To the Indies Read Free Page A

noticing that the ship’s company was assembling aft.
     
    He hastened after them, and took his place among the group of gentlemen and priests at the starboard side. The Admiral stood by the tiller, Carvajal at his side, the seamen in line athwartships, and the landsmen to port. Only the lookout and the helmsman took no part in the prayers. Heads were bowed. Horny hands made the sign of the cross. They prayed to the Queen of Heaven, the unlettered among them stumbling through the Latin words following the others. Rich glanced up under his eyelids at the Admiral, who was standing with clasped hands gazing up at the darkening sky. There was a happy exaltation in his face, a fixed and fanatical enthusiasm — everyone was aware of the Admiral’s special devotion to the Blessed Virgin. His blue eyes were still bright in the growing darkness, his white beard ghostlike.
     
    The prayer ended, and the massed ship’s company began to break up again into groups. Overhead the stars were coming into sight — strange stars, with the Great Bear almost lost on the northern horizon, and new constellations showing in the south, glowing vividly against the velvet of the sky. Like another star appeared the taper borne by a ship’s boy to light the shaded lamp that hung above the compass before the steersman.
     

Chapter 2
     
    The blessed new coolness of the night gave sweet sleep to Narciso Rich — despite the foulness of his sleeping quarters with twenty gentlemen of coat-armor on the berth-deck below the great cabin aft, despite the snores of his companions, despite the lumpiness of his chaff mattress and the activity of its inhabitants. He told himself, as he stepped into the fresh air in the waist, just before dawn, that they must be nearing the fountain of Youth, for he felt none of the weight of his forty years on his shoulders, and his bones had ceased to protest about that chaff mattress. Carvajal had told him of the curious type of bed used by the natives of the Indian islands — a network of interlaced creepers, secured to posts at either end, and called ‘hammock’ in their pagan tongue — and Rich had once suggested that this would be ideal for use on board ship, where space was limited and motion violent; but Carvajal had pursed his lips and shaken his head at such a preposterous notion. Chaff mattresses had always been used at sea, and always would be; and Christian sailors could do better than to adopt ideas from naked unbelievers.
     
    Rich dipped his bucket and rinsed his face and hands, ran his comb through his hair and beard, and looked about him. The sky was lavender-hued now with the approaching dawn, in such lovely contrast with the blue of the sea as to rouse an ache in his breast, and that blessed breeze was still blowing from the east, driving the Holy Name steadily westward over the rhythmic rise and fall of the sea. He walked over and glanced at the slate hanging beside the helmsman. There was bunch after bunch of little strokes recorded there — they must have made at least twenty leagues during the night. Quite soon they must reach land, and they were a hundred leagues or more farther south than Española — near one of the southern islands which Polo had heard about, Sumatra, perhaps, with its sandalwood and spices.
     
    A ship’s boy came pattering up, barefooted; the last grains were running out of the hour-glass and he turned it and lifted his voice in a loud cry to Diego Osorio. The ship’s day was begun, and by coincidence just as the first rays of the sun were gleaming over the sea, touching the crests of the waves into gold. Carvajal came up onto the poop, crossed himself before the painted Virgin by the taffrail, and looked keenly at the slate. He nodded curtly to Rich, but he had no words to spare for him at this time in the morning, for it was during this cool hour that the work of the ship must be done. Soon he was bellowing orders at the sleepy men who came crawling out of the forecastle