The Moor's Account (24 page)

T
HE BEACH WAS NARROW
and ended in a small dune that was covered with bright green palmetto, hiding whatever lay on the other side. No Indian trail was visible, nor any dugouts. We would have to walk over the dune to look for water. The argument about the gunwales had deepened Narváez's dislike for Dorantes and Castillo, so he chose two different captains for this mission: Tellez and Peñaloza. Everyone else was to remain on the shore.

I gathered some firewood to toast the last of the corn and walked the shoreline looking for crabs or oysters, but could not find any. The men had scattered into smaller groups on the beach, quietly waiting for the captains to return. The only sound came from the rattling of the rafts on the waves; even the herons and egrets we had grown used to seeing in these parts were gone. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sky was darkening steadily by the time Tellez returned. He was a slight man, with narrow shoulders and a handsome face. When he spoke, he kept his eyes on the ground, as if embarrassed by the sound of his own voice. Don Pánfilo, he said, I did not find a river.

Nothing?

No, not even a spring.

Narváez pursed his lips in a way that suggested he had once again been disappointed by one of his lieutenants. But Peñaloza came back from the other side of the beach soon after, bearing the same news. No river.

The panic that gripped our company was so sudden and so strong I felt as if I could touch it. How would we survive without water? The ration master, unable to bear the thirst any longer, filled up his flask with seawater and, despite warnings from the more experienced soldiers, drank all of it at once. With a sigh of relief, he lay on the beach and closed his eyes. Not an hour later, while the commissary was taking the confession
of a dying man, the ration master began to convulse. His arms and legs seemed to acquire a life of their own, kicking up the sand in all directions. There was no expression in his eyes and his mouth was white with foam. The friars tried to comfort him by holding down his limbs, but this did nothing to stop his seizures. He looked for all the world like a man possessed by a demon. Peace came to him only when his soul left his body.

When we carried the ration master to the shallow grave that had been dug for him, I noticed that he still had, hanging from his belt, the native hatchet he had bartered me for some water. Now the ration master was gone, and so was the poor horse the barter had helped. The elders teach us: we all belong to God, and to Him we return. I knew that I was not supposed to rebel against the will of God. Yet the death of the ration master, so sudden and so brutal, stoked my anger. Had I built a raft and sailed this far away from La Florida only to die on a barren island? Had I been forsaken?

Then, quite suddenly, the gray clouds that had followed us all day rumbled with the sound of thunder and the wind picked up, blowing through the beach at furious speed. A good wind could not be wasted—it was a chance to travel a greater distance toward the port—so we ran to the rafts and hoisted the anchors. The air was thick with the smell of our fear. As we moved away from the shore, flashes of thunder interrupted the eternity of darkness around us. We turned our faces up to the heavens and when at last it began to rain, we opened our mouths to catch the raindrops. Like beggars, we held up every jar, every bucket, every cooking pot we had toward the skies. We had waited so long for this mercy.

W
E SAILED FOR ANOTHER WEEK
, keeping the continent in our sight as best as we could manage, but seeing no sign of a river. If we could not be certain to find water, we dared not risk another landing, even though our supplies were dwindling. But early one morning, a dozen Indian fishermen in painted dugouts, much like those Narváez had broken up, approached us. They rowed in a wide circle around our rafts, taking stock of our pitiful condition and our meager possessions. We could see no food or water in their canoes, but in our state of utter exhaustion the Indians seemed to us more like guardian angels than men of flesh and blood. We followed them to the continent.

Upon landing, Narváez produced two necklaces made with blue
beads, handing each one slowly and ceremoniously to the fishermen. The Indians were surprised by the gift and delighted by the clattering sound the beads made when the necklaces were slung together. His gift earned Narváez an invitation to the Indians' village, but since some of the men were too sick to walk and others unwilling to trust the Indians, only a small party of healthy men—no more than fifty or sixty of us—went with him.

We marched behind Narváez down a narrow path that cut straight through the green wilderness like a fresh scar. It led to a village of a dozen dwellings, arranged around an earthen mound of the kind we had seen in Apalache. Three boys were racing each other on stilts while their friends urged them to go faster, faster, faster; some women were spreading red paint over a deerskin stretched upon a triangular frame; and two young girls were taking turns pounding something in a mortar. The air smelled of fish and smoke, a combination that, in our state of deprivation, was a particular torment. As we proceeded to the village square, the women and children stopped what they were doing and watched us. The cacique, an old man with heavy-lidded eyes and droopy earlobes, was waiting for us, his sentinels having given him advance notice of our arrival. He wore a cloak of marten and ermine skin, whose front ends he held in his hands, so that they would not drag on the ground. Armed with plumed lances, his deputies appraised us from where they stood.

Head bowed, Narváez offered the cacique some bells and a long string of yellow beads. The chief accepted the items with a nod, then took off his magnificent fur cloak and gave it to Narváez, who immediately wrapped himself in it. The village, so still and quiet for a moment, returned to life. The children resumed their play, the women went back to grinding corn, the men invited us to sit. Up in the trees, turtledoves cooed to one another. Pablo, Narváez's prisoner and interpreter, was asked to come forward. From him, we learned that this cacique's name was Echogan and that he ruled over this village and two others some distance away along the coast. In reply, Narváez told Echogan that he was the emissary of a powerful king, more powerful than anyone here could imagine. He had come to this land as a friend, he said, to teach the Indians all that he and his Christian brothers knew, but for now he was looking for his comrades, from whom he had been separated. Have you seen men who look like us in these parts? he asked.

No, Echogan replied. Have you lost some of your brothers?

They are waiting for us on our ships. Perhaps you have seen their ships sail nearby?

No. The cacique was quiet for a while. Then, his eyes darting from Narváez to the lieutenants standing behind, he asked: And your powerful king, will he come to your aid?

To admit that his powerful king had no idea where he was would have made Narváez look insignificant, so he chose to lie. Surely, he said. As soon as he hears from us.

Narváez then asked the cacique about any rivers nearby; Echogan told him that a few leagues west of the village was a wide river, which in his language was called the Great River. This news was a great comfort to all of us, for what other great river could there be in these parts but the Río de las Palmas? We were finally in the vicinity of Pánuco.

The cacique offered us great quantities of fish and squash, and a drink made from fermented fruit. To the men who had remained on the beach, he sent baskets of victuals. In all ways, he was a generous host, honoring us with his presence until sundown, when visitors from a nearby tribe arrived to see him and together they retired into their temple for the rest of the evening.

Now that we were left alone, we broke up into smaller groups, warming up by the side of the campfires. The thought that we would soon reach the port made the men fantasize about everything they would do once we arrived there. Diego said he wanted to take a hot bath. Imagine the sensation of soap against your skin, he said. Cabeza de Vaca said he would settle for some paper and ink, so that he could write to his wife. But Dorantes wanted to hear good music. All the fiddles in our company, including the friar's, had been stripped of their strings, which had been used to tie the sails. He missed music the most, he said. Castillo was about to say something too, when a rock landed on his hand.

Before I could turn to look for the source of the projectile, another one landed on my head. The pain was so sharp that it took the air out of my lungs and numbed any other feeling; I fell on my knees and covered my head with my hands. A third rock landed on our campfire, sending bright sparks high up in the air. As I shot to my legs to look for cover, the notary leveled his musket and fired. One of our Indian hosts fell to the ground, clutching his leg and screaming. Stunned by the sound and the smoke, the others retreated.

Narváez came out of the lodge the Indian chief had given him for the
night. What happened? he asked. The Indians turned against him now, hurling rocks at him. To the rafts, he screamed.

We ran back to the shore under a shower of stones. Our sudden return alarmed those who had remained on the beach and they quickly set up a line of defense, but we were in very poor shape. The horses, which had given us such an advantage at the Battle of the Río Oscuro, were gone now and there was little ammunition left for the five muskets we still had. Many of us suffered injuries: Narváez was bleeding from the forehead, Cabeza de Vaca was nursing a sprained elbow, one of the carpenters had a broken leg, and I could feel a large lump throbbing on my head. To make matters worse, several men were missing, including two from the Dorantes contingent. The Indians returned twice that night, to hurl rocks or shoot arrows at us and the musketeers and crossbowmen held them back as best they could. All night long, we waited for the missing men, but they did not return.

We were forced to leave at first light, rowing away from the coast as fast as we could. The fate of our missing companions, the guilt we felt at leaving them behind, and the prospect of dying on the rafts weighed heavily on all of us, putting us in a quarreling mood. The men wanted to know why Echogan and his tribe, who had been so generous to us at first, had turned so suddenly and so inexplicably against us.

Perhaps we offended them, Father Anselmo said.

How, Father? Dorantes said. We did not set foot in their temple.

Do you think we did something to them? Ruíz said. No one did anything. That is just how the heathens are. Look what they did to me. He pointed to the dark socket where his left eye had been, oblivious to the role he had played in his own predicament.

Looking back on these events now, and having given them much thought and gained the perspective that can only be given by the passing of time, I have come to believe that this tribe of fishermen attacked us because they had been warned about our wickedness. The visitors we had seen at sundown must have told them what we had done on San Miguel Island: the dugouts we had destroyed, the containers we had stolen, the food we had taken. It may seem a far-fetched idea, but not as far-fetched as generous hosts turning against their guests for no reason. God, may He be glorified and exalted, tells us: God will not deal unjustly with man in aught; it is man that wrongs his own soul. Now we were back in the ocean,
drifting like tree leaves in the wind, and we dared not land anywhere for fear of encountering more Indians.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, we sailed into the mouth of a mighty river, the largest I had seen in all my life. Its flow was so powerful that we were able to drink freshwater directly from our rafts and to refill every one of our containers. Thank God, I thought. Now that the port was near, so was our salvation. But some of the men among us, perhaps having grown used to our misfortune, insisted that this river was not the Río de las Palmas and that we had been led astray. Do you see any sign of Castilian presence on the shore? they asked. But others, and this servant of God among them, insisted that there was only one way to know whether this was the right river: we would have to go upstream to look for the port.

The Indians had good reason to call this the Great River. At the point where it met the ocean, its current was still strong enough that it would be very difficult to maneuver our rafts, whose oakum had washed away and whose floors were so damaged that we could see the water in between each pair of logs. And there was, too, the risk that the five vessels would be separated or lost. This was why Dorantes called out to Narváez: Don Pánfilo, we ought to throw lines to one another.

It was a good suggestion. No matter what happened, at least the rafts would remain together. But Narváez did not reply. The sun was setting and a strong wind blew from the east, growing more intense as the light faded.

I do not believe he heard you, I said.

Dorantes cupped his small hands around his mouth, so that his voice would carry farther. Don Pánfilo!

Still, there was no reply. Cabeza de Vaca, whose raft was nearest ours, took up the request in his own way. Don Pánfilo, he said, how should we proceed across the river? What are your orders?

Narváez's eye patch gleamed in the half-light. The time for orders is past, he said at last. Each raft should try to save itself. That is what I intend to do.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then the questions and complaints started. How can you say this?

Are you forsaking us?

Traitor.

Reason with him, Father.

How are we going to cross with only these tattered sails?

Grab one of his oars!

Stop! I will have you shot.

Then there was the sound of thunder. The skies opened up and the rain fell fast, hitting us at an angle and blinding us. The wind pushed us across the mouth of the Great River and the noise of the storm, terrifying in its intensity, quickly drowned out the sound of our quarrels. Our raft would capsize, we would all die, no one would know what happened to us—such thoughts flitted through our minds even as we tied our sails and tried to keep the raft level. I can say in all honesty that each one of us wrestled with his fate that night. We prepared ourselves to die, praying to God that He forgive us our sins and grant us eternal life in heaven.