He drew himself up tall, which was not very tall, and put his nose near mine, and said, “I give not the smallest part of a cruzeiro for your fear of curses. I think that is woman-folly, to fret over the vengeance of blackamoor-ape spirits. And so far as the matter of respect for the dead is concerned, why, I have no respect for these monkeys living, so why should I respect the dead ones? But there is this to reflect upon, that your fear of witchcraft is so great you cannot be dissuaded from running to Faleiro with your tale, and if you do that, it will go badly for me. So I could kill you where you stand, or I must return what I have rightfully acquired by my courage and skill. I should kill you, in good sooth. But I think I will not do it. I will take back the treasure.”
“I will accompany you,” I said.
He glared fire at me then. “Is not my word sufficient?”
“It is a dangerous thing, slipping into that holy place. I will go with you, and stand watch for you, while you restore what you have taken.”
I thought then he would indeed make an attempt on me; and I saw his fingers quivering, as though to go to his dagger. I was ready for him. I think he knew that. So although his hatred for me did smoulder and reach almost to the flashing point, yet did he subdue his wrath, which was most wise of him. Together we went to his quarters, where he had secreted in an oaken chest an astonishing array of marvels, all manner of precious gems and little splendid carvings of ivory and the like. Most sullenly did he gather these things, and in my company he took them back to the graveyard, and would have dumped them without ceremony on the open ground, but that I urged him most menacingly to put them below the earth. Which he did; and I think even then he toyed with the idea of murdering me in this lonely place ringed by vast elephanto teeth, but that he was too craven to make the venture. Give him five or six bravos, and surely he would have had them hold me while he slit my gut. But he would not face me alone, and wise of him, aye.
So I had earned his double enmity, both that I was a mere crude Englishman, and that I had compelled him to give up his purloined treasure. I cared nothing for that. One does not go to sea with a man who has called down upon himself the wrath of the invisible world. Those sailors who took the prophet Jonas onto their ship in ancient times, when Jonas had been disobedient unto the Lord, found themselves in the midst of a tempest, that did not subside until they cast forth Jonas into the sea; and so, too, in this instance was I certain that Caldeira de Rodrigues’ plunder of the dead would cause us all to suffer. Therefore had I risked the loathing of that shoddy and shameless young man, for it affrighted me far less than the anger of the unknown deities of this place.
As we took our leave of Loango the city was hectic with concern, and barely saw us go. The four albino ndundus of the king were mounted in a high station to chant prayers, and various witch-women went about making sacrifices to the powerful mokissos of the nation, and so on, just as the cathedrals of Europe must keep busy when an onslaught of the Turks is predicted. Everywhere it was incense and bonfires and drums and pipes and chanting, with somber-faced Loangan soldiers striding up and down drilling with their weapons, and so on and on, everyone active in the preparations for defense against the imagined attack of the on-rushing anthropophagi.
Thus we left Loango with our rich cargo of goods and sailed back toward São Paulo de Loanda. Which had been a very fine voyage for me, and exceeding instructive in the ways of that foreign land.
3
We started us southward in high good spirits, for our hold was full and the profit would be great, and there was not one of us but yearned to be in the capital city again. But though I had gone myself to the graveyard with Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues to make him undo his impiety, yet did it soon become clear that we still had a reckoning of the most heavy sort to pay for his crime, and that our sturdy little ship was indeed now accursed.
The wind was good, if strong sometimes beyond our needs, and the sky was fair as we made our way down the coast. But we were still some distance north of the mouth of the Zaire when we had an omen of an ill-fated journey, for at the noon hour one day we came across a fish, and no one knew what fish it might be. It was like a whale of no great bigness, somber-looking and evil-countenanced, that frightened away all the other fish that traveled with the ship. It stayed with us all day, and the next it was still there, and it left us not at all, but stayed in front of the vessel throwing up great spurts of water, and peering at us from its small baleful eyes.
Then a dry sour wind did come from the south, very hard, like water rushing down a gulley, or like a river of air coursing fierce through the air. This wind made us all most impatient with one another, as though it excited a morbid action in our veins. And then there were flashes of lightning above us, but no rain, only a greater and greater dryness.
The Portugals were all much alarmed by that, as was I, for we had only rarely seen lightning without rain, and always it was a boding of nothing fortunate. The air was now so hot and parched that one felt as if one could strike blue sparks by the snapping of the fingers, and that if one were to turn too quickly into the wind, one’s clothes would burst into flame.
Faleiro came to me and said, “We must be prepared to strike sail quickly, for this wind could become evil.”
“Aye,” I said. “If it shifts to westerly, I would fear it, and I pray it does not.”
We were vigilant; and still the wind came out of the south, hotter and harder, standing us stock-still in our track. We were well out to sea now, with the coast only a thin faint line. There was much praying aboard the Infanta Beatrix, the men dropping to their knees at every slight change in the intensity of the air, and crossing themselves and doing their game with their beads. I also was no stranger to prayer at that time, and I saw even the vile Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues at his devotions. I looked to him as if to say, “You see? The demons of Loango are searching for the one who did profane the dead!” But he would not meet my gaze at all, and shifted guiltily away. I think he feared I would denounce him to Faleiro, and have him thrown overboard as a Jonas in our midst. In truth the idea did cross my mind. And also it crossed my mind that Rodrigues might forestall such a move on my part by slaying me; so I did not sleep all that night, and kept my weapon close beside me in case he came creeping like an assassin.
Another thing that I considered, but only briefly, was that I might be the root and cause of this terrible wind. For was I not carrying a little witchcraft statue that Dona Teresa had made for me, and did I not, from habit, rub it from time to time, which was a kind of veneration? I thought that might have incurred upon me the anger of God, that I should be praying to a heathen deity, and invoking a lust-charm. Once again, as I stood by the rail of the ship, I contemplated throwing my little Teresa-mokisso into the water, to spare us from the menace of the sea. But I could not do it. The thing was precious for having come from her hand, and summoned to my mind all the passionate hours we had spent entwined in one another’s arms. To cast it overboard was to cast Dona Teresa overboard: I could not. She held me in her unbreakable grasp.
And had I not already made voyages with this idol by my side, and were we wrecked then? If I were to be punished for idolatry, surely it would long since have happened. So I kept the carving by me, and prayed that I was not thereby taking upon myself the guilt for the death of others.
And the wind rose and rose and rose, and the air grew yet more dry and hot, and then befell what we had all feared, for it shifted and blew out of the west, and drove us willy-nilly across a wild and lurching sea toward the unknown coast. In this violent veering our sails bellied out like the cheeks of Boreas, so that we thought the fabric might not hold, and began to lower them. But before we could, the strong wind ripped the mainsail off its yard. When we saw that we had lost our sail, we all ran to take in the foresail, before it be stripped also. Now the waves which bore down from the west and those which mounted up in the east so swamped us that each time she rocked we thought the ship was going to the bottom; but yet we preferred to risk the waves striking the ship athwart to being left without any sails.