Robert Silverberg - Lord of Darkness

I know not whether the warm and gentle waters of that estuary indeed do hold man-eating fishes, but of the cannibal Indians I have no doubt. In the second month of my captivity I and Torner and a dozen Portugal soldiers were despatched inland a short way, to collect timber of a certain rare kind, and we were set upon by a tribe called the Taymayas or Tamoyas, who are the most heated enemies the Portugals have in these parts. They tethered us and carried us away deeper into the forest, and a Portugal named Antonio Fernandes said to me, “Make your peace with your God, for these people mean to eat us at their festival.” We were kept in their village, near a river full of allagardos and huge serpents, and other strange beasts. I recall one as big as a bear, and like a bear in the body, but with a nose of a yard long, and a fair great tail all black and gray. This beast puts his tongue through ant-hills, and when the ants are all upon his tongue, he swallows them up. Torner said, “And can you find such joy in monsters, when you are about to die?”

I made answer: “I live all my life as though I am about to die, and find such joy meanwhile as I can. And you and I are too stringy and tough from our labor to make good meals. They will dine on the Portugals first.”

In sooth I could not credit that men could have a taste for the flesh of other men. The more fool I, for this world is full of cannibals that happily devour all they can hold, as I have come to know better now than any Englishman who ever lived. But I was right in one thing, that these Taymayas would eat the Portugals first. Their devilish feast began that night. The Indians came to us and selected the most plump of the Portugals, who cried out, “Jesu Maria!” and other such things, and called upon the saints. He could just as well have called upon the trees, or the allagardos in the river. They drew him forward by his rope and a lusty young man came behind him and struck him two terrible blows with a club, cracking open his skull and killing him. Then they took the tooth of some beast and unseamed his skin, and held him by the head and the feet over their fire, rubbing him with their hands, until the outer skin came off.

I watched this thinking I was in a dream, and thinking also that at this same moment my Anne Katherine was quietly reading a book, and the great Queen Elizabeth might be sitting with her courtiers, and actors are on the stage of the Globe, speaking the lines of a play, that is, there is a civilized world somewhere that knows nothing of these matters, and here is Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex sitting in a wild jungle watching a plump young Portugal being trussed for dinner. Truly this was no dream, and never did I feel further from the world into which I had been born than in this first episode of great horror, which by God I wish had been my last.

They took from him his head and gave it to their chief, and then the entrails to the women, after which they jointed him joint by joint, first hands, then elbows, and so all the body. After which, they sent to every house a piece; then they fell a-dancing, and all the women brought forth a great store of wine. And later they boiled every joint in a great pot of water, and made a broth of it. I witnessed all these things in such shock and disgust that I thought I would die of it. For the space of three days the Indians did nothing but dance and drink, day and night. After that they killed another Portugal in the same manner as the first. But they did not get to enjoy his bounty, because a rescue party of Portugal troops burst upon the village just then with muskets blazing, and set us free.

Free, aye, but for me it was only the freedom to escape the dinner-pot, for they had me swiftly back at the mill slaving like a weary mule. Torner beside me said, “I almost regret being saved, for that was a quick death, and this is a living hell that may engulf us for fifty years.” And then he smiled and said, “Nay, Andrew, spare me your talk of preferring life to death at any cost. I know you too well by now, your stubbornness, your perseverance, your faith that all will end happily.”

“Would you truly rather have died, then?” I asked.

“Nay, I think not,” he said, and we went back to our toil.

But though I never yielded to despair, yet did I feel it nibbling at my soul, for the weeks were passing and I longed for England and Anne Katherine and the cool gray skies and the clear sweet streams that were not all deadly with coccodrillos and the like. Why, it must be spring in England now, I thought, April or May of the year 1590, the land greening and the flowers bursting, and I am here in a land that knows no winter, a slave, and unto what purpose? A year of my life had passed away from England: how I lamented that!

A year of my life! Yet my captivity was only beginning.

In our fourth month at the Rio de Janeiro a Jesuit friar came to Tomer and me, one who spoke some English, and said, “Will you embrace our faith, and come to our Mass?”

I did not strike him, as another man might. I did not spit. I did not cry out that the Catholic faith is treason to England and I was no traitor. I am not excitable in that way. Though I felt all these things, I said only, “I would not. We have our own English faith, and we prefer it, for it is the only consolation we have just now.”

The friar sighed. He was not a cruel sort. “We could keep you here at our College, if you took up our way. But otherwise you are to be sent from here, for they want no heretics at the mill.”

“Where are we to be sent?” asked Thomas Torner.

“ São Paulo de Loanda,” replied the Jesuit.

“Jesu!” cried Torner. “To Africa?”

To Africa, indeed, to that dark and steamy land from whose vast bosom gushes a milk of mysteries and horror.

The Portugals had seized a foothold there long ago, sailing south and south and south until they rounded the continent’s tip, that was the Cape of Bona Speranza, and went on to India. Thus they had built a vast empire the spread of which makes the mind grow dizzy in contemplation of it. This was at a time when we English foolishly had no interest in going far to sea, but were content to sail only to Flanders or Portugal or France, or sometimes to Iceland or Newfoundland for the fishing. Up and down both coasts of Africa the Portugals had founded cities and fortresses for their trade, which was in all the wondrous goods of the land, gold and spices and the ivory of elephantos, but most especially slaves: and it was to one such outpost, nine degrees south of the equinoctial line in the land called Angola, that Torner and I now were shipped.

It was a long and worrisome voyage, for the winds were contrary and the gales blew in our teeth much of the time. We rode a broad and heavy carrack, some three hundred fifty tons or maybe larger, with an ingenious great lot of sail, spread on masts patterned after the Dutch scheme. That is, there were topmasts with caps and fids, carrying topsails of great size and topgallants above them, which I had never seen before at close inspection. But for all that, the vessel was hard pressed to beat her way eastward, and we wallowed miserably in rough and sinister seas.

Cold furies and hot rages ran through my spirit. I could not bear being a prisoner. I wanted England, and Essex, and Anne Katherine, and my patch of land; and I could not have them; and often I thought of throwing myself into the sea, if only I had the chance. But that was only hollow bravado, I knew. For all my pain I would not have surrendered myself to death, not then or ever.

Torner was my bulwark. This sole remaining companion was ten years my elder, a staunch weatherbeaten man who had sailed in many seas. Ofttime he lost heart himself, but at a different time from me, so that we cheered one another alternately. “See, now, we’ll be home before you can say Jack Sprat!” he cried. “As we strike forth into the Atlantic some good English brigand will swoop upon this old scow and take it prisoner, and ship us aboard!”