In the last hours of darkness there were many tears, and signs of contrition and repentance for sins. I heard them at their litanies and rituals, and asking for God’s mercy, which I also did in my own English words. Some waved crucifixes on high, or pictures of the Virgin, and in great weeping asked her to save their souls, for they thought their lives were doomed. But by first light we saw there was some hope. We found the ship’s ropes, and out of the planking of the deck commenced the construction of some small rafts, a task that took us less time than I thought it would. Now the storm was gone away, and the day was hot and fair. What was most sad was that the ship was burst open, and some of the vast elephanto teeth were strewn upon the shoal like match-sticks, and our fine fabrics and other good articles of trade; and the rest of the cargo was in the water, beyond all salvaging. Yet were we still alive, most of us, and for that we gave thanks.
When the rafts were built, Faleiro looked to me and said, “Well, Piloto, and can you lead us to shore?”
“I will do my best,” said I. “Come, let us take the tide while it is running high, and leave this place at once.”
It was agreed that I was to ride in the longboat, since that I was the pilot and must not be lost. Faleiro would command one raft, and Pinto Cabral another, and the third, that was the largest, would be led by a man named Duarte Figueira, who had shown great coolness and strength in the wreck.
The others drew lots, for who was to have the safety of the longboat. Nine were chosen, and they did rejoice greatly, with a kind of crazy jubilation. Also did we stock the boat with such things as we could rescue from the ship, weapons and ropes and tools, but not much. Of food-stores we had scarce any. The tide was now at its fullest, and the shoal was altogether submerged, which freed the rafts and boats, and let us get away: and a good thing, too, for at that moment a great wave came up, and split the ruined Infanta Beatrix in sunder, so that the two halves of her fell off and were swiftly carried down, leaving only some part of her hull that was impaled on the rocks.
At the last moment there occurred something that would return to trouble me sorely in after times. For the wave did sweep Cabral’s raft close alongside our longboat, and suddenly Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, that had a place on the raft, did stand up, looking like a madman with that purple mark of his ablaze on his face, and cried out that he did not intend to die in an uncovered raft that was at the mercy of the sea.
I saw him making ready to jump into the longboat, which was overfull as it was.
“Nay, you may not!” I shouted. “You will swamp us!”
But he was already in mid-leap. We could not have him with us, for we would all be lost. Though Caldeira de Rodrigues was a man of slight build, he carried a sack in his arms, doubtless containing things that in his greed he had saved from the ship, and from the look of his effort it was of great weight. His lunatic leaping would up-end us for sure.
So I did not hesitate. It was no mark of my dislike of him, that which I did: I would have done the same had it been Cabral, or Faleiro, or anyone else, for we could not afford the loss of the longboat. I seized the handle of my oar, and as he sprang through the air I rammed him hard in the belly with it, and thrust him back toward the raft.
He hung in mid-air for a moment like one suspended by a rope, which was a fate I think he richly deserved. His eyes were round with amaze, his mouth was gaping, his birthmark flashed like a beacon-light. Then he fell and dropped beneath the waves, still clutching that sack of his. The longboat, at the same time, tipped far to the side and shipped some water, but righted itself in a moment. I looked down, and thought I saw a glimpse of Caldeira de Rodrigues, and waited for him to bob to the surface. But he did not. Mayhap my blow had knocked the wind from him and stunned him, yet even so he should have floated up in a little time. I think, though, that he held his sack in such a deathly grip that he would not release it, and the weight of it drew him downward and drowned him.
“You will suffer for that if ever we see São Paulo de Loanda again,” said a man at my elbow. “His brother is certain to have vengeance.”
With a shrug I made reply, “I will face that problem when the time for it comes. If he had reached the longboat, we would all be in the water now with him.”
“Aye,” said another. “There is truth in that.”
We waited a moment or three more, but there was no sign of him. I believe I do know what was in that fatal sack: for I suspect that when he agreed to return his stolen booty to the graveyard, he did keep some of it back without my knowing, and carried it upon the Infanta Beatrix, and had it safe in his arms during the wreck, and it was that stuff, so precious, that carried him down to his death. Well, and a proper death it was, if so be the case: for I think it was the curse on the grave-robber that brought the storm onto us, and caused the loss of our ship and all its treasure, and took the lives of some innocent men.
4
And such was the piteous end of our joyous and prosperous voyage to Loango. Now, under a cloudless and merciless sky that gave us no surcease from the terrible hammer of the tropic sun, we made our way landward in our distress. But some worse horrors even were yet awaiting us.
By God’s great mercy, the wind was out of the west, and not an evil one, and we rowed our boat and poled our rafts in brisk order. Soon the shore was clear in view. From the look of it, and my memory of the coast as we went northward, we were perhaps midway between Loango and the mouth of the Zaire, and how we ever would get back to São Paulo de Loanda I did not know. But I gave that question little heed: sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.
Though we managed to remain in close formation most of the journey, the raft commanded by Duarte Figueira veered somewhat to the northward as we neared the land, and, try as he might, he could not make headway back nigh to us. At the time that seemed of little consequence, for we thought we could reunite on the shore: but in fact that separation of his raft from us led to a sore and tragic calamity in a little while.
The current now ran swiftly north-easterly, and our rowing and poling were no longer of avail. We were simply swept up and carried toward the shore, and had no say in our going, and merely prayed that we would not be cast up on some fanged rocks. Nor did that befall us, for when we were close we saw that the shore here was flat and sandy, with a good many little spits and islands and peninsulas of low stature, the product of some inner river, much like the isle of Loanda in the harbor of São Paulo de Loanda. So we glided to an easy landing, the longboat and Faleiro’s raft and Cabral's at one such spit, and Figueira’s at another, with perhaps three hundred yards of open water separating him from us. We unloaded our pitiful little goods, and cried out to them, “Come over! Let us all be together!” But when they attempted to pole their raft to our place, they could not achieve it: the water was too shallow, and the pole became mired as it were in a quicksand. And when they tried to come about to us from the landward end, it was the same thing. The landward side of their spit was all muck, and they could not pass.
So there we were in two parties, come to land on a pair of sandy spits that jutted out like the two prongs of the letter V from the true shore, with shallow open water between them, and impassable swamp at the inner end. Well, and we could rest awhile, I thought, and then return to our rowing, and move on along the coast to some more hospitable place.
Meanwhile we foraged on our little spit for anything that might be useful to us, for we had salvaged not much in the way of edible stuffs from the wreck. Some flagons of wine, a bit of cheese, some quince jelly, some waterlogged bread: that was about the whole of it, and it would not last two days.