Robert Silverberg - Lord of Darkness

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.

Primus, 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.

So I lived three or four days alone. Again I tried to bury the dead, but the earth ashore was hard and full of rock, and at the beach the sand slipped and fell about as I dug it, so that I could not make graves. I would have tied rocks to the men and buried them in the sea, but I had no cords for tying, and it seemed un-Christian merely to push them into the water, where they would float and bloat in the surf and be eaten by vermin. So I did nothing, except feel shame that I left them unburied. The stink of them became noisome and the sight of them was a reproach, so I moved on around the edge of the island and passed by a fair river that ran into the sea.

Here I thought to make my abode because of the fresh water. But I had not been there scarce the space of half a quarter of an hour, but I saw a great thing come out of the water, with great scales on the back, with great ugly claws and a long tail. I knew it not, though later I would learn that it is the animal known as the coccodrillo, or in some parts called the allagardo.

This monster put me into a fright close to perishing. It came toward me and I would not flee, nay, could not, but strangely went and met it, as though drawn by sorcery. When I came near it I stood still, amazed to see so monstrous a thing before me. It was like a diabolus, a mage, something from Hell come to fetch me, and I yielded utterly to its malign power. Hereupon this beast seemed to smile, and opened his mouth, and thrust out a long tongue like a harpoon. I commended myself to God, and thought there to be torn in pieces, but the creature turned again and went into the river. And I burst out into laughter, not that I saw any jest, but only the deep jest that is the frailty of our flesh, the ease with which at any moment our bodies may be parted from our souls.

The next day I walked farther around the island, fearing to tarry in that place, and I found a great whale lying on the shore like a ship with the keel upwards, all covered with a kind of short moss from the long lying there. As I examined this marvel a familiar voice cried out, “Andy, for the love of Jesus!” It was Thomas Torner, who had made his camp on the whale’s far flank.

An immensity of joy rose in me at the sight of him, for he gave me hope that I might escape this place, which would not be easy for two but was well nigh impossible for one. We embraced like brothers.

“I feared I was left alone,” I told him.

“Nay, there are several of us,” said Torner, and led me around the whale’s heavy flukes. “Look ye,” he said, and I beheld three others of our company, Richard Jennings and Richard Fuller and one other whose name the years have washed from my memory. These men had been in divers separate places at the moment of the Indian attack and each had fled a different way into the forest, and one by one had come together here. “God’s wounds,” cried Richard Jennings, a great burly man half as high as an oak tree, “Do you know, Battell, that we were betrayed and abandoned by Cocke the cockless, and will live the rest of our lives among these crabs and other insects?”

“Aye,” I replied, “I know of our betrayal, for I saw the ship depart. But as to the second part I say you nay, friend. I think we will see England again.”

“Do you now? Will dolphins carry us there?”

“God will provide. And if He do not, we must provide for ourselves, or indeed these crabs will be our neighbors forever. Are there others of us here?”

“Just we four,” said Torner, “and you are the fifth. I think there are no others in the part of the island behind us. Were there more in your direction?”

“Only six dead men, rotting and unburied on the beach. But five of us are enough to build a boat and take it to the mainland,” I said, and explained my plan of capturing a Portuguese pinnace in Santos and using it to cross the ocean by small hops and skips and jumps. They listened intently and without scoffing. Fuller was a carpenter’s mate, which gave us a great advantage in this project. We spoke of searching for a fallen tree, and hollowing it for our hull, and such things, and as we talked I understood that I had silently been elected the leader of these men. It surprised me greatly, for I had only a deckhand’s skills and had never held authority of any sort, indeed had in some ways been cramped and diminished by being the youngest of so many brothers. But that counted for nothing here. I was thirty years of age, and strong of body, and such failings or smallnesses of spirit that might have afflicted me in youth were unknown to my companions and had no bearing. I think also it was my determination to reach England again that gleamed like a beacon out of my soul, and gave them courage, and had them turn to me; for until I came upon them, these four had been concerned only with finding food and shelter, and had given no thought to a plan of recovery.