Tim Severin - Sea Robber

To Hector’s astonishment, Ma’pang threw back his head and began to laugh so hard he started to cough and splutter. When he finally caught his breath and had wiped away a runnel of red saliva from his chin he said, ‘Now you speak like a true guirrago. You think that you know everything, and that we, the Chamorro, are stupid.’

He translated Hector’s questions to Kepuha, and the old man’s face crinkled into a knowing smile. He beckoned to the young man to follow him.

‘Go with the makhana,’ said Ma’pang. ‘He’ll reassure you that we won’t get ourselves lost on the ocean. But hurry. We leave before nightfall, and there is much to do.’

Mystified, Hector accompanied the shaman at a fast walk back towards the village. Halfway along the track they turned to their right and plunged into the undergrowth. Pushing their way through the dense vegetation, they arrived at the foot of a low cliff draped with lianas and climbing plants. Kepuha pulled aside the vines. A section of the cliff face had been painted over with a light wash of lime. Here and there someone had made black marks with soot. Other mysterious symbols were drawn in red ochre.

Still holding back the vines, Kepuha looked back at Hector and waited expectantly.

Hector scrutinized the marks, trying to guess their meaning. When he failed to decipher them, the makhana stepped up to the wall and tapped on a symbol. It was larger than most, the size of the palm of his hand, and showed a hollow circle with four short curved lines radiating from it. He pointed up into the sky and made a sweeping movement from horizon to horizon. Next, he touched three or four of the black marks and again pointed to the sky, but this time in different directions.

Hector began to understand. ‘The sun? Stars?’ he enquired.

The makhana nodded. He carefully snapped off several twigs from a nearby bush and laid them on top of one another on the ground to make an open framework. Walking in a circle around the twigs, he stopped at various points to look up into the sky, then turned on his heel to face the opposite direction and again made a sweeping motion with his arm above his head. All the while he crooned what sounded like verses of poetry in his own language. He intoned with such reverence that Hector was reminded of the monks who’d taught him scripture during his childhood in Ireland. He understood that the makhana was trying to tell him something to do with the stars and sun, and that it had to do with the coming voyage. So he nodded and smiled politely and pretended to understand what the shaman was saying. Then, as soon as Kepuha finished, he hurried back in search of Maria to tell her of the new developments.

He found her in the village, talking with Jacques.

‘What’s going on, Hector? Everyone seems in a great hurry,’ she asked. There was indeed a general bustle as Chamorro men and women busily filled baskets with dried fish and fruit and carried them off towards the beach.

‘Stores for a long voyage, Maria,’ Hector said. ‘Ma’pang is sticking with the plan to loot guns from the patache. He seems to think he can catch up with her at sea.’

‘Surely it’s far too late. The patache will soon be halfway to Manila.’

Hector shrugged. ‘He seems very confident. They’ve got a giant ocean-going canoe.’

‘Will you, Dan, and the others be going with them?’ she asked.

‘The Chamorro don’t yet know how to use guns correctly. They need us as musketeers if there’s a fight.’

‘Of course there’ll be a fight,’ she said a little grimly. She had another of the yellow flowers and twirled the blossom in her hand.

‘Maria, it would make more sense if you came with us,’ Hector said seriously. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone here on Rota. There’s no point in sailing all that way, then bringing the boat back to fetch you.’

Maria began to pull the flower to pieces, petal by petal. Clearly she was unhappy. ‘Of course I’ll go with you,’ she said in a small voice. ‘But I didn’t expect this to happen so soon.’

Hector frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

She grimaced. ‘I always knew my whole life would change once I went with you. But this is piracy. And if I’m with you, that makes me a pirate too.’

‘But the Chamorro are at war. They’re not pirates.’

‘I don’t think my countrymen understand the difference.’

‘There need be very little bloodshed.’

She looked up at him, doubt in her eyes.

‘We’ll take the patache by surprise,’ Hector went on, trying to sound more confident than he felt. ‘Board her quickly. The Chamorro want guns, not a fight.’

‘And what will the Chamorro do with the patache’s crew?’

Hector forced a smile that he hoped she’d find reassuring. ‘A living Spaniard is more valuable as a hostage to the Chamorro than a dead one,’ he explained.

Even as he spoke the words, Hector had misgivings. He knew of only one prisoner taken by the Chamorro – the interpreter who had run away from the beach when they first landed from the Nicholas . Ma’pang had told him the wretched man had been caught farther along the coast. Regarding him as a traitor and turncoat, the Chamorro left his body on the shore with a spear driven through his mouth.

FOURTEEN

IT REQUIRED TWO TEAMS of Chamorro, forty men in all, to haul the sakman from her boathouse. They chanted as they heaved on the heavy coir ropes, and the vessel emerged into the evening light looking, Hector thought, like a crouching sea beast reluctantly dragged from its lair. The Chamorro threw heavy logs down on the sand as skids, and carefully manoeuvred the boat to the water’s edge and pushed her afloat. Clay jars and bamboo tubes filled with water and the last of the stores were loaded. Hector, Maria and the other guirragos were told to climb aboard with their muskets and stay out of the way. Ma’pang was to be the captain, but the greater respect was paid to old Kepuha. He came down the beach, tenderly holding a framework of wooden sticks like the one he had shown to Hector. But this contrivance was brittle with age, its flimsy joints tied together with thin strips of coconut fibre. Here and there seashells had been attached like random barnacles.

Kepuha laid the contraption carefully inside the thatched hut that formed the only accommodation on the sakman. Then the vessel was pushed out farther into the sea until the helpers were chest-deep in the water. For a few minutes they held the sakman in position while Ma’pang shouted orders, and his crew of eight Chamorro fishermen raised the mast and fitted its heel in a central step. Heavy rope stays were led fore and aft, and secured. More rigging was taken out sideways to the float and fastened in place. As soon as the mast was held firm, the bulky cocoon of the single sail was attached to a halyard and unrolled. The fabric of the sail was woven from strips of palm leaf and was so fine that at a distance it could have been mistaken for canvas. Even before the sail was fully hoisted, the sakman began to sidle and shift, answering to the breeze.

The wading men were pulled off their feet and let go their grasp. Instantly the sakman began to gather way, moving so smoothly and quickly that Hector was scarcely aware the voyage had begun. One moment he was within a stone’s throw of the watching crowd of villagers on the beach, close enough to make out their expressions of mingled pride and anticipation, and the next time he looked back, they were far away and indistinguishable. All he could see was the swaying of green palm fronds waved in farewell.

He turned again to look forward over the bows. The sakman had already crossed the width of the bay. He had to restrain himself from shouting out in alarm. The vessel was heading straight towards the barrier reef. In less than a minute she would smash into the jagged coral. Ma’pang, who held the steering paddle in the stern, let out a warning cry. To Hector’s utter astonishment, it seemed that the sakman’s captain had panicked. He threw the steering paddle into the water. In the same instant two of his men loosed the sheets that controlled the sail. Two others seized the forward end and ran with it aft to where Ma’pang was standing. The sakman slowed, hesitated and then began to move backwards. The abandoned steering paddle, Hector now saw, was attached to a cord. It floated past the opposite end of the hull, where another member of the crew retrieved it, placed it in a notch in the gunwale and began to steer. Now everything was back to front. The vessel’s bow had become its stern, and the sakman was accelerating in the opposite direction, heading for the gap in the reef. Ma’pang treated Hector to a jagged-toothed grin. ‘Something else the guirragos have to learn,’ he laughed.