The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [69]
“Oh!” cried Horen. “I know where this happened: they must have been at Gerafitola.”
“Rubbish, Horen,” I said. “How could you know such a thing? This happened over three hundred years ago.”
“But I’ve seen it too,” Horen protested, “and it’s exactly as you describe — a creek just off a big river. That’s the only place where you can see the moon’s rainbow — it happens when there’s a full moon and a fog. But never mind all that, Saar. Go on with the story.”
“On the third day Bernier and his party discovered that they were lost. They wandered through creeks and rivers and became more and more distracted, thinking that they were trapped forever in this labyrinth of waterways. And then again an amazing thing happened. They saw some people in the distance working on a sandbank, so they headed in that direction. These would be local fishermen, they assumed, who would show them the way. But on getting there they discovered that these men were Portuguese. They were making salt.”
“Ah!” said Horen with a long, drawn-out sigh. “I know that place. It’s on the way to Kedokhali. There’s a place there where people still sometimes go to make salt. My chhotokaka spent the night there once, and all night long he heard strange voices uttering strange words. It must have been those same ghosts they saw. But never mind all that, Saar — just go on.”
“The fourth day found the priest and his party still in the tide country, and in the evening they withdrew once again into the shelter of a creek. Then there followed ‘a most extraordinary night.’ First the wind died down so that not a leaf stirred in the forest. Next the air around the boat began to heat up and it soon became so hot that the priest and his party could scarcely breathe. Then all of a sudden the mangroves around the boat seemed to burst into flame as the greenery was invaded by great swarms of glowworms. These insects hovered in such a way as to give the impression that fires were dancing in the mangroves’ roots and branches. This caused panic among the sailors, who, the Jesuit says, ‘did not doubt that they were so many devils.’”
“But Saar,” said Horen with a puzzled look in my direction. “Why should they doubt it? What else could they be?”
“I don’t know, Horen. I’m just telling you what the priest says.”
“Go on Saar. Go on.”
“The night that followed was still worse — ‘altogether dreadful and perilous,’ says the priest. With no warning, a violent storm arose and pursued the priest and his party into a creek. They took their boat close to shore and, using all their ropes, tied it to a tree. But the storm raged with such ferocity that their cables could not long withstand the wind. Soon the ropes snapped and it seemed certain the boat would be blown out of its shelter, into a storm-tossed mohona where the waves were sure to rip apart the hull. All the while ‘the rain fell as if poured into the boat from buckets,’ and the ‘lightning and thunder were so vivid and loud, and so near our heads, that we despaired of surviving this horrible night.’
“At this juncture, in a ‘sudden and spontaneous movement’ the priest and his two Portuguese pilots took hold of a tree and entwined their arms into the mangroves’ twisted stilts. Their arms became living roots, like those of the tree that had given them shelter. In this way they clung on ‘for the space of two hours, while the tempest raged with unabated force.’”
“Ei ré!” cried Horen. “They