Eventually half of those of us who were left embarked in the longboat. In a few days we reached the estuary of Nicaragua, where, to our misfortune, Indians and Spaniards together attacked us, killing many of our men and forcing us to flee toward the coast of Cartagena, where L’Olonnais fell into the hands of the Indians of Darien; and what happened to him there will here be set in the mouth of Nau himself, L’Olonnais, the son of a small merchant of Sables d’Olonne, who let himself be signed up by a colonist from Martinique passing through Flanders, on a three-year contract for the West Indies, and whom he left, slavery seeming unbearable to him, by escaping with some buccaneers by whom he was beaten and mistreated and picked up by yet others who enlisted him into the Brethren of the Coast; and he led the glorious expedition to Maracaibo, only to undertake the unsuccessful story in which he lost his life, in this fashion:
We took the boat in toward shore, toward the jungle, to try hunting, since in this land there is little more to be had than what can be found in the jungle. We would attempt to discover game; and while the others were preparing for this, I left them and went on ahead for a short reconnaissance unarmed, thinking the place deserted. As I pushed along through the brush, suddenly on both sides of my path I heard a great shouting, as the savages are in the habit of doing, and they sprang toward me. I saw then that they had me surrounded, pointing their arrows at me and shooting. I exclaimed, “God help me!” and scarcely had I pronounced those words when they had me down on the ground, throwing themselves on me and poking at me with their spears. But they only wounded me in the leg, and I thought, “Thank God!” expecting that at any moment my own brave boys would be coming for me. My assailants removed all my clothing. One of them took my shirt, another my hat, a third my boots, and so on. They began to fight over me, one of them claiming he had been the first to reach me, and in this way they pushed me through the jungle down to the ocean where they had their canoes; and where I counted myself lost, as my men had not arrived. When those who had attended the canoes caught sight of me pushed along by the others, they ran to meet us, adorned with feathers as is their custom, biting their arms and forcing me to realize that they wanted to eat me. Before me stood a king with a club that is used to kill their prisoners. He made a speech and told how they had made me their slave, wanting to avenge on me the death of their friends. And when they took me toward the canoes some of them kept slapping me. They hastened then to drag their canoes out into the water, fearful that my men might be alarmed by this time, as was true enough, while others bound me hand and foot; since they were not all from the same place, each village was annoyed that they would have to return with nothing, and they argued with the ones who were keeping me. Some said they had been just as close to me as the others, and they also being eager to have a part of me, proposed to kill me immediately.
I waited for the blow, but the king who wanted to possess me said that he wished to take me home alive so that the women might look me over and have some fun at my expense, after which they would kill me, they would make their special liquor, and everyone would get together for a feast and they would dine on me conjointly. So they left it, binding me at the neck with four ropes, and forcing me to get into a canoe, which was still beached. They tied the ends of the ropes to the canoe and then dragged it into the water for the return to where their huts were. Suddenly, I realized that I was understanding the words of their savage language as if they had spoken them in my own tongue. And consequently that there would no longer be any deliverance.
Coming to land, they pushed the canoes up on the sand, where I remained as well, lying down now because of the wound in my leg. They circled around, with threats of devouring me.
In the midst of this great affliction, I remembered the glory I had once enjoyed, and I also saw before my eyes the bad luck that had been pursuing me since leaving Tortuga the last time. With my eyes damp from weeping, I began to sing the psalm “My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” which I had not sung even once since leaving childhood behind. Nearby were their women, in a field of manioc close to the sea. And I was forced to call out to them in their language, “I am your dinner, and now have I come!” and while saying these words I imagined that it was those of their sex who were to blame for the bad situation I found myself in — without knowing why I thought that.
They lit bonfires as soon as nighttime arrived, and arranged me in a hammock, my arms bound just as the hammock was bound to the poles holding it up. They hitched the ropes that went around my neck to the highest part of the tree and lay down all around me, talking and calling out, “You are my little creature, all tied up!”
At dawn everyone ran out from their villages to have a look at me, young and old. The men came with their bows and arrows, commending me to their women, and then led me away with them, some ahead, others behind me. They were singing and dancing the songs they usually do when they are about to devour someone.
In this fashion they brought me to a kind of fortification situated facing their huts; it was formed of long, heavy tree trunks, rather like a wall around a garden, and is useful against their enemies. When I entered the enclosure the women ran at me, slapping me and pulling at my beard, shouting at me in their own tongue, “In you I will take revenge for the blow that killed my friend, murdered by those who were with you!”
They led me afterward to a hut and forced me to lie down in a hammock. The women returned and went on slapping and pulling and tugging at me, telling me they were going to eat me. One woman approached with a piece of glass fixed in a bow-shaped stick, cutting off my eyelashes with that bit of glass. Then they wanted to shave off my mustaches and beard but I did not let them, until they brought some scissors left them by the Portuguese.
They began to prepare the special liquor they were to quaff after eating me. The fire was ready. They did not roast all of me whole but one part at a time, first one limb, then another … I was still alive when I saw even the children devouring parts of my body, chewing on chunks of my flesh, until the loss of blood made me lose consciousness, and my last breath left me the moment they drove a stake into my body as a spit for roasting torso and head together. I did not feel the fire. I do not know how the ceremony ended in which the Indians of Darien celebrated the feast provided by my body.
THIRTEEN
During our unsuccessful expedition there was a moment when, during the night, the memories with which le Nègre Miel peopled the darkness of his blindness began to rise up out of the nothingness.
I saw a lioness springing upon an antelope and devouring it. I saw the ostriches running over the savannah, the dense plantings breaking through the gray earth, the odd way they dressed their men and women, the way they painted their bodies and faces with many colors. I saw animals I do not know how to put names to, huge and strange and not always fearful. I did not know right away that these were le Nègre Miel’s memories, but as they kept recurring and became purified through the years I gradually realized that they were not mine, that inscribed within me, carefully assembled, as in a paradise, were the recollections of le Nègre Miel.
Even now, in that blindness which the passage of the centuries has presented me with, and which I am so grateful for, le Nègre Miel goes on making his way around that valley where the earth reaches its perfection, showing it to me as more perfect every day, as if it gets better and better the oftener it finds itself being repeated. The men, the women have now disappeared from those pictures. Only plants and animals reside there, plus that beautiful beast we call the earth, shining in the most miraculous cloud formations, its rivers, its mountains, the rustling of a breeze whispering nobly, continually …