The Islands of Unwisdom

Robert Graves

• Publisher: RosettaBooks
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780795336836
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

Swashbuckling historical fiction from the author of I, Claudius. "A cleverly balanced mixture of spice, fact, humor and adventure on and off the high seas" ( Kirkus Reviews ). Set in the Age of Exploration, The Islands of Unwisdom tells the story of the ill-fated Don Álvaro de Mendaña y Neyra, a Spanish explorer set on finding the Solomon Islands, the mythical source of King Solomon's vast wealth. Driven by greed, ambition, and lust, Don Alvaro and his wife, the beautiful and dangerous Ysabel, lead a crew of adventurers beyond the horizon in search of the wealth of their wildest dreams. However, that's not exactly what they find. In the hands of master historical novelist, classicist, and poet Robert Graves, this tale offers a fascinating look at a brutal and bloody era, and insights into the reasons for Spain's failure to ultimately dominate world exploration during this time.

Chapter 1

THE BLIND GIRL OF PANAMA

In the visible firmament which (according to my learned Sevillian friends) is but the eighth of a grand series—the other seven being designed only for the reception of saints, martyrs and their attendant angels—God has placed many thousands of stars. Some are great, some of middle size, some so small that only the keenest eye can distinguish them on the clearest of nights. Yet, as Fray Junipero of Cadiz who taught me Catholic doctrine in my childhood once assured me, every one of them is numbered and registered and twinkles with a certain divine destiny. ‘If even the least of them were to be quenched, my son,’ he said, ‘an equivalent loss on earth would soon be observed.’

From where I knelt on the cold sacristy floor, before the image of Saint Francis, I asked dutifully: ‘Father, what moral are we to deduce from this?’

‘Little Andrés, my son,’ he answered, ‘the moral is as plain as the nose on your face. Even the most minute event that may to all appearances be wholly finished and done with, whether proceeding from a good intention or from a bad one, must necessarily, in God’s good time, have its effect upon the people concerned in it: an effect consonant with the quality of the intention—as grapes are fruit of the useful vine, and thistle-down flies from the thistle, food of asses.’

Fray Junipero’s philosophic doctrine was as memorable as his discipline was severe, and with this particular conclusion I have always been in perfect accord. All the troubles, for example, that occurred during the famous and terrible voyage across the South Seas which is the subject of this history may be said to have sprung, and spread like thistle-down scattered by the wind, from the tale of the Blind Girl of Panama. This tale therefore, though raw and indelicate, I will quote in full as I heard it, not indeed for your amusement (the Saints forbid!) but—by one of those paradoxes beloved and exploited by the schoolmen—for your moral edification.

On the morning of the fourth day of April, in the year of our Lord 1595, at Callao, the port of Lima where the viceroys of Peru reside, I stood with two companions in the waist of our flagship, the San Geronimo, a fine galleon of one hundred and fifty tons; and from the mastheads above us two royal banners of Spain and the pendant of General Don Alvaro de Mendaña y Castro fluttered bravely in the land breeze. This celebrated explorer, a nobleman of Galicia and nephew of a former Lord President of Peru, had been appointed to command our expedition, by royal letters patent signed by King Philip II himself. Our destination was the Isles of Solomon, which Don Alvaro had himself discovered twenty-seven years before, but which no one had visited since; our purpose, to colonize them. My companions were the valiant Ensign Juan de Buitrago, a scarred and grizzled veteran of many wars, and tall, hook-nosed, mild-mannered old Marcos Marin, the Aragonese boatswain.

‘That is very true, Don Marcos,’ the Ensign was saying. ‘Some women will never be put off, try how you may. I remember when I was a young soldier at Panama, billeted in the house of an ebony-merchant from Santander, a very respectable man whose name I have now forgotten… Shortly after my arrival, as we sat drinking in doublet and shirt, he said to me earnestly: “Don Juan, may I ask you to do me a kindness?”

‘“I am entirely at your disposal, host,” I said.

‘“It is this. In a garret of this house lives a beautiful girl, an orphan, who spends her days carding and spinning wool. Very industrious she is, and proficient at her work; but can do no other, because, poor creature, she is blind. This girl greatly desires to handle your arms and speak to you, for her grandfather who brought her up once served under the great Pizarro, and though a model of piety, she is always curious to hear tales of soldiers and camp life.”

‘“To refuse a blind orphan a few minutes of my long day would be uncharitable indeed,” I said. “I am ready to humour her this very moment, if you please.” With that I rose, made an armful of my accoutrements and told him: “Lead on.”

‘We went upstairs to a garret room where the girl sat spinning at the open window; and beautiful she was, by the eleven thousand virgins of Saint Ursula, with her pale skin and broad brow like the Madonna’s, her glossy hair, slim waist and rounded bosom. My host made us acquainted, and a few compliments and nothings were exchanged, when presently he was called away on a matter of business and she and I were left alone.

‘Well, first she asked permission to examine my armour; and I handed her my headpiece, my corslet and my tassets, which she tapped with her nails and stroked with her fingers, greatly admiring their lightness and toughness. Next, she reached for my Venetian scabbard and fingered it thoughtfully from end to end; she cried out with delight at the silver chasing which, indeed, was curiously intricate and graceful—as you can see for yourselves, for here is the very scabbard. Next, she drew my sword out a hand’s breadth or two and tried its edge with her little thumb—“as keen as a razor!” she exclaimed—and her finger-tips traced the fine Toledo inlay on the flat of it. Next, my Mexican dagger and its copper scabbard with the turquoise studs. Next, my trusty arquebus, with its match; my powder-horn, my bag of bullets. Everything pleased this poor blind girl beyond expression. But then, then—’

Don Juan paused and his face, that had been serious, took on a droll expression between triumph and shame. ‘But then—?’ the Boatswain prompted him.

‘—But then: “Is that all, soldier?” she asked in tones of dissatisfaction.

‘“It is indeed all, daughter,” I replied. “Though I am heartily sorry to disappoint you, I have nothing else.” But some women will never be put off, try how you may. She came close up to me and her eager hands went all about me, deft as a Neapolitan pick-pocket’s, remorseless as a Venetian sea-captain’s when he searches his captive Turk for concealed jewels; and pretty soon she caught firm hold of a something. “Aha,” she cried, “my brave comrade, what concealed weapon is this?”

‘“Take your little hands out of the larder!” said I. “That is no weapon of offence: it is no more than a prime Bolognian sausage hanging from a hook against time of need.”

‘“Hanging?” she exclaimed with surprise. “But it hangs upside-down!” And then in a voice of deepest reproach: “Oh, noble Don Juan, would you tell lies to a poor blind girl, and an orphan too?”’

The intention of the tale cannot by any means be described as a good one, and its effect was altogether lamentable. At the very moment that the Ensign reached this climax, lowering his voice because Father Antonio de Serpa, the Vicar’s keen-eyed Chaplain was edging near, a boat drew alongside and the Colonel, Don Pedro Merino de Manrique climbed ponderously aboard. The Boatswain and I were so beguiled by the tale that we did not turn round, and what with the sailors’ singing and shouting, and a duet of carpenters’ hammers, it was excusable that the Colonel’s arrival should have escaped our attention; we supposed that a bum-boat had come with fruit, or perhaps the skiff that had been sent to fetch the laundry.

The Colonel staggered aboard, three parts drunk with chicha, the maize liquor of Peru—for this was the feast of Our Lady of Joy—slipped on a pool of oil, caught his scabbard between his legs and went flying, head first, into the scuppers; not a second before the Boatswain, though a most respectable old man, burst into a hoarse cackle of laughter at the Ensign’s tale. I laughed too, till the tears flowed, being young and gay and no longer so devout as when I was Fray Junipero’s acolyte.

‘God’s blood!’ cried the Colonel, hauling himself to his feet with the help of the bulwarks and a loaded stick he still grasped in his hand. ‘God’s blood and nails!’

The Boatswain gasped: ‘Upside-down, by the miraculous Virgin of Pilar, upside-down! That’s wonderful! Ho! ho! ho!’

I tried to move off quietly. To tell the truth, I had no right to be gossiping on deck on so busy a morning and only three days before we were to sail. My place was below, checking the stores as they were piled in the hold: this forenoon, five hundred tubs of salt beef and four tons of biscuit, together with a ton of chick-peas, fifty jars of vinegar and a ton and a half of dried beans were being fetched aboard. But the Colonel roared at me to come back. ‘You, sir, with the fat cheeks! You too laughed at me when I slipped and fell!’ he cried. ‘To sneak off and leave your companions to bear the brunt of my wrath is certainly the act of a coward. Are you a rat, sir, or are you a man?’

I swept off my plumed hat and made him a deep obeisance. ‘My lord,’ I said, ‘I am no rat: I am the General’s assistant secretary and your very humble servant. But I fear that you have caught the wrong bull by the horns. I was laughing at a droll tale told me by the Ensign, and since I did not observe your lordship’s fall, I had no occasion, as I should not have had the presumption, to laugh at your lordship.’

The Ensign supported me boldly: ‘What Andrés Serrano has told your lordship is the plain truth, and if it had been otherwise I should have at once defended your lordship’s honour.’

The Colonel glared at the two of us and fired a thunderous broadside at the Boatswain, whose face was still wreathed in smiles. ‘As for you, you Aragonese snail-guzzler, you tall, tottering, rotten ladder, will you also deny that it was at me you laughed? “Upside-down, by the Virgin of Pilar, upside-down!”—were not those your very words, you tarry-tailed dog, you Jew’s bastard?’

The Boatswain was not used to be treated with such contumely. His captains had always trusted him, his crews spoke well of him, and he had grown old in the King’s service. For the Colonel to revile him in the hearing of the sailors, indeed in the hearing of the whole port of Callao, because Don Pedro Merino had the most powerful parade-ground voice I ever heard in my life, was hard to bear in silence. He kept his temper but strode close up to the Colonel, who was a little turkey-cock of a man, and looked down on him with his head gravely bent. Then he said in his atrocious Castilian, his mother-tongue being a sort of Languedoc French: ‘With the greatest respect to your lordship, I was referring not to your unfortunate posture, but to that of a fine Bolognian sausage which figured in the Ensign’s tale; and I should be glad to think that I misheard your lordship a moment ago and that the evil names you pronounced were meant for the same sausage, not for the Boatswain of the San Geronimo.’

The Colonel, though he understood that he had made a fool of himself, was too far gone in drink to take the opportunity of honourable retreat which the Boatswain offered him. Standing on his yard and a half of dignity, he roared back: ‘The Devil fly off with your fine Bolognian sausage! Do you expect me to believe this trumpery lie? You laughed at me, you sweepings of an ass-stall, you scurfy-headed camelopard—instead of drumming me aboard with the respect due to my rank and honours, you laughed at me—at me, Don Pedro Merino de Manrique y Castellon, the Colonel appointed by the Viceroy himself to command the troops of this expedition! What is more, my fall, which might have broken both my legs, was caused by your unseamanlike slovenliness. My foot slid on oil slopped over the deck by your ruffianly sailors!’

‘Believe what you are in the humour to believe, but permit me to remind your lordship that it is not customary in any royal ship for a military officer, be he ever so exalted, to abuse a boatswain except with the permission, and in the presence, of the ship’s master; and even then not before the crew. I humbly beg pardon for not having drummed your lordship aboard, but arriving at an awkward moment as you did, unannounced by tuck of drum, you were on deck in an instant. Moreover, deeply though I regret your lordship’s fall, I cannot offer apologies as the person responsible, since my men have handled no oil-jars. If you seek satisfaction, your complaint had best be directed to Doña Ysabel, the General’s lady, whose servants have been carrying oil aft to her private larder.’

‘O sweet Saint Barbara and all the loud artillery of Heaven!’ burst out the Colonel. ‘If this is not insolence beyond any remedy but death!’ He clapped his hand to the pommel of his sword and would certainly have spitted the Boatswain like a sucking-pig had I not darted forward, with Miguel Llano the General’s secretary, and caught at his wrist, while Father Antonio and the Ensign between them hustled the Boatswain away.

We could not long restrain this raving officer, he struggled and swore so hard, spitting in our faces like a llama, but the Boatswain had escaped below deck before the Colonel could free his sword and go charging after him, hallooing as loudly as a Morisco on a feast day.

Doña Ysabel stood on the half-deck watching the scene below her with impassive face, but her blue eyes danced like stars under her crown of wheat-coloured hair. As I went off to the forecastle, giving her the respectful salute to which both beauty and rank entitled her, the Chief Pilot, Don Pedro Fernandez of Quiros, who stood by her side, gestured to me to wait; I suppose he wished to question me about the origin of the affray. I obeyed, and could not but overhear what Doña Ysabel said to him: ‘Our Colonel is a man of more than usual severity. If this is the way he means to assert his position throughout the voyage, he may, of course, come to a good end, but I think that most improbable.’

Pedro Fernandez shook his head glumly. ‘I am forced to agree with your ladyship,’ he said. ‘I only wish that he might be given a warning before it is too late.’

‘And why not?’ she answered lightly. ‘The sooner the better.’

The Colonel, finding that his quarry had gone to earth, sheathed his sword and marched towards the forecastle, still puffing fire and smoke. Doña Ysabel called down to him: ‘Why, Colonel, what has come over you this fine morning? What savage insect of the tropics has found its way into your peascod-bellied doublet? By the violent way you behave I can only conclude that something has bitten you where you are ashamed to scratch. But listen to me, my lord: if my husband comes to hear of this morning’s doings, I undertake that he will be little pleased to know that his ship’s officers are treated with contumely, and served with language that would better suit the mouth of a brothel-keeper than a Colonel with the King’s commission; especially when so slight an occasion for your outburst has been offered.’

The Colonel turned half about when Doña Ysabel began to address him. Now he grimaced like a schoolboy and, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, cried with great insolence to the sergeant who attended him: ‘Why, upon my word, what have we there on the poop?’

This lubberly retort brought the Chief Pilot into the quarrel. He grew indignant, and with good reason. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘in the absence of the General it devolves on me to resent the gross insult that you have offered the virtuous and high-born Doña Ysabel. It were better for you to ask her pardon publicly; for every one of us respects her, not only as the General’s Lady, but as the flower and glory of the womanhood of His Most Christian Majesty’s possessions overseas.’

‘Hold your tongue, insolent Portuguee!’ the Colonel roared back. ‘I offered Doña Ysabel no insult. My remark was meant for that fabulous Bolognian sausage, hanging upside-down—though upon my honour, it would puzzle me to distinguish one end of a sausage from the other—not for any woman whatsoever, least of all the General’s distinguished Lady. But I do not hesitate to insult you, as suits your inferior rank and calling. Understand, numbskull, that I am the Colonel, and that if we sail together in this ship I command her in battle, and if it pleases me to order you to run her upon a rock, what then? Answer me, dog, what then? Will you obey my order?’

The Chief Pilot made a politic reply: ‘When that time comes, your lordship, I shall do whatever seems best, but the case is a hypothetic and dubious one. As things stand, I recognize no superior in naval affairs except his Excellency the General, to whose high-born Lady, though you protest that you intended no insult, you have at least failed to render the civilities due from every nobleman to every noblewoman. The General has appointed me to navigate this vessel, and to act as her master while he controls the movements of the flotilla as a whole; when he comes aboard, as I trust he soon will before this scandal grows worse, he must define my powers in so far as a conflict of authority may arise between your lordship and myself. But you may believe me when I tell you, without oaths and objurgations, that if it is your aim to become lord and master of all lands which we hope to discover, I will resign my appointment at once rather than come under the orders of an officer who takes so much upon himself and shows so little discretion.’

The Colonel gestured to the sergeant. ‘Up into the pulpit, fellow,’ he said, ‘and bring me down that gabbling Portuguese preacher. I mean to beat the Devil’s tattoo on his hide with this stick of mine!’

The sergeant saluted, shouldered his weapon and started reluctantly for the quarter-deck; but before he could execute his orders, two of Doña Ysabel’s brothers, Captain Don Lorenzo de Barreto and Ensign Don Diego de Barreto came rushing up with drawn swords, having been warned of what was afoot. Don Diego hauled the sergeant off the ladder by a leg, and Don Lorenzo kicked him across the deck, where he stumbled into the Colonel and sent him flying once more. Then they went up to their sister and each kissed one of her hands deferentially, before turning to the Chief Pilot and clapping him on the back. ‘Sir,’ Don Diego said, ‘you may be only a Portuguese, but for the bold and honourable way in which you championed our sister against the rudeness of that soused Bombastes yonder, you deserve to be a Spaniard. Our swords will always be at your disposal, should you ever have need of them in the course of this voyage.’

Pedro Fernandez thanked them gravely and declared that he valued their goodwill beyond measure. ‘Nevertheless, my lords, I could never consent to join a fa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. THE BLIND GIRL OF PANAMA
• 2. AN AUDIENCE WITH THE VICEROY
• 3. THE VICAR’S BAGGAGE
• 4. DEPARTURE FROM CALLAO
• 5. WHAT HAPPENED AT CHERREPÉ
• 6. WHAT HAPPENED AT PAITA
• 7. ON THE HIGH SEAS
• 8. THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS
• 9. THE COLONEL SEEKS A HARBOUR
• 10. THE CROSS IN SANTA CRISTINA
• 11. SAN BERNARDO AND THE SOLITARY ISLE
• 12. THE ADMIRAL’S FAREWELL
• 13. GRACIOUS BAY
• 14. THE ERUPTION
• 15. A SETTLEMENT FOUNDED
• 16. THE COLONEL SPEAKS OUT
• 17. THE MALCONTENTS
• 18. A FORAGE WITH MALOPE
• 19. MURDER
• 20. THE ECLIPSE
• 21. THE SETTLEMENT ABANDONED
• 22. NORTHWARD ACROSS THE EQUATOR
• 23. HUNGER AND THIRST
• 24. COBOS BAY
• 25. THE LAST HUNDRED LEAGUES
• 26. AT MANILA
• HISTORICAL EPILOGUE
• Endnotes