The King's Fifth (3 page)

To mind the sails, for we were all landsmen, the Admiral sent one of his men. From the rail he called down his last instructions.

"I sail for another day and night," he shouted. "For a week I lie at anchor. Tell this to Coronado if by chance you meet."

He smiled and waved a jeweled hand. There was still no sign that he had triumphed over Mendoza. Nor did Mendoza himself show that he had been outwitted. He stood in the bow of the longboat, his jaw outthrust, and with a last prideful gesture called to his three musicians—Zuñiga who played the flute, Lunes who strummed a guitar of five strings, and Roa the drummer. At his signal the three struck up a lively tune.

The
San Pedro
dipped her flag, her crew cheered—wondrous loud, I thought, because they were not leaving—and on a light wind we moved away.

The cheers slowly faded. The galleon grew smaller on the horizon and then, as we rounded an islet, suddenly was lost to view. One by one the musicians stopped playing. Seated in the bobbing stern, my few possessions gathered around me, I stared at the place where the ship had been. I thought of my cabin and the map I had left on the table, unfinished.

Mendoza turned and swept us with a glance.

"Comrades," he said, "put the ship out of your minds. For in this life you shall never see it again. Fix your thoughts instead upon the task of getting ashore and upon the land of the Seven Golden Cities that lie beyond. And mark this well, each of you. We shall find these cities if it takes a year or five. If we walk through the soles of
our boots and to live have to eat the parts that remain."

Again he signaled the musicians and turned his back upon us.

To a brisk tune we left the islet. A rocky beach lay ahead, at a distance of half a league. Beyond it a defile wound steeply upward to a treeless promontory. There against the sky I saw three small figures, Torres and the two horses.

I idly noted that the sky above them was changing from blue to white. Clouds were beginning to move through this pearly mist on a wind that did not blow here on the sea. Ulloa's sailing instructions, left behind in the cabin, I could not remember. Yet I was certain that both wind and haze were portents of foul weather, in which these seas abound.

We then came upon a series of low-lying islets. As we entered a winding corridor between them—a place of remarkable beauty where the water was clear like air and fish of every hue darted—at that very instant I heard a prolonged hiss. It was the sound of a monstrous snake.

There was a second prolonged hiss. And then in a moment's brief time came the sound of a thousand serpents venomously breathing upon us. The moving sea flattened and from its surface pellets of water, hard as stone, whipped our faces.

From my memory of Ulloa's instructions, a thought raced through my mind. June was the month of the
Chubasco,
wind with rain. Spring and Fall were the seasons of the dry
Santana.
The most dreaded wind born in all the wilderness of Cortés' Sea blew in January. This
was summer but still, somehow, that wind was blowing now and we were in its path.

"
Cordonazo!
" I shouted.

The word was driven back into my throat. It made no difference. None in the longboat would have heard or understood. Wrestled to their knees by the wind, our men were trying to claw through the mound of provisions to a safer place in the bilge. Alarcón's sailor gallantly clung to the rudder.

The
Cordonazo's
first breath had parted a rope. The sail now streamed over our heads like a banner. The sailor rose to save it, but when he reached out the wind lifted him into the air. He fell upon the sea and as a man slides on the deck of a ship, so hard was the surface of the water, he slid past us and out of view.

There was no hope of saving him. Indeed, in our hearts all of us felt that we would never save ourselves. Either one by one we would be plucked from the boat by the steel fingers of the
Cordonazo,
or we would founder at once, together.

The myriad, snakelike voices of the wind became one, a scream that rose and fell and rose again. An oar, a helmet, a cask of flour, a scabbard were caught by the wind and flung into the sea.

The shore disappeared. I saw by the pale sun that we were being driven into the northwest. From what I remembered of the chart the sea was open there, free of islands and reefs upon which we could be wrecked.

We raced out of the shallows where the wind had bitten off the waves. A hill of gray water now came up
behind us. Our stern lifted high and we sank downward, downward until it seemed that we must founder on the bare rocks beneath the sea.

At this moment Captain Mendoza crawled the length of the boat and wrapped his arms around the tiller. But for this we would have drowned. As it was, the longboat listed and began to fill with water.

We bailed, using our helmets, until our hands bled. We bailed through the afternoon, never stopping. The sun went down and still we bailed, except Roa the drummer who lay as if dead.

A star showed in the east. It was small and wan, yet it proved an omen of good fortune. The wind lessened and began to blow in gusts. The moon rose in a sky swept clean of mist, turning the gray waves to silver.

For a time it was quiet, yet we waited. We looked at the sky, the sea, at each other, not believing that the
Cordonazo
had blown itself out and that we were still alive.

With the toe of his boot Captain Mendoza aroused Roa. "Drummer," he said, "a tune. Something of a lively nature."

Roa stirred himself and rose from the bilge. "The drum has grown soggy," he said.

"Play," the captain said.

While three of us bailed and Mendoza held the rudder, Roa beat his drum. The sound was hollow, but as we drifted into the north it served to enliven us.

T
HE WAVES GREW SMALLER
in the night. Taking turns, two men bailing while the others slept, we kept the longboat dry. At dawn the sea was calm. By the early light we surveyed the storm's damage.

My first thought was for the maps and instruments, which I had carefully wrapped when we left the
San Pedro
and placed between two bags of flour. The flour was wet, but to my great relief the roll was safe, uninjured by the sea water.

Our swords and daggers, we found, were already beginning to rust. One of Mendoza's cloaks was gone, besides a small sack of trinkets we had brought for barter with the Indians. The oar and sail, however, blown away in the first blast of the wind, were our most grievous loss.

"We have been driven afar," Mendoza said, looking at the instruments I held in my lap. "How far, Maker of Maps?"

"It is impossible to tell until noon," I said. "Then I shall take a reading on the sun."

"What is your guess?"

"Ten leagues."

"How far away is the coast?"

"Perhaps five leagues."

"Then we should see it."

"Not from our height, unless there were mountains on the coast," I said, explaining to him that since the world was proven round the horizon lowered five
varas
every half league.

He did not wait to hear me out. "We head for the coast," he said, and gave orders for the stitching of a sail.

The sail was a makeshift, two blankets sewed together, yet it served to catch what wind there was. With it and the aid of our one oar, we set a course to eastward.

At noon we took our first water that day, drinking little from the goatskin Mendoza passed around. Our throats soon were parched again, for the sun shone fiercely upon us. It fell upon us like fiery rain. It struck the sea and shattered into a thousand barbs of light that blinded our eyes and seared our flesh.

At dusk we sighted land low on the horizon.

About the same time, sitting at the oar, I noted that the boat left no wake and that we were moving north-by-east in a crablike motion. It was as if the whole sea were flowing away from the land.

"I remember that Ulloa's chart speaks of strong currents in this part of the sea," I told Mendoza, "caused by the difference between high and low tide, often as much as twenty feet. We must be caught in such a current. Furthermore, the chart warns that a boat cannot move against these tides, but must go with them until they run their course."

Mendoza glanced at the coast, less than a league away. His face hardened and I could see that he meant to reach it. Jumping to his feet, he reset the sail to catch more wind and shouted for Zuñiga to help me at the oar.

"Pull, you sons of Spain!" he shouted.

And pull we did until our eyes started from their sockets. The heavy longboat did not change direction. Mendoza pushed me aside and took my place at the oar. Yet the boat sped onward with the powerful tide, farther and farther from the coast.

Until midnight the tide held fast. Then, as you open your hand and free a bird, it released us.

At this time, using the Pole Star, I found its elevation above the sea and thus our position, south and north. (Someday a man wise in these matters will think of a trustworthy way to tell distance east and west. Even now, I have heard, there is a navigator in Portugal who claims to have invented such a method. Would that he had been with us on the Sea of Cortés!)

"We have been carried back," I told Mendoza, "almost to the place I fixed at noon."

"But how far is the coast?" he demanded.

"That I do not know."

"A cartographer and you cannot tell right from left?"

I tried to explain to him why this was difficult, but turning his back, he raised the sail and again we set toward the east.

We were too tired to row, so we ate a few biscuits, took sips of water, and lay down to sleep, all of us except Captain Mendoza. He sat at the tiller, holding the goatskin
of water, which was now half-empty, between his knees.

The sun seemed to grow hotter. We dug small caves among the baggage to lie in when we were not rowing. We drank no water until midday and then only one mouthful apiece.

Low yellow cliffs marched along beside us and a heavy surf beat against them. Through the afternoon we watched for a soft place to land, but saw none.

Night came and we sailed slowly on into the north. In the morning the yellow cliffs were still there. Fog hung over the sea but the sun quickly bore through it and sought us out.

We now were too exhausted to row, so we lay in our caves and came out only to take turns at the tiller.

We passed close to a small island covered with birds. They stood motionless as the longboat sailed by, their red beaks hanging open in the heat.

From the south white clouds rolled up and the wind died to a whisper.

"Tell us, scanner of the heavens, reader of charts," Mendoza said. "Tell us what Ulloa has about clouds."

The words were thick for his mouth was swollen from the sun, like all our mouths.

"He says that it rains during the summer in the Sea of Cortés," I answered. "Sometimes for a week."

"We have been five days on the sea and it has not rained."

"I have counted," Lunes said, "it is six days, not five."

Mendoza shrugged his shoulders.

I was surprised at Lunes because he was not one to
argue. I was more surprised at the Captain's silence, for no one argued with him, even over a trifle.

The clouds rose higher. From time to time I saw Lunes glance at the goatskin oE water, which the Captain held between his knees. Suddenly he staggered up and pointed into the west.

"Three galleons," he cried.

Everyone got to his feet.

"I see nothing," said Zuñiga, who had a squint and saw little at any time.

"All with sails flying," Lunes said. "Look, where I point."

I shaded my eyes and looked until tears ran down my cheeks and dried there. I saw nothing except the steaming sea.

"You have lost your wits," Roa said and sat down.

"Next you will see lakes and trees growing beside them," Zuñiga said.

Mendoza laughed, though there was little to laugh at. "A mirage," he said. "A moment ago I saw waterfalls. I conjured them because I wished to."

"Lunes, you see so much, can you see Admiral Alarcón eating a breakfast of cold fowl?" Roa asked. "Does he drink Jerez or Madeira?"

Lunes fell silent. He sat down and again began to eye the goatskin.

The white clouds moved overhead and formed themselves into snow-covered mountains. Rearing above the mountains were great castles and battlements and below them were running horses and fighting men. After a
time, when the sun set, it gilded the roofs of the castles with gold and the gold sifted down over everything.

"The Seven Cities," Lunes said, watching the clouds. "All gold. Even the doors and the tiles people walk upon."

"Captain," Roa said, "is there much water in the Seven Golden Cities?"

"Springs and rivulets, streams and rivers and lakes of water," Mendoza answered. "And fountains everywhere, tall as the trees along the Guadalquivir in our city of Seville."

"Tell us more about the fountains," Zuñiga said.

"I cannot talk more of fountains or of anything," Mendoza answered. "My lips are very sore. Words feel like burning pebbles in my throat."

"This is the way with all of us," said Roa. "But I too wish to hear more of the fountains."

Mendoza was silent.

Lunes said, "There is also true gold in the streets which lead to the castles. Paved with golden flagstones so heavy that it needs two men to lift just one."

Mendoza picked up the goatskin but did not pass it around. He held it and gave each of us a sip of water and put the stopper back.

"Musicians," he said, "we now play a tune. Something gay to suit the circumstance."

Roa found his drum and Zuñiga his fife. The sun had given Lunes' guitar the shape of a gourd, but together the three played a tune that was gay and also sad. It was the same tune Don Baltasar, my grandfather, had marched to when he fought the Moors at the siege of Granada.

D
ARKNESS CAME
and we moved northward. I remember nothing of this night. Nor much of the day which followed, except that I thought death was not far away. It was just beyond the horizon. It was there waiting for me because I had broken my solemn pledge to Admiral Alarcón.