Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [52]
Even with these reassurances, the Indians remained fearful, and made their best effort to seduce Columbus, their defender, with an irresistible offering. One of Guacanagarí’s men informed Columbus that the king had “ordered to be made a statue of pure gold as large as the Admiral himself.” What could be more impressive, or more calculated to appeal to Columbus’s vanity than this priceless effigy? They promised it would be ready for delivery in only ten days.
Friday dawned fair, with a light wind, and Columbus made a determined effort to depart, deploying nimble Niña to scout a channel and to confirm that it was free of reefs; he noted islets and gulfs as he went, but light wind impeded his progress that morning. He continued to profess, though with less conviction, that the splendid China described by Marco Polo must be close by, but the kingdom remained as elusive as the mythical El Dorado.
On Sunday, while running along the northern coast of the landmass he had named Hispaniola, he feared that reefs and shoals lurked around every point, or were concealed beneath the iridescent water of every harbor like so many sea monsters, their teeth poised to rip his ship’s hulls to slivers. Amid these hazards, Pinta, presumed lost, appeared on the horizon, racing downwind toward Niña and Columbus. The two ships sailed a full ten leagues together to find a safe anchorage, and then Martín Alonso Pinzón came aboard, dispensing with the usual formalities, “to excuse himself, alleging that he had left him [Columbus] against his will.”
Exasperated, Columbus dismissed Pinzón’s claim as “all false.” Pinzón had gone his way out of “much insolence and greed.” His behavior was the work of Satan. The Indians believed that Pinzón had abandoned the fleet in the futile pursuit of gold, going all the way to Jamaica—“Yamaye” to the Spaniards—a ten-day journey by canoe. Columbus declared that Pinzón’s unauthorized conduct amounted to “insolence and disloyalty.”
Water is the enemy of wood, and Niña required repairs, pumping, and caulking the following day, January 8, before Columbus considered the craft seaworthy. He awaited news of the life-size gold statue he had been promised, but none was forthcoming. On Tuesday, a high wind from the southeast delayed his exodus yet again. He remained troubled by the actions of the Pinzón brothers, Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez, who had abandoned him on November 21. “To get rid of such bad company, with whom he had had to dissemble (for they were undisciplined people), and although he had along many men of good will (but it was no time to deal out punishment), he decided to return and delay no more.”
As usual, the slightest mention of gold acted on him like a powerfully addictive drug and sufficed to distract him from his other concerns and goals. Columbus heard from his sailors that they had found gold in the mouth of a river—probably the Yaque—while they were collecting water for Niña. He dreamed of the wide and deep river “all full of gold, and of such quality that it is marvelous but very fine.” He ordered the sailors “to go up the river a stone’s throw,” in search of the gold, and when they filled their barrels with water and returned to Niña, “they found bits of gold”—gold!—adhering to the barrel hoops. He named the body of water Río de Oro, River of Gold. Columbus’s thoughts once again veered toward reality and the necessity of returning to Spain “at full speed to bring the news and to quit the bad company that he had, and that he always said they were a mutinous lot.” The ill will was entirely mutual.
After the latest series of delays and maneuvers, he estimated he had traveled only twenty-seven miles from the fortress, which he had taken to calling La Navidad, after the date of the shipwreck and to commemorate the beginning of the Spanish empire in Hispaniola. At midnight, January 9, he set sail once again, soon becoming frustrated by reefs and unseen channels. He took in fine sights, turtles (“very big, like a large wooden shield”) and