchased no tender maidens that day or any other. After that we did not find Indians, or for that matter any good harbors, nor did we see hide nor hair of the Spanish treasure-ships out of Buenos Aires, though we tacked back and forth in the sea-road searching for them. Abraham Cocke began to look coldly upon me, as if he thought I had let the Portugal merchant beguile me with lies, or had misunderstood his language. And so we were six-and-thirty dreary days of it until we came to the Isle of Lobos Marinos, which is in the mouth of the Rio de la Plata.

  This island is half a mile long, and has no fresh water, but abounds with seals and a larger animal, a sort of sea-horse. There were so many of these creatures that our light horseman could not push through them to the shore unless we beat at them with our oars: and the island is covered with them. Upon these seals we lived some thirty days, lying up and down in the river, and were in great distress of victuals apart from that meat. Then we determined to run up to Buenos Aires, and with our light horseman to capture one of the pinnaces that waited at that town. But, being so high up the river as the town, we were struck by a mighty storm at south-west, which drove us back again, and we were fain to take refuge at the Isla Verde—that is, the green island—which is in the mouth of the river on the north side.

  Lack of victuals discomforted us mightily, and we were not able long to remain there. So downcast were we that we gave over the purpose of the voyage altogether, and made a melancholy retreat back to the northward to reconsider our intentions. Now we came to the Isle of São Sebastiao, lying just under the Tropic of Capricorn. There we went on shore to catch fish, and some of us, I among them, went up into the woods to gather fruit, for we were all in a manner famished. And on this island my life as a free man ended.

  I think it befell on Twelfth Night, this calamity. There is cold irony in that, for I had promised my betrothed Anne Katherine we would be wed that night, in all my innocence, not knowing that Abraham Cocke would foolishly sail halfway down the side of Africa before making toward Brazil, or that we would waste weeks here and there and here and there without finding the treasure-ships. In the tropics all is upside-down, and Twelfth Night falls in the dead of summer, and it was a day of most fearsome heat, that made me fond for snow. I stood high on the hillside plucking a soft sweet purple fruit from a tree with leaves bright as mirrors, and O! I heard cries and screams, and looked downhill to see a band of naked Indians rushing upon our people from hiding. These were no childlike folk with gifts of feathers. All had bows and arrows and some carried knives that they must have had from the Portugals, and they attacked so fast there was no time to put match to powder, but only to flee. Flee! Aye, so it was. Within a moment there were corpses on the beach and Englishmen clambering into the boat or merely swimming desperately out to the May-Morning.

  Well, that is fair enough, to take flight when surprised and sore beset. I thought I knew what would happen next, that is, that Cocke would turn the guns of the ship against the Indians, and terrify them to surrender, and then send the light horseman back to the island to collect our dead and to recover those of us who had been picking fruit in the hills. But that is not what happened. The light horseman reached the ship and the men scrambled aboard; and before my stupefied gaze the May-Morning hoisted anchor and rigged her sails and made briskly for the open sea. I could not believe it. I dared not cry out, knowing it would only bring the Indians upon me, and anyhow my voice would have been blown apart in the wind. But something in my soul cried out, and loudly, so that I thought my forehead would burst from the roar and thunder of it. Treachery! Cowardice! Had Cocke forgotten me, or was he so pissing his pants with terror that he would make no attempt to regain me, or was it simply that he did not care? I was abandoned, that was the sum and total of it.

  Jesu! How I wanted to rend and tear things asunder in my fury!

  But I am, God wot, a man of balance and even temperament, and my first fine rage passed quickly, and I examined my situation. Was I a castaway? Well, then, I was a castaway, and not the first since the beginning of time in such a pickle. Perhaps there were others nearby of the same lot. I squatted down beside a plant that was all barbs and prickles, so I would not be seen by the Indians who still infested the beach, and considered the case.

  P
rimus, Cocke might not yet have fully abandoned me. Perchance he would take a census of his men when safe out from shore, and in counting the missing would recall he had left a few to gather fruit, and would come back for me. Perchance. And perchance the Queen would marry the Pope, but I did not intend to wager high stakes on it.

  Secundus, so long as I lived I was not yet dead, even though abandoned. I must try to survive, and find other English, and build some sort of boat to take me across to the mainland. For we were only five leagues from Santos, where the Portugals had a town of fair size.

  Tertius, if I had allies perhaps I might capture a pinnace in Santos, and sail away from Portuguese territory. For the Portugals were my enemy, ever since King Philip of Spain had conquered their land nine years past and made himself king over it, too. God’s eyes! How hard all this would be, and how needless! Between one moment and the next our lives can be wholly transformed, while our backs are turned.

  Out of fear of Indians I spent the night on the hillside. I made a gloomy dinner of purple fruits and slept in snatches, standing watch and watch with myself, so to speak, now awake and now taking some winks. In the morning all seemed quiet and the Indians were nowhere about, nor, I do say, was the May-Morning, not even a dot of white against the far horizon.

  I went cautiously down the slope to the beach, tearing my trousers often on the demonic fanged plants. Six of our men lay dead with arrows in them, men whose names I knew and whose friendship I had valued. Their bodies were twisted and wretched of their last agonies, which told me that the arrows must have been tipped with poison, as is the custom here. I resolved to bury the dead men in the afternoon, but it was one of those bold resolutions easier to make than to keep, for I had nothing to dig with but my hands and some seashells, and a grave must be six feet deep. I put the task aside for another time.

  I went around a little headland to the far side, where the shore was rocky. Here I saw things stirring by the seaside, as the tide went out, and I crept on my hands and feet like a child, and when I drew near I beheld many crabs lying in holes in the rocks. I pulled off one of my stockings and filled it with crabs, and I carried it to a hollow fig-tree where I found an old fire smouldering from some lightning-stroke. Casting the crabs on the coals, I cooked them and made my dinner out of them, and so the day passed.