Those who were not throwing up every time they turned around would gnaw on hard biscuits and dried fish when fear did not prevent them from eating or, just as likely, an attack of nausea prompted by the nausea of others nearby. The sand clock had gotten damp and the hours went by unmarked because no one sang them out, nor were the chanteys heard that in good weather the chorus of sailors would bellow out while raising the sails.
Rise — my hearties
God grant us — help
we’re here — to serve
to keep — the faith
the Christian — faith
to flog — the pagans
and spite — the Saracens.
At night, with the storm clouds shutting us in, one could see nothing at all, and in no way did the glow of my love for her shed any light for me. So dark was the darkness that not even our hands were visible. We were even more afraid in that darkness when, with the storm abating somewhat, the rolling and pitching would seem to slacken, as if the ship were beginning a mournful dance of death. Totally blind on those blind nights, lacking both moon and stars, with the ship’s lamp extinguished by the storm and the total darkness permitting our fancies to dwell on lands and beings that, so it was said, peopled the sea, we imagined ourselves approaching the islands of no return, we believed we were about to bump into fish as huge as islands, or phantom ships, all-engulfing waterspouts, enormous octopuses, fantastic amphibious beings whose bizarre tentacles would snatch sailors off the deck and take them down to the deep of the ocean.… Amid those wonders, those monsters, I saw myself rescuing her! … Those who managed to conquer their dread, despite their fear of navigating without the orientation of the stars, without sails, completely given over to the will of the tempest, would let their imaginations sail away to the marvelous islands of the Antilles, the Seven Cities, Saint Brendan’s Isle, the Amazon, all of them filled with marvels and riches, and there were even those who wondered about the Fountain of Youth, believing it to be on the land closest to hand.… Our voices, never too loud, went back and forth through the hold without our being able to distinguish who brought up and described each marvel, each monster, and there was a moment when we all together (even I, so different from the others by reason of my attachment to her) formed something like a single body unembarrassed by its own excretions and above which the hours, closing in over it, hovered with a gray tone identical to no and yes, to now and always and never….
The gale had held on for eight eternal days when the cow died. It seemed as though its death were sufficient to restore good weather. Without its continual moaning, the hours seemed to thaw out, and we returned to a situation in the hold that somewhat resembled the way it was in the beginning, when it had first received us with its greasy planks and the shameless rats jumping about here and there; and the temperature awakened, too, rising so high that it made life in the hold unbearable.… The old sailors in charge of the kitchen butchered the cow, with the help of the barber, the only one of the younger sailors not pressed into checking on the condition of the ship. Part of the animal was boiled in the cauldrons and part they salted down and put out in the sun to dry, but all of it, now silent and milkless, ended up in the bellies of the crew and the hungriest passengers.
Resuming our progress was not difficult, by dint of working the ship. Thanks to the fact that the tempest had never wakened to its whole fury, we had managed to keep our anchors, the tackle, the sails, and all the small boats.
The weather being fair as far as the Tropic of Cancer, it was very favorable to us from there on, which gave us much joy, since we were in dire need of water, so much so that we were now rationed to four gills a day. The thirst was even hurting our eyes; if the men had had any need of tears during this time in order to relieve their despair, as in the middle of the storm, they would have found none at all, their eyes being altogether dry from such thirst. On four gills a day and a diet of salt meat, how would even the little water necessary for shedding tears ever reach the eyes? Not a single drop of water did they get.…
And it was then that one of the strongest and most robust sailors took sick, his gums so swelled up it was impossible to see his teeth. The barber having bled them, a black liquid was all that came out. Once bled, the swelling went down, but in a few days the sailor was left without a tooth, not a single molar or eyetooth. He groaned aloud, at the top of his voice, “Four molars I used to have there, for in all my life I never had a tooth or grinder pulled nor has any fallen out or been eaten away by abscess or decay!”
His complaint merely concealed another that was more gloomy. He already knew the outcome of his illness, for he had the scurvy. Yet to come was the awful swelling of his limbs amid the most horrible pain, the barber bleeding them again and removing some fetid liquid, and then, inexorably, death.
Approaching Barbuda, an English corsair tried to give chase, but as soon as he saw he had no advantage over us, he drew off. We sought to give chase then ourselves, but unable to reach him, we returned to our course.
We passed within sight of Puerto Rico, a pleasant island garnished with leafy trees and underbrush right up to the peaks of its mountains. We also saw the island of Hispaniola and I understood, with panic and grief — even though I also longed for it — that we were on the verge of reaching our destination.
Thirty-five days after weighing anchor, on June 7, 1666, without having lost a man on the voyage (the man sick with scurvy and now toothless, with both arms swollen and bled, was yet alive), we dropped anchor off the island of Tortuga.
TWO
My arrival on the island of Tortuga was cloaked in a veil that clung wantonly to my body and my soul, numbing me to everything, and that I would do no wrong to call disillusionment. So hastily did they get those of us who were indentured to the Company on deck, and loaded down with bundles, like true ants, that there was no time to get an idea of the island from there, nothing could I see of the place to which I had come.
The moment we set foot on dry land, a foreman awaited who hurriedly divided us into fast-moving, orderly squads under the command of youths of our own age, although self-assured colonists of Tortuga already (or so they seemed to me then, but later on I realized that if they were doing work of that sort, it was only because they were so slow to catch on), who led us immediately to the places where we would sleep and eat: huge sheds that imitated the structures of the natives in having no paint or decoration, nor any furniture, and that benumbed my eyes like empty hulks of gloomy barrenness in which I was unable to see any alleviating quality, roasting me with a heat I thought inexplicable and that only with the passing of time would I accept as the natural temperature, though always unbearable and all the more accentuated by the anguish of not knowing where she had ended up (and which this kind of climate made all the worse), whether in some nearby shed or, something I sensed and feared, on some other island, a likelihood I was not long in substantiating because I did not see her anywhere. I was not certain then if I really wanted to have reached Tortuga or if I wanted the voyage never to end. I had been defending myself against the pains of love by seeing her, and the perfect picture of unhappiness consisted in seeing her no longer.