And then I remembered that I was only a penniless man of Essex who wanted nothing more than a wife and a farm, and that I had come to this strange place to take from the Spaniards and the Portugals the gold they in turn had taken from the Indians. And I laughed at my own swollen grandeurs and set about mending a sail, which was my task for that day.
We ran along the coast of Brazil until we came to Ilha Grande, southward of the Line. This is a fine lofty island most green and lavish with trees. We put in on the mainland side and haled our ships on shore, and washed them and shoveled out the ballast so we might scrub the bilges, a foul job but a needful one. We refreshed ourselves and took in fresh water. No inhabitants did we see in this part of the island, but it is very fruitful. When we had been there some twelve days there came in a little pinnace heading south, to water and to get some refreshments. We surprised it in our harbor and took it prisoner, and brought from it a Portugal merchant, who seemed in fear for his life.
Abraham Cocke sent for me and said, “You speak the Portuguese tongue. Ask him when the treasure-ships come.”
Now such Portuguese as I knew had years of rust upon it, and this Portugal was in such terror he all but beshit his pants and he chattered in the teeth when he tried to speak. So our conversation was like that of blind men discussing whether the sky be red or green. But the words returned to me, enough to comfort him that he would not be slain by us, if only he dealt honestly with us. Even then he only shivered and prayed and named all the saints a hundred times each.
“He is out of his wits in fright,” I told Cocke.
The captain nodded his head. “It is because he knows what would happen if matters were the other way round, and one Englishman were taken by a ship of Portugals. Tell him we gave up burning Papists long ago, and want only information from him, not his soul.”
I spoke as I could and finally the man grew calm and said two treasure-ships would leave Buenos Aires within two months to sail to Bahia, near this Ilha Grande. He also said without being asked that on the other side of this island lived a degradado, a banished man, with a plantation full of fruits that would nourish us. Since our bread and our victuals were almost all spent, we allowed the Portugal to lead us there. And indeed we found the plantation and its owner, and took from him great stores of plantains, and a few hogs and hens and other things.
Captain Cocke now divided our party, putting some of the men of the Dolphin aboard our May-Morning, and leaving the Dolphin behind at Ilha Grande while the rest of us went south to meet the treasure-ships at the Rio de la Plata. That seemed foolish generalship to me at the time, as had so many other of Cocke’s doings. We had few enough men as it was, and to split our number was hard to understand. I have had more than twenty years to reflect on that, and still I have no answer to the mystery, and I know I never shall. What became of the Dolphin and her men I also do not know, though I think they stayed only a few days more at Ilha Grande and went home to England. At any rate we filled our hold with the degradado’s plantains and departed from his island. Cocke spoke long and loudly of the gold that soon would replace the plantains belowdecks. When you looked at his face—which was not easy, since that his eyes went in different ways and would not meet yours—you saw in it a glow of avarice, as if he were staring at mountains of doubloons. So it was; yet there is a good old English saying, “A crowing cock lays no eggs,” and thus it was with this our good Cocke. For in my life I saw as many cock’s eggs as I did doubloons out of that voyage.
3
A long bleak time we had of it going down that fertile coast.
The third night, or the fourth, there was such a strong south-easterly wind and squalls that it threw us awry, and we sought a sheltered spot to anchor in. But where we came to shore there were a dozen Indians waiting. They were dark brown and naked, and had no covering for their private parts, and they carried bows and arrows in their hands.
They all came with determination toward our boat. Nicholas Parker, the second mate, made a sign to them to put down their bows, and they held them down. But he could not speak to them or make himself understood in any other way because of the waves which were breaking on the shore. He merely threw them some baubles and a little cap, which pleased them, and one of them threw him a hat of large feathers with a small crown of red and gray feathers, like a parrot’s. I think they perceived that we were not Portugals and therefore would not harm them.
These Indians had holes in their lower lips and a bone in them as broad as the knuckles of a hand and as thick as a cotton spindle and sharp at one end like a bodkin. Some were covered in a motley way with stripes of paint of a bluish black. We made gestures to them and they to us, and then four or five girls appeared out of the woods. They were very young and most pretty, especially to men who had not touched soft skin in many months. They had abundant long hair down their backs, and their private parts (of which they made no privacy) were tightly knit and almost without hair, and so comely that many women in our country would be ashamed, if they saw such perfection, that theirs were not equally perfect. “I will buy one or two maidens from them,” said Nicholas Parker, laughing broadly, and we encouraged him in this, for these girls were well made and rounded. “What price will they have? Something shiny, I think,” he said.
But then the Devil took a hand in the dealings. A sailor from Portsmouth, a huge clumsy lout or ox, chose to stumble forward to put his hands on one of the Indian maids. That was bad enough; but as he lumbered toward her a vine in the sand caught his boot and he fell headlong. His musket began to fly from his hand. He seized it as he dropped, but such was his position that it appeared to the timid Indians that he was getting ready to fire. They fled in an instant and favored us with a shower of arrows from afar, which did no harm but put an end to our parley, and we purchased no tender maidens that day or any other. After that we did not find Indians, or for that matter any good harbors, nor did we see hide nor hair of the Spanish treasure-ships out of Buenos Aires, though we tacked back and forth in the sea-road searching for them. Abraham Cocke began to look coldly upon me, as if he thought I had let the Portugal merchant beguile me with lies, or had misunderstood his language. And so we were six-and-thirty dreary days of it until we came to the Isle of Lobos Marinos, which is in the mouth of the Rio de la Plata.
This island is half a mile long, and has no fresh water, but abounds with seals and a larger animal, a sort of sea-horse. There were so many of these creatures that our light horseman could not push through them to the shore unless we beat at them with our oars: and the island is covered with them. Upon these seals we lived some thirty days, lying up and down in the river, and were in great distress of victuals apart from that meat. Then we determined to run up to Buenos Aires, and with our light horseman to capture one of the pinnaces that waited at that town. But, being so high up the river as the town, we were struck by a mighty storm at south-west, which drove us back again, and we were fain to take refuge at the Isla Verde—that is, the green island— which is in the mouth of the river on the north side.