Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [203]
For the moment, Columbus still had to neutralize the mutineers led by the Porras brothers, who had little appreciation for Méndez’s heroics. To bring them around, he dispatched two representatives—Ferdinand described them only as “respected persons”—considered friendly to both parties; they came bearing a gift in the form of the mouthwatering salt pork that Ovando had sent to Columbus. Captain Porras warily conferred with the two envoys by himself, fearing that they “brought an offer of a general pardon that his men might be persuaded to accept.” Nothing, not even Porras, could keep them from learning about the arrival of the caravel and its promise of a safe return to Spain, and, eventually, of Columbus’s offer of clemency.
The mutineers made a counteroffer: if given another ship all their own, they would leave. Failing that, they might consider leaving if they were guaranteed half the space on the little caravel Ovando had sent. And they wanted access to Columbus’s stores, because they had lost all of theirs. Becoming impatient, Columbus’s envoys explained why these demands were “unreasonable and unacceptable,” whereupon Porras’s men declared that if they were not willingly given what they wanted, they would seize it. With that, they turned their backs on the envoys, and the promise of a peaceful resolution. They went back to their followers, decrying Columbus as a “cruel and vengeful man,” and they told the others not to be afraid, they had friends at court who would rally to their side against the Admiral. (Ferdinand Columbus reflected on Roldán’s recent rebellion: “And see how well their enterprise turned out; assuredly it would be the same with them”—that is, with Porras’s followers.)
Porras devised an argument to defeat the powerful presence of the caravel and Méndez’s return. Do not believe your eyes, he told them. The ship was not real. It was merely, as Ferdinand recalled, a “phantasm conjured up by the magic arts of which the Admiral was a master,” an image evoking Columbus’s striking fear into the Indians by appearing to conjure a menacing lunar eclipse. “Clearly, a real caravel would not have left so soon, with so little dealing between its crew and the Admiral’s men.” If it had been real, “the Admiral and his brother would have sailed away in it.”
Columbus’s behavior these past eleven months invited this kind of wild speculation. Confined to his cabin, grumbling orders, leading the Indians to believe that he controlled the heavens, he acquired the aura of a man possessed if not by supernatural skills then by the gifts of prophecy and revelation. Spain had come to regard him as the discoverer of new lands, but he believed himself an instrument of divine revelation. Others had come to accept that Columbus was making history, but he wanted to see his deeds emblazoned in Holy Scripture, glittering with fire, and, if need be, soaked in blood. Other explorers, especially those seeking to usurp him, wrote on water, while his accomplishments would stand as monuments, or so he believed. He created history as he went, as if time and place were two aspects of the same entity that he had chased for twelve years, guided by Marco Polo, inspired by the Bible, and driven by his lust for gold.
If not wholly convincing, Porras’s crude deception caused the mutineers to doubt what they could plainly see. So he strengthened the mutineers’ resolve, and prepared them to lay siege to all the ships, confiscate their contents, and even take the Admiral prisoner. Emboldened, they occupied an Indian village called Maima, close to the beached ships, to prepare an assault. As he had in similar situations, Columbus dispatched his brother Bartholomew “to bring them to their senses with soft words,” reinforced by fifty armed loyalists in waiting to repel an attack, if it materialized. On May 17, the Adelantado positioned himself on a hilltop “a crossbow shot” from the village and charged the two aides who had negotiated unsuccessfully with Porras to try again. The mutineers refused even to speak to the representatives.