CHAPTER XI
AN hour after moonrise we were gone from Gomera. At first a light windfilled the sails, but when the round moon went down in the west andthe sun rose, there was Teneriffe still at hand, and the sea glassy.It rested like a mirror all that day, and the sails hung empty and thebanner at maintop but a moveless wisp of cloth. In the night arose acontrary wind, and another red dawn showed us Teneriffe still. The winddropping like a shot, we hung off Ferro, fixed in blue glass. Watch waskept for the Portuguese, but they also would be rooted to sea bottom.The third morning up whistled the wind, blowing from Africa and fillingevery sail.
Palos to the Canaries, we had sailed south. Now for long, long daysthe sun rose right aft, and when it set dyed with red brow and eyesand cheek and breast of the carved woman at our prow. She wore a greatcrown, and she looked ever with wide eyes upon the west that we chased.Straight west over Ocean-Sea, the first men, the first ships! If everthere had been others, our world knew it not. The Canaries sank into theeast. Turn on heel around one's self, and mark never a start of land tobreak the rim of the vast sea bowl! Never a sail save those above us ofthe _Santa Maria_, or starboard or larboard, the Pinta and the Nina. Theloneliness was vast and utter. We might fail here, sink here, die here,and indeed fail and sink and die alone!
Two seamen lay sick in their beds, and the third day from Gomera theSanta Maria's physician, Bernardo Nunez, was seized with the samemalady. At first Fray Ignatio tried to take his place, but here the monklacked knowledge. One of the sailors died, a ship boy sickened, and thephysician's fever increased upon him. Diego de Arana began to fail. Theship's master came at supper time and looked us over. "Is there any herewho has any leechcraft?"
Beltran the cook said, "I can set a bone and wash a wound; but it endsthere!"
Cried Fernando from his corner. "Is the plague among us!" The masterturned on him. "Here and now, I say five lashes for the man who saysthat word again! Has any man here sense about a plain fever?"
None else speaking, I said that long ago I had studied for a time witha leech, and that I was somewhat used to care of the sick. "Then youare my man!" quoth the master, and forthwith took me to the Admiral. Ibecame Juan Lepe, the physician.
It was, I held, a fever received while wandering through the ravines andwoods of Gomera. Master Bernardo had in his cabin drugs and tinctures,and we breathed now all the salt of Ocean-Sea, and the ship was clean. Italked to Beltran the cook about diet, and I chose Sancho and a man thatI liked, one Luis Torres, for nurses. Two others sickened this night,and one the next day, but none afterward. None died; in ten days allwere recovered. Other ailments aboard I doctored also. Don Diego deArana was subject to fits of melancholy with twitchings of the body.I had watched Isaac the Physician cure such things as this, and now Ifollowed instruction. I put my hands upon the patient and I strengthenedhis will with mine, sending into him desire for health and perception ofhealth. His inner man caught tune. The melancholy left him and did notreturn. Master Bernardo threw off the fever, sat up and moved about. Buthe was still weak, and still I tended the others for him.
The _Pinta_ had signaled four men ill. But Garcia Fernandez, the Palosphysician, was there with Martin Pinzon, and the sick recovered. TheNina had no doctor and now she came near to the Santa Maria and sent aboat. She had five sick men and would borrow Bernardo Nunez.
The Admiral spoke with Nunez, now nearly well. Then the physician made abundle of drugs and medicaments, said farewell to all and kindly enoughto me, and rowed away to the _Nina_. He was a friend of the Pinzons, andabove the vanity of the greater ship. The sick upon the Nina prosperedunder him.
But Juan Lepe was taken from the forecastle, and slept where Nunez hadslept, and had his place at the table in the great cabin. He turned fromthe sailor Juan Lepe to the physician Juan Lepe, becoming "Doctor" and"Senor." The wheel turns and a man's past makes his present.
A few days from Gomera, an hour after sunset, the night was torn by thehugest, flaming, falling star that any of us had ever seen. The massdrove down the lower skirt of the sky, leaving behind it a wake of fire.It plunged into the sea. There is no sailor but knows shooting stars.But this was a hugely great one, and Ocean-Sea very lonely, and to mostthere our errand a spectral and frightening one. It needed both theAdmiral and Fray Ignatio to quell the panic.
The next day a great bird like a crane passed over the _Santa Maria_. Itcame from Africa, behind us. But it spoke of land, and the sailors gazedwistfully.
This day I entered the great cabin when none was there but the Admiral,and again he sat at table with his charts and his books. He asked of thesick and I answered. Again he sat looking through open door and windowat blue water, a great figure of a man with a great head and face andearly-silvered hair. "Do you know aught," he asked, "of astrology?"
I answered that I knew a little of the surface of it.
"I have a sense," he said, "that our stars are akin, yours and mine. Ifelt it the day Granada fell, and I felt it on Cordova road, and againthat day below La Rabida when we turned the corner and the bells rangand you stood beside the vineyard wall. Should I not have learned inmore than fifty years to know a man? The stars are akin that will endurefor vision's sake."
I said, "I believe that, my Admiral."
He sat in silence for a moment, then drew the log between us and turnedseveral pages so that I might see the reckoning. "We have come well," Isaid. "Yet with so fair a wind, I should have thought--"
He turned the leaves till he rested at one covered with other figures."Here it is as it truly is, and where we truly are! We have oversailedall that the first show, and so many leagues besides."
"Two records, true and untrue! Why do you do it so?"
"I have told them that after seven hundred leagues we should find land.Add fifty more for our general imperfection. But it may be wider thanI think. We may not come even to some fringing island in eight hundredleagues, no, nor in more than that! If it be a thousand, if it be twothousand, on I go! But after the seven hundred is passed, it will behard to keep them in hand. So, though we are covering more, I let themthink we are covering only this."
I could but laugh. Two reckonings! After all, he was not Italian fornothing!
"The master knows," he said, "and also Diego de Arana. But at least oneother should know. Two might drown or perish from sickness. I myselfmight fall sick and die, though I will not believe it!" He paused amoment, then said, looking directly at me, "I need one in whom I canutterly confide. I should have had with me my brother Bartholomew. Buthe is in England. A man going to seek a Crown jewel for all men shouldhave with him son or brother. Diego de Arana is a kinsman of one whomI love, and he partly believes. But Roderigo Sanchez and the othersbelieve hardly at all. There is Fray Ignatio. He believes, and I confessmy sins to him. But he thinks only of penitents, and this matter needsmind, not heart alone. Because of that sense of the stars, I tell youthese things."
The next day it came to me that in that Journal which he meant to makelike Caesar's Commentaries, he might put down the change in the _SantaMaria's_ physicians and set my name there too often. I watched my chanceand finding it, asked that he name me not in that book. His gray eyesrested upon me; he demanded the reason for that. I said that in Spain Iwas in danger, and that Juan Lepe was not my name. More than that I didnot wish to say, and perchance it were wiser for him not to know. But Iwould not that the powerful should mark me in his Journal or elsewhere!
Usually his eyes were wide and filled with light as though it were sentinto them from the vast lands that he continuously saw. But he could beimmediate captain and commander of things and of men, and when that wasso, the light drew into a point, and he became eagle that sees throughthe wave the fish. Had he been the seer alone, truly he might have beenthe seer of what was to be discovered and might have set others upon thepath. But he would not have sailed on the _Santa Maria_!
In his many years at sea he must many times have met men who had put tosea out of fear of land. He would have sailed
with many whose names, heknew, were not those given them at birth. He must have learned to takereasons for granted and to go on--where he wished to go on. So we gazedat each other.
"I had written down," he said, "that you greatly helped the sick, andupon Bernardo Nunez's going to the _Nina_, became our physician. But Iwill write no more of you, and that written will pass in the flood ofthings to come." After a moment, he ended with deliberation, "I know mystar to be a great star, burning long and now with a mounting flame. Ifyours is in any wise its kin, then there needs must be histories."