But above all, Ramón was tormented by the idea that his wife could have complications at the time of delivery and that they might not be able to resolve them due to the isolation from the continent. In the delirium of his frequent sleepless nights, he obsessed about being marooned on the island and about having a wild creature born to them. The only things that assuaged his throbbing anguish were their sessions of lovemaking, which had not been interrupted, and the certainty, growing in him as he kept reading and rereading all the documents about Clipperton, that a fabulous treasure had been abandoned by the pirate somewhere on the atoll, which had to be, Arnaud concluded, in the lagoon or in the big rock to the south.
In spite of these reassuring ideas, people noticed his lost serenity when he developed a nervous tic that curled his lips on the left side, which became progressively more obvious and frequent, and eventually accompanied by a quick blinking of his eye on the same side.
“Stop making so many faces, things are not yet a matter of life and death,” Alicia kept telling him. “The stupid ship will come.”
Finally while they were talking in the studio one afternoon, through the yellow, red, and violet stained-glass windows, they saw Cardona’s wife, Tirsa Rendón, coming by. She was dripping wet and screaming that a ship was approaching. They all ran to the dock, where they stood under bursts of rain, their palpitating hearts in their throats, and waited until the approaching blurred silhouette took shape among the raging waves.
It was neither El Demócrata nor the Corrigan II, but the ship from the American guano company, coming for its annual visit to pick up the product. It brought exquisite gifts from Brander to Schultz, his successor in the post: bottles of French champagne, Amaretto di Saronno, boxes of dates, olive oil from Seville, jars of maraschino cherries, and canned Danish ham.
But it also brought them news that dealt a heavy blow to their thin hopes: the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd. was no longer much interested in Clipperton. They had found unexploited and abundant guano deposits on islands that were closer and presented a less risky approach. Therefore, they announced that they were cutting down the frequency of their trips to the atoll but were asking Schultz to stay there a few more months as holder of their concession, until the definite closing of the plant and his transfer to another one.
From Schultz’s throat surged a long series of incomprehensible obscenities, and Ramón’s facial tic increased in frequency to two or three incidents per second.
Clipperton Island, 1705
THIS WAS NOT its name yet. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, people believed this island had no name because it did not deserve to have one. Only those well versed in maritime routes and cartography knew that Magellan had sailed close to it and given it the sonorous but desolate name of Isle of Passion.
In 1705 the English corsair John Clipperton landed on it for the first time. Some say that his vessel, the Five Ports, did not fly the usual pirate’s black flag with skull and crossbones, but always proudly flew a vermilion flag with a winged wild boar. Whether the boar was alate or rampant, or both, nobody knows for sure.
Miraculously, he managed to dodge the isle’s surrounding reefs, which had destroyed — and will destroy for centuries to come — so many other vessels. Some people say it was because the isle recognized the flag of the man who was to become its master and bowed down, allowing him safe passage. Others say that the explanation lies in the shape of his vessel, sleek and swift, narrow in the beam, and with low draft and freeboards.
One fact is undisputed: the name of his vessel, the Five Ports, honored the ancient brotherhood of buccaneers to which he belonged: the Cinque Ports (Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich, old bastions on England’s southern shores). The rebirth of piracy in America, now at the expense of the Spanish galleons, had also revived the confederation and its ilk — the Shore Brotherhood, or the Beggars of the Sea — in order to protect the Turtle Island corsairs.
Captain John Clipperton sighted the atoll that today bears his name one good day while navigating through uncharted waters far from the common sailing routes. The story is told that he was looking for a place, a sandbank or rock out of the water, in order to abandon and punish with death a member of his crew considered a traitor because he had violated the oath of strict obedience. “Maroon!” was the unanimous demand of the Five Ports crew in punishment for his guilt, and marooned he would be: the law of the sea would be carried out.
Clipperton, cruel and notorious for his drastic sanctions, spotted the silhouette of the atoll, which he had never explored, and gave out orders to approach it and to prepare the condemned man. It is rumored that showing a slave trader’s mercy and a murderer’s humor, Clipperton said a few sarcastic words of consolation to the wretched man and handed him — as prescribed by maroon law — a bottle of drinking water and a gun with a single bullet.
But in crossing over the reefs and looking closely at the coastline, Clipperton found much more than he was looking for. He discovered the ideal place, not to cast out a traitor but to find refuge for himself. It was the perfect hideout.
Treatises on the pirate world indicate that a buccaneer feels no attachment to his ship. He can bare it of all wood carvings, of luxurious furnishings, of anything that increases weight and decreases speed, since what he needs is a swift and seaworthy vessel, efficient in the assault of his victims. A buccaneer is willing to get rid of his ship without any sentimentality, and to replace it any time he captures a better one.
It’s not the same with his lair. On inhabited and regulated lands the pirate is merely a fugitive, a criminal who ends up losing his freedom and his life. So when he finds a piece of land belonging to no one, where he can establish the same dominion he enjoys on the high seas, he keeps it to himself, and loves it fiercely. He feels a very vital connection to his hiding place.
Henri Keppel, a shrewd pirate hunter, knew what he was talking about when he said that the lawless men of the sea, just like spiders, are found in the nooks and crannies. And Clipperton Island was full of them: it was an isolated corner of the world providing the right protection for spiders and pirates.
John Clipperton made a quick decision as soon as he saw the atolclass="underline" it would be his hideout. Remote and hostile, it was surrounded by sharp coral reefs like fangs that would make a breach in the hull of any other vessel that dared come close enough, while he and his men could camouflage their presence along its many bays.
Nobody would find him there, nobody would even look for him there. So he established his shadowy domain and called it Clipperton Island. Not to give it his name, but to declare his act of possession. The island belonging to John Clipperton, buccaneer and rebel, solitary prowler with lots of raw courage, very few loves, and no faith. Perhaps he never learned that the place had already been named the Isle of Passion, or if he did, he probably thought it sounded too romantically Iberian and disregarded the fact.