Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [183]
As if these terrors were not sufficient to defeat the fleet, a “waterspout”—Ferdinand’s term for a small tornado—appeared on December 13, churning a deadly path between two ships. Catching sight of the funnel from the heaving deck of his ship, Ferdinand noted how “it raises the water up in a column thicker than a water butt, twisting it about like a whirlwind.” The only defense was prayer: “Had the sailors not dissolved it by reciting the Gospel according to St. John, it would surely have swamped anything it struck.”
As the tempest blew without respite, Vizcaína disappeared in the mist, forever, it was feared, until she reappeared “after three very dark and dangerous days, during which time she had lost her boat and once anchored near land, but had to cut her cable.” She was safe, for now.
The hurricane had relented, but from within the bowels of her hull, the snakelike shipworms were slowly destroying her.
Even a spell of calm weather, when it finally came “after the fleet had been half destroyed by the battering storm,” brought a new menace. A swirl of shadows beneath the rippling surface of the sea coalesced into a school of sharks—probably specimens of the Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi). Los tiburones surrounded the ships and terrorized the superstitious sailors, who considered them the vultures of the sea and portents of death.
“These beasts seize a person’s leg or arm with their teeth and cut it off as clean as with a knife because they have two rows of saw-like teeth,” Ferdinand noted in revulsion. The sailors killed as many of the streamlined predators as possible, yet “they still followed us by making turns in the water.” He was referring to what is now known as a shark threat display, exhibited by sharks sensing danger. When making the display, they exaggerate their usual movements. The gray reef shark, for instance, plunges its rigid fins downward, arches its back, and lashes its tail to the side, swimming in a pattern resembling a figure eight. Sharks behaving in this manner are preparing either to strike or flee.
So ravenous were these sharks, Ferdinand recalled, that they ate carrion, and “one can catch them by simply attaching a piece of red cloth to the hook.” Their voracious greed exceeded his nightmares. “Out of one shark’s belly I saw a turtle taken that afterward lived on the ship.” Another slain shark yielded an entire shark’s head previously discarded by the men “because the head, unlike the rest of the body, is not good to eat.” Yet the shark had devoured it. Even though the slithering monsters repelled the men, “all did the shark the honor of eating it, for by that time we had been over eight months at sea and had consumed all the meat and fish that we had brought from Spain.” The blood, the slime, the foam, the stench, the ships rolling and pitching on the heaving seas: it made a man ravenous and nauseous at the same time. What little food they had caused them to retch in disgust. “What with the heat and the dampness even the biscuit was so full of worms that, God help me, I saw many wait until nightfall to eat the porridge made of it so as not to see the worms; others were so used to eating them that they did not bother to pick them out, for they might have lost their supper by being so fastidious.”
Deliverance came on December 17, when the fleet reached Puerto Gordo, Panama. “In this harbor, resembling a great channel, we rested for three days.”
The men staggered ashore, weak from the ordeal, to gaze at a new marvel. “The people here lived in the tops of trees, like birds; their cabins or huts were built over frames of poles placed across branches.” The men could not explain the phenomenon, and decided it was a response