Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [193]
With their most pressing needs provided for, Columbus and his men convened repeatedly to discuss their return to Spain. No ship was likely to appear on the horizon to carry them away, and they lacked the means to build a new vessel or to repair the wrecks sheltering them. A raft, or juryrigged ship, would not suffice, not with the weather and winds and currents they had to face on the return journey. “We had neither the implements nor the artisans needed for the task.”
Columbus decided to send messengers back to Hispaniola with an urgent request for a rescue ship with provisions and ammunition. The bearers of that news would have to contend with Columbus’s nemesis, Nicolás de Ovando, who would no doubt be pleased to learn that the Admiral of the Ocean Sea was stranded on Jamaica, desperate and powerless, but the castaways had no other choice but to seek help; they could not go on trading with the Indians indefinitely.
For now, the bay enclosed and protected them. The days offered reassuring breezes, calm seas, and radiant vistas. The nights revealed the immensity of the heavens, and their suspension in the sea of infinity. Like all sailors, they gazed on the flickering stars and the moon’s spectral countenance, and traced the trajectory of the occasional meteor streaking across the night sky. Beyond the harbor, moonlight glistened across the swell. The celestial spectacle revealed their insignificance in the scheme of things; God ordained their place, and Columbus urged them toward their homeland, more distant than ever. They had food for now, but if the Indians became distracted or hostile, the shipwrecked Spaniards faced the prospect of starvation on the pristine sands of a beach found on no map. Their bleached bones might be discovered a hundred years later, or never; they and their little expedition to the edge of nowhere would be memorialized, celebrated by partisans and condemned by rivals, and soon forgotten. Only by the trick of survival could they fend off the inevitable for a while, and live out the span of years left to them.
“None of my people realize the danger of our situation,” Columbus confided to his chief clerk, Diego Méndez de Segura. “We are very few, these savage Indians are very many, and we cannot be certain that their mood will not change. One day, when the mood strikes them, they may come and burn us here in these two ships.” With their straw roofs, the structures would instantly catch fire “and roast us alive.”
Columbus proposed sending “someone”—Méndez knew whom the Admiral meant—to make the risky crossing to Hispaniola in a canoe, purchase a ship, return to Jamaica in her, and rescue them all. The dutiful Méndez envisioned playing a heroic role in this assignment; he could emerge as the savior of Columbus and the voyage. Méndez aired his doubts, as Columbus listened patiently, and “firmly persuaded me that I was the man to undertake the voyage.”
Méndez worried that the other men resented him because “Your Lordship entrusts all the most honorable responsibilities to me.” He suggested that Columbus assemble his men to see if anyone else would undertake it—which Méndez doubted—“and if they all hold back, as they will, I shall risk my life once more in your service.”
When Columbus explained the mission to the others, no one came forward to offer his services and his life, and several were overheard to say that crossing forty leagues of open ocean in rough weather