Serpentine Vol. 1, No. 3, Lord of the Mayas

Serpentine, Volume 1, Number 3, July 1997

Lord of the Mayas

by Robert Burdette Sweet

"Geranimo de Aguilar explained to Cortes that the two survivors were Gonzalo Gurrero, who had married the daughter of an Indian Chief and refused to give up his family and social position, and himself, whose life had been spared because he had no contact with women, and so the chief had kept him as a slave and made him the overseer of his harem.

"Cortes then took Malinal, called 'La Malenche,' the tongue, for himself, not only as interpreter, but wife as well."
-- ITINERARIO DE HERNAN CORTES -- Jorge Guerrla Lacroix

CHAPTER ONE

How long since Gonzalo Guerrero realized who or where he was? On the ship Anuncio in the sea of Caribs...but this rolling water held no meaning for him. Cuba he knew too well, and Santo Domingo, where they were headed, lodged more of his Spanish countrymen and as many Indian whores as Cuba. But what lay over there to the west? The thought of that unknown made him stare dreaming toward the distant cover of clouds. Damned if his present life was much. It's easy to seek risk when there's little to lose.

Since he'd shipped from Spain to drift about this tropic part of the world, even the heat of the sea wind drugged his awareness. Guerrero thought the month might be August, the year 1521. The exact date was Captain Valdavia's business. But Guerrero wondered as he turned to watch Valdavia squinting over instruments in the wheel house, if the captain was precise as he pretended to be. Take life easy, Captain. Better let it run you-or you'll be running after it.

All afternoon Guerrero had noticed the sun slowly haze white in growing cloudmist. He squatted on his haunches, knees pressed together where he rested his chin. His eyes kept to the sun, the pewter glow, imagining it a medallion shaped into a relief of Our Lady's mantled head. Christ, but he wished he had a woman. He was sick of men and the sea.

The curve of his back shifted against the bow-sprit as he tried to steady his body with the plunge of the ship. The ship reared like a horse over the waves. Then it struck hard down in the next trough, wrapped in a mane of spray. Most of the men were asleep in the hold, out of the sun and wind. Guerrero liked the wind, even the sting of salt in his eyes. To protect himself from the sun he wore a ragged, felt cap given him by his father when he left Spain.

"Don't know where you go or why, but you'll need this cap for that, that cabeza. Loco, loco... His father stopped, speechless in the act of offering the gift. "Gonzalo..." the man tried again. "you're a handsome, handsome fellow. Remember that. Always." Then, under his breath, "But I think that's what got you into trouble. Now go." The father pushed the cap in Guerrero's hands. "Yes, go. You've hurt all of us. For deserting you wife and children, may God strike you."

Gonzalo Guerrero looked fixedly out over the sea. He stroked his thick reddish beard. No matter where he fled, his memories were there, waiting for him. 'May God strike you' still rang in his ears. His wife, Maria, might now be taking his children to Mass. But she could not hit him, quickly, across the face as she had done. Not here on the sea she couldn't. His hands clenched. He felt the long but thinning hair that curled from his cap scrape his forehead, move across heavy eyebrows. Maria seemed to think their marriage meant she had bought him, owned him, and that she could scour his tongue and soul with soap easily as she scrubbed the cobbled stones leading to the shed they lived and argued in.

He was better off now. Better alone. 'Gonzalo Guerrero, Nobody from Seville, drowned off the shores of Nowhere.' Would Papa pay to have that written in stone on a wall of the church?

Guerrero managed to stand, his feet spaced wide on the shifting deck. Where the veiled sun hovered, a dark horizon stretched across the silver sea. Valdavia told them all the world was round, to quiet rumors that their journey was dangerous. But was the world really round? Maybe Columbus had just sailed out of time, out of space. That's what Guerrero suggested yesterday to Aguilar, his one real acquaintance on the ship. Let your mind wander, he'd said, to where there might be a better place. Guerrero rapped his fist excitedly on the gunwale. As a boy, his fantasies of angels and miracles of Our Lady, and stories of saints made him comfortable with hopes and heady speculations. And yet, as he leaned now over the gunwale snorting spray, he could just as easily imagine that to the west lay a land of the dead, a hell that waited for him. There could be no real paradise for the likes of Gonzalo.

Out of the corner of his eye Guerrero glimpsed soft leather shoes and silk pantaloons. "Is that you, Geranimo Aguilar? Don't try to sneak up on me. " Guerrero did not move his head.

Aguilar leaned his back against the gunwale, hands folded across his chest. "You've got eyes in your spine, my friend. Mind if I watch with you?"

"No, sir. I don't mind." Guerrero edged away from Aguilar. The Anuncio pitched to port side. They both grabbed hold of rough, wet rope.

Aguilar often joined Guerrero at his watch. Aguilar was a gentleman and did as he pleased, but Guerrero would have preferred solitude. God knows, there seemed no other place on that ship when his shoulders did not rub against another man's. A ship the size of the Anuncio was a floating hovel, stinking as the back streets of the Seville he'd tried to escape from.

"I think you resent my being with you."

Now, how do you respond to that?

"But despite our differences, Gonzalo Guerrero, we have two things in common."

"That I'm common and you're not. Is that it?" Guerrero licked the salt off his lips. The high-born were bastards. All of them.

Aguilar leaned close to him. "No, not that..." Aguilar seemed to choose his words carefully. "We're both intelligent. And we're both runts of the litter. There's no two men aboard who look..."

What did he mean? Aguilar stood a foot taller than Guerrero, went beardless and walked with a jerking stride as though his legs had got attached wrong. And Aguilar made up to everyone. He needed to escape into people, to test what danger they might be to him. At least that's how Guerrero had him tagged. So that silver buckle and amethyst ring do you no good, eh Aguilar? "I may be runty, as you say, sir, but inside I'm..."

"Yes?"

"Go to hell !". Why did he shout that? Geranimo Aguilar couldn't help being who he was. Aguilar was fated to be rich as Guerrero was to be poor. There's no real blame in fate. Is there?

"Have I made you angry, Gonzalo? Because if I have, of course, I want to apologize. Sometimes I think I like talking to you simply because you don't like talking to me." Aguilar smiled.

The ship shuddered, rolling port side again on a large swell. The top sail cracked like a musket shot. Guerrero held to the gunwale, his feet sliding in a wash of water. He took the wave full in the face.

"Mother of God," Aguilar complained from his stooped position behind a coil of rope. "You think it's going to storm?"

"I've been watching for that. But the gulls still follow. And I saw a line of pelicans flying west not half an hour ago. They seemed calm enough. There's no problem."

Aguilar padded back to look out over the water, his shoes making a sodden noise. He cupped a hand over squinting eyes. "What do you mean there's no problem," he tried to joke. "With Valdavia for a captain, there has to be trouble. If he's at the wheel, he's drunk. If he's in his cabin, he's very drunk. But mind you, Valdavia is a noble gentleman so there's nothing basically wrong." Geranimo Aguilar cleared his throat. "The captain's native ability is not to be questioned."

"Hah," Guerrero said.

Aguilar put his hand over his heart. "Gonzalo, friend, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to defend us. We're merely a class who can give into our whims wandering over these waters to escape early betrothals, the pox, even the King, under the ruse of settling new lands for him...and we drink too much."

Guerrero looked at him, puzzled. "Why demean yourself?"

Aguilar affected a smile so servile Guerrero felt touched by the mockery of it. As Guerrero raised his hand to tip his cap he felt a rending tremor, a sound hollow but wrenching, pass through the bowels of the ship. His mouth began to open in a shout that he immediately silenced. Yet the ship plowed on, heedless, though Guerrero swore he heard a moan still worrying through the slope of the deck beneath the top sail. For a moment the Anuncio had seemed about to buckle amidship...or was it Guerrero who felt he might split in two? He rubbed shaking palms across his face and down his wet beard.

"You surprise me." Aguilar stuffed ringed fingers in his belt.

"What do you mean?"

"You think the ship just struck something. It didn't. These are charted waters and Valdavia..."

"I'm on watch here! A ship, any ship's a coffin." Clinging to the slick of the bow-sprit, Guerrero leaned over the waves. Clutching the ropes with both hands, Guerrero swung himself over the side. Why did Aguilar pretend nothing had happened? It felt as though a giant's hammer struck the ship. Beneath the bow-sprit stretched the carved shape of a woman. Her gilt was half worn away, her arms pressed to either side of the keel. Now what do you lead us into, Lady? He hooked his fingers through the smooth gouge between her elbow and breast. His grip felt dangerously unsure as the ship reared and hovered over the near blinding white of spray. Then he saw it.

Quickly, Guerrero hauled himself back onto the deck. He rubbed his calloused hands. They burned from the salty ropes. "As a favor, sir, fetch me God or Captain Valdavia."

"God may be the more alert of the two. But what..."

"There's a gash in the starboard bow. Shape of a shark fin. I saw it when we lifted a swell."

Aguilar placed a hand on Guerrero's shoulder. He pointed through the snapping lines of rope to where Captain Valdavia tried to approach them down the deck. "He must have heard it. Is the belly of this ship really filling? It's just your imagination again, Guerrero." Aguilar dug his fingers into Guerrero. "You want this ship to go down. You're always talking about it."

Captain Valdavia, arms out, head lowered, stumbled through ropes along the pitching deck. He was followed by five men. Valdavia fell forward, then righted himself as the sheath of his sword knocked against storage trunks lashed amidships. The captain never appeared without his sword. Because he was more a soldier on land and horseback than a captain of the sea, he had agreed, against his will and publicly, before Guerrero and the crew, to guide the Anuncio only as far as Santo Domingo. Valdavia's eyes ran, his face showed veins across nose and cheeks. No light seemed to enter his eyes as they shifted from left to right, startlingly blue, frozen and blank.

"What did you hear?" Valdavia held one hand up to keep the other men behind him, but his eyes seemed to be studying the buttons of his jerkin. His greying hair that curled only down the nape of his neck blew frail as goose down in the wind. He held onto a rope, bent slightly forward. "If there's some trouble...Who was at the wheel," he demanded, his head turning slowly to starboard. "The sextant read..." But the bow of the Anuncio heaved, and Valdavia fell backwards into the arms of one of his men.

Guerrero came forward. "My captain," he said, "the hold must be filling. There's a gash the shape of a shark fin."

"Sharks? They're not a threat to me, mister."

"I think it was coral, sir. Must have struck a reef."

"Who was at the wheel?" the captain shouted again.

"The men are below, sir," said Guerrero. "We'll have to get them up here. The keel can't last..."

"No!"

"But why not...sir?"

Captain Valdavia smiled, seemed to be looking at the sun that pressed flat and small, nearer the horizon on their right. "There's not even a storm." The captain irrelevantly held up a finger. "No rain."

Is that what it meant to be a gentleman: rude, lazy, drunk? "I'll ring the bell. We can't know how bad it is until ..."

"No!" The captain struggled out of the arms of the sailor who had averted his head in embarrassment. "You there," he said to the sailor, "lock all doors leading to the hold. And be fast about it. Listen!" His words struck like a snake's tongue into Guerrero's ear. "If the Anuncio has hit upon coral, the Anuncio will not be under us much longer. I know this horse!"

"God help us." It was Aguilar, mouth open, puffy lower lip tight against his teeth.

"Gentlemen," the captain's voice whined with the wind, "there's only one small boat to get us away from the Anuncio." He hesitated, closed his eyes, fingers touching the pink lids.

Are you sorry you said that, Captain? Too drunk and confused to think fast enough to save your own skin? Better we keep such knowledge under out hat, sir. Or is that why you've had all doors to the hold bolted.

Valdavia opened his eyes to grainy slits. He crouched to keep his balance on the tipping deck and pointed with his index finger at the men, his lips silently counting. "She'll only hold eighteen," he grunted.

Thirty men lived aboard the ship. Nineteen were now on the deck hovering expectantly, leaning on the wind, coldly eyeing Valdavia.

"What are you going to do sir?" a young sailor called, advancing one step toward the captain. His stained grey hose were torn at the knees. Guerrero seldom spoke to him. The sailor had a brother who was his twin and, since Guerrero could not tell them apart, he avoided them. The sight of them made him uneasy. The brothers were smooth-faced, skinny shadows who served the cook, like exact cast handles of his soup pot. "My brother's down there in the hold. You mean not to call him up? My brother..."

"What business is it of mine?" Valdavia's suddenly alert, narrowed eyes turned to the young fellow. "You want to protest?" He gestured at Guerrero, "Come here, you.". The captain's red, liver-spotted fingers closed on Guerrero's elbow. "Tie the boy up. Won't you, please? With that rope over there."

The sailor suddenly doubled forward, hands over his stomach. Like the sails, listless now, not a sound came from him. As Guerrero stooped to grasp a coil of rope, he thought the boy might be in pain. But as he walked toward him, the sailor began backing through the crowd of men. He was trying to make an escape? Good! Run! But Guerrero stalked slowly after the sailor in his effort to be obedient to the captain. Do I keep fear back by making a god of duty? Guerrero seemed to be watching himself with amazement when he caught up with the boy and bent over him, the rope pulled taut between his wrists. Am I going to strangle this poor pup?

"You three men there. Hold him down. If he warns those in the hold, none of us has a chance. Hear me?"

Yes, Captain, we understand. To save our necks we lose our souls by making a scapegoat of the boy. Guerrero unclasped the knife he always had slung about his neck. The Anuncio leaned heavily and groaned. The wind lifted only the corners of its sails. But still the ship careened westward, leaping, plunging--Valdavia's horse, mad with wounds.

Guerrero and three other sailors bound the brother. They tried to do it without thinking. Guerrero carefully sliced the rope short with his knife and tied the young sailor's hands tight behind his back. He watched himself do that, curiously outside his own body. The three others bound the boy's feet and thighs.

Valdavia slipped an arm around the mast and tried to rise. He still seemed drunk, but his eyes had gone hard. He lurched toward the bound boy who lay gasping, animal-like, his feet pushing toward the anchor hook to gain leverage on the sloping deck. As Valdavia leaned over the boy, Guerrero turned his head from the captain's rancid breath. The captain pulled on the boy's chin, forcing one side of his face against the boards. "You have one chance, mister," Valdavia addressed the lad politely, though his voice shook. "Forget your brother. Tell none of the others. Jesus!" he yelled, "hasn't anyone lowered the boat yet? Now, what do you say?" He spoke again to the boy whose eyes glistened.

The boy's lip curled toward the captain's hand that held him. "Yes. Let me up. Untie me. I'll allow my brother be drowned. Captain, captain..."

Guerrero who had let the fellow's head rest on his boot, heard the words clearly and watched as Valdavia's eyes looked up into Guerrero's, fastening on him. The captain regained his feet. "You all heard him," Valdavia cried out. "The poor man wants to join his brother with the fish." Then he added as a pious inspiration, "To join him in heaven. Now, get rid of him. We've got no time left." The captain's own mouth hung open as he appeared to struggle for a long moment with the implications of his command. Then, crouched on all fours, Valdavia scrambled up the steep of the deck to the gunwale where the boat was being lowered. "Hurry now, men." His hat fell off and his frail hair licked his balding pate.

Guerrero wondered if he really would lift the brother's head, as he was commanded, and with the three others balancing the thighs and chest, hurl the boy overboard. Guerrero stood motionless for a bit, sucking on his lower lip. Then slowly he backed off, wishing he did not hear the young puppy's words: " I'll come with you. Yes, the captain's right. He's right to save those of us he can. I tell you, he's right! To hell with my brother."

Guerrero shivered. He watched the three sailors push past his shoulders, running, almost panicked now, trying their way down the rope ladder, their heads disappearing, one by one, over the shaking sides of the ship. Guerrero turned back to the bound brother: "Will you tell them, eh, when your twin and the others break out of this stinking cesspool of a ship...will you tell them why you're lying here in ropes? You'll not mention, sir, surely, that you tried to betray them."

The boy's mouth moved, the lids of his eyes half lowered looking suspiciously at Guerrero. "Better not worry about this corpse, Mr. Guerrero. Only God knows what...plans I had. My soul is clean. Is yours? You think they'll let you into their little boat?"

Guerrero hit the boy's face with the back of his hand. Once. Twice.

Then he was running. Fast. The waves boomed, kicking the ship, and there was the glassy eye of the sun, of God. Guerrero perched on the gunwale, then dropped himself down the side of the Anuncio, the broad stomach of her hull turning up, black-caulked and grey with dripping barnacles. He heard the men up from the hold burst shouting on the deck. It hadn't taken them long to force the doors. He turned to see their mouths open, arms high over their heads, some without shirts. In front was the bound boy's twin, a specter-double. Guerrero averted his eyes and stared anxiously down at the bouncing life boat. The boat looked small, crowded, a slip of green in white waves. Valdavia, sword unsheathed and across his knees, gripped the one rope that held them to the ship clearly preparing to cut free before Guerrero might have a chance. Men are animals! No, no animal would so purposefully connive.

Guerrero slipped onto his hands and knees leaving blood on the barnacles, leapt forward over the water toward the captain's wide eyes. He felt caught in air, on the drifts of warm wind, his own eyes hinged to Valdavia's. He seemed to float through the hiss of waters, the burn of salt. Then it felt wet and cool and he had to climb through bursting bubbles of stifling water.

He knew by the flash of amethyst on the finger pulling his collar that it was Aguilar who lifted him. He felt the tugging and then the scrape of his chest and thighs over the worn wood. Guerrero coughed water from his lungs as he heard Aguilar say, "Senor fish! I've caught the senor fish. Let the Anuncio go down. I've caught my friend."

Good Aguilar. Thank you, Aguilar. Guerrero kept his face down in the skiff, breathing into the tarred floor boards. The muscles in his shoulders spasmed as he imagined himself journeying to a place where he might want to be. He heard the screams of men in the wind. Yes, let the Anuncio go down.

CHAPTER TWO

Fourteen days they drifted under the sun that now glared raw and blinding. Seagulls came in the mornings, gold darts in the first light, and pierced Guerrero's ears with their "Braying," he called it. "Like donkeys. Sea donkeys." A particular gull kept hovering a few feet above his head. He saw its eyes cocked sharp and waiting. "You son of a bitch." Guerrero weakly waved an arm. Were sea gulls really the souls of those who died at sea? Maybe it was all right for the birds to snatch Gonzalo from his hurting body, let his spirit ride and squall through air like them.

Other sea gulls had pecked at the five men already dead and thrown to the sea. Often their bodies did not sink. Caught in the same current as the boat, the bodies followed for most of a day. Birds first attacked the eyes. Was that how they got at the souls?

The sixth dead man lay naked on the floor of the boat. His clothes had been taken by the others to further protect themselves from the sun. Guerrero himself draped the man's shirt like a cowl over his head, enduring the strong smell of alien sweat. The sailor's starved body melted in the heat a foot from Guerrero, the skin drawing close to the harsh bones and festering. The stench caused Guerrero to prefer the man's living sweat, and he wrapped the shirt tight over his nose. Why didn't Valdavia order them to toss the body over? Maybe he didn't care anymore. Maybe none of them cared or had the strength. Guerrero closed his eyes, held his ears to shut out the screeching of the gulls. But when he tried to block his senses, his mind obsessively focused on the twin boy bound and twisting on the tilted deck in the rope Guerrero had tied around him. He saw his own children's uncomprehending look of fear when he said goodbye to them and recalled Maria's last threat: 'You'll never see these little ones again, ever, if I can help it.' 'I'll pray for them,' he had said. 'Better pray for yourself,' she shouted.

Do we go mad before we die, mad with the accumulating injuries to body and mind? Better, through lashes of slitted eyes, to watch Valdavia. Try to concentrate on anything but the gulls, the dead man at his feet and what haunted Guerrero's memory.

Valdavia crouched in the bow, his back to the void they drifted toward. He had not dropped his role as captain, rather it appeared to be pinching him like fresh burnt skin. In a gentlemanly manner, he scratched with his sword the records of days and deaths. The wood triangle of the bow filled with more and deeper gashes. On Valdavia's left he'd dug the ragged marks for days, on his right those for deaths.

Guerrero had never seen Valdavia's eyes so keen, so sober. The blue from sky and sea and the drawing in of the skin made his eyes severe as the eyes of the gulls that hovered close. Now, a gull's wing held a strong shadow across the captain's lined cheeks. Valdavia's lower lip, erupting with sores, moved as if to form words. Then stopped.

No one had spoken for a day. The only meaningful gesture in all that meaningless time on the roll upon roll of ocean had to be the dig of Valdavia's sword, the intense look in his eyes. Maybe there was something to being highborn? Only the captain seemed able to invent for himself a purpose.

Valdavia attempted to stand. His eyes blinked as he slowly dragged his sword along the gunwale. But he managed only to lean forward and tap at the dead man's feet with the sword's unscabbered point. What was this? Guerrero alerted himself. Sorry, Captain, I can't throw the body overboard. Nor can any of us. I don't even have the strength to make the sign of the cross over it. What had been the dead man's name? Pedro, he recalled. Just before Pedro died the man muttered how it was beautiful, all of it beautiful, where they were, where they were going. Maybe the dying knew what the living could not know.

The boat lurched, slapping into a high wave. The captain bent to port side, holding on with his free hand, but the sword remained pointing at the dead man's feet. Valdavia's lips moved again, but still there came no command through the whine of wind. Guerrero looked at Aguilar, but his face remained hidden in his hands, hands raw with scabs, wet and glistening from the new break of waves. Only Guerrero and Valdavia seemed aware. Guerrero let his eyes burn into the captain' s. What do you want of me? I'm the only man you can depend upon, but can you guess the resentment I have for you?

Guerrero wondered what his father would do in such a situation, who all his life had made clothes for aristocrats. He'd do what he'd always done: stitch hems and complain. But here on the sea he would use a herring bone for a needle, sew a shroud of water and sky. Be careful of what's in your mind, Gonzalo Guerrero.

He watched as Valdavia's free arm bent toward his chest, the hand fisted. The captain rapped the fist over his heart. He's going to die, that's it! Valdavia is indicating with his sword that he feels joined with the dead. Don't move. Wait until his heart stops. Then there will be no man of higher station in the boat than Guerrero, except of course for Aguilar, whom he could easily handle, should it come to that. Guerrero would be captain of the riff-raff. He closed his eyes, thinking. He could hear the beat of sea gull's wings straight above him. Wasn't it only days before that he had still vainly tried to catch them? Now food was meaningless. If you try over and over to do a thing and it always eludes you, you give up.

Captain Valdavia's fist shook away from his heart. Guerrero observed the fist tremble toward Valdavia's mouth. When the fist touched the lower lip the fingers sprang out, like the bony joints of crabs, and crawled toward the white tongue. Again, Valdavia tapped his sword on the dead feet. "Eat." The word came at Guerrero dry and high as the wind. "I command...it."

Guerrero turned his head, nauseated. It was easier to starve.

Valdavia's sword fell to the boat's floor with a loud smack. He leaned against the gunwale. With eyes open and his head tipped, Valdavia at first appeared to struggle for breath, and then, Guerrero realized, the Captain was laughing. A sea gull screeched, the shadow of its long wing clinging again to the Captain's face. Valdavia's chest heaved, a corner of his lip bled. He coughed in deep hilarity.

The other men looked up. Aguilar whispered, "He's crazy? Gonzalo, has he gone..."

"He's crazy," Guerrero whispered.

Guerrero didn't laugh, nor feel crazy, because just that morning he had seen blue jellyfish riding the waves. The water must be getting shallower, warmer. Now is the perfect time for you to lose you mind, Captain.

But that night felt bitingly cold to Guerrero. Had he no blood? His heart beat slow as a requiem bell. He dozed but couldn't sleep. Tomorrow, when the sun made him sweat, Guerrero would do something about the dead man. All his life inertia had chained him until the time would come when he'd try to smash all the links. Suddenly. But for now he'd drift, waiting as the moon rose over a copper sea.

The moon held bright and high. Interrupted from a doze by a rasping sound, Guerrero noticed the dark shape of Valdavia press down on its knees, chin close to the breast bone. The Captain, like Guerrero's father, slept with his mouth open, and in the moon there might be a slight shine of teeth and coated tongue. But now Guerrero saw nothing of his mouth. Instead, the face was black with shadow as both pale hands crept along the floor boards hesitating just beyond his knees. Then the bulk of him hunched forward, the sword gripped in his right hand catching the light. Come closer to me, Captain, and I'll throttle you. Maybe I'd do it just because you look like my father, with a sword instead of a needle threading the light. The dark form of the captain paused by the dead man's thigh. Valdavia touched his sword to the hairy grain of what looked like marble, not flesh at all. He lay his head on the shrunken thigh.

Guerrero pressed his eyelids hard shut, pretending sleep, as he heard the weak grind of the Captain's teeth on flesh. There are things we don't need to know about others, don't want to know.

But Guerrero stared when he realized Valdavia crawled back to the bow, a sated jackal, who fell instantly asleep, his mouth flung open and the moon spread milky over his teeth and fouled tongue. Guerrero grabbed for the dead Pedro's frail weight, struggling to lift the body by chest and bent legs. He pushed the stiffening bones up the curved ribs of the boat, let the body balance for a moment on the gunwale's ridge and then shoved forward with a heave of his shoulders. Let the gulls have what's left of him. Goodbye, Pedro. Good riddance. The water glowed with the phosphorescent sheen of plankton as the body struck the waves into a momentary leap of fire around the corpse. You're right in you own way, Pedro: it is beautiful. All of it. The body seemed to incinerate, a false cremation of wet sparks and tonguing spray.

No one woke. The burial had been swift and clean. Guerrero's first act. He smiled vaguely. Sleep on, Captain. I've hid your dirty work for you.

Then Guerrero must have slept, because, when he tried responding to a sharp jab in the ribs, the sun glared a torch in his eyes. The sea showed a terrific yellow, the sky white as the break of waves beneath it. He looked to the west where Aguilar pointed. Aguilar fell against him, clutching at Guerrero's elbow. He stammered, "I don't know, I don't know...Are we dead? Gonzalo...It's a ship, but not like any ship I've seen."

Guerrero pulled Pedro's shirt down to his chin and tried to adjust his eyes. The Captain was lifting his sword into the air. When their skiff balanced a swell, Guerrero saw what he first took to be a dragon raising its tail not far off the bow. But at that short distance whatever it might be appeared to him as a blur of colors--an intense blue mixed with yellow outlined by a shining black. It burst with speed across the water. "If it's a ship, then..." He couldn't say any more. Nearly blinded by it, he jerked Pedro's rancid shirt back to the bridge of his nose, staring cautiously from beneath the wrap as silhouettes of men became clear standing motionless along each side of that strange ship. Other dark forms pulled hard on flashing, long-handled oars.

"If you are men or devils,". called Captain Valdavia, sword high, "in God's mercy, help us."

The craft slowed with a hiss. From both its bow and stern, the huge ornamentally carved tails shaded the water. Guerrero dared to focus now on the men, but the unusual appearance of them so confused him his teeth chattered.

There were many of them, Indians, he assumed, some with arms waving, calling out what sounded like, "Ah mehenob. Ah mehenob.". Others leaned over the side of the ship glaring, brooding.

"Yes, we're dead," Guerrero heard himself finally answer Aguilar. Because the men looked like angels to him. They seemed not to be made of flesh.

Aguilar said, "Look at their teeth, Gonzalo. The one standing in back there, holding the main oar... " Aguilar touched his throat with curved fingers. "I can't talk...it hurts to talk. But I swear the fellow's teeth shine like gems. Watch. See? He just turned his head. The sun..."

"And feathers in their hair. Green feathers, like a halo." To Guerrero, all the men on that ship resembled living jewels.

Their hair hung black and long at the sides and down their backs but through the center of their skulls it appeared to be cut short, as with a shears. And their foreheads were flattened. Six men to a side plunged into the waves with their paddles in an effort to draw their craft nearer the Spaniards.

All wore gleaming stones tied to their hair around which curved the iridescent feathers. Large plugs of blue-green stone stretched their ears, and, as the side of their ship finally scraped against the lifeboat, Guerrero noticed tattoos on their foreheads and cheeks, their teeth inlaid with bright green stone. One had what might be a topaz shining from the flare of his nose.

These aren't men, they're dreams. They're the moving statues of dreams. Guerrero pulled the shirt away and tried to boldly face them.

He heard Captain Valdavia cry, "They have food and water. Water!"

Careful, Captain, never trust the unnatural. Never trust men who are garnished and cloaked. Guerrero lifted himself by his elbows from where he'd fallen. "Water, water," he heard himself bellow like a dumb beast or a mere man willing to grovel, even to apparitions. "Help me, help me..." And the word 'me' echoed in his mind as if he believed these angels had been sent to save him and him alone.

Guerrero pitched forward on his knees toward them, his hope to face them with dignity gone. It was the hunger. The thirst. He started to crawl to where one of the strangers leaned down and held out a hand. Guerrero glanced up. It was the one with the topaz in his nose. There must be something wrong with the man's slatted eyes. What was it? Christ, the man's black eyes were crossed. Fixed as if in static anger.

Aguilar crouched low. "It's better to die here. Let's stay where we are, Gonzalo. They're haunts, spirits..."

But already the hand closed on Guerrero's wrist. "Ah mehenob. Ah mehenob." Guerrero was hauled upward, a frail wreck of bones. He heard Valdavia demanding from a raw throat, "I'm the captain here. It is I who should be first fed and watered. It is I who should be dealt with. In the name of our King."

The Indian with the topaz grasped Guerrero by his beard, then his arm, and flung him into their ship. Then the Indian bent over him, his hands on Guerrero's beard. He pulled at the beard until Guerrero screamed. Could he be trying to yank out all the hairs? The man's lips curled back from his gleaming teeth. Sweat ran down his high, tapered forehead. "Non mehenob." He kicked Guerrero and backed off as though repelled. Was it Guerrero's smell, his emaciated body?

The Indian rubbed his palms, as though to clean them, on a yellow skirt edged in black. He sneered at Guerrero. Guerrero weakly blinked his eyes as Geranimo Aguilar groaned while being thrown into the ship. They stood around Aguilar, shouting. But they didn't touch him. They didn't kick him. They carefully lifted Aguilar and seated him in a chair made of bamboo. Guerrero wanted to hide his head in his arms. Why did they treat Aguilar with respect and Guerrero with disdain?

Aguilar slumped in the chair, long legs splayed out. "They're going to kill me. Yes, I'm a dead man. Damned Indians." He snapped his teeth and the man with the topaz laughed. He touched Aguilar's lightly stubbled chin and then came back to Guerrero, still laughing, his eyes so crossed it made Guerrero dizzy. He yanked angrily at Guerrero's beard. Was that it? They were disgusted by the hair on his face?

No Indian has so much as a wisp of hair on chin or naked chest. Now that Valdavia and the others had been pulled aboard, Guerrero thought they all looked like unsavory animals next to these jeweled mannikins. Guerrero felt for his knife, sharp under his shirt and over his heart. I'm not going to cooperate, bastards. But, Santa Maria, neither this time do I think I can run.

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