PART 1
Chapter I - Rebirth
I stood motionless, hip-deep in a tepid soup that resembled the bitter gritty cacao I had seen the natives drink. Creatures I was glad I could not see scrabbled past my legs. A leviathan the size of the ship's dory, sheeted in slimy green plates, slid from the muddy bank with barely a splash. I grabbed Hernan's shoulder, turned and yelled, "Lads, to dry ground! Now! Rápidamente!" Corselet-clad soldiers climbed frantically over each other like turtles to get to safety. Somehow we all managed. Perhaps the accursed dragon was merely taking an afternoon swim, and it was not yet time for dinner. So far none of us unfortunates had filled the belly of one of these monsters.
That damned Sargento Garcia had cornered me before we plunged into the swamps.
"Herrera, I have an important job for you and Mendiaz. Do you know what an alligator looks like?"
I didn't like the sound of this. "Aye, Sargento. Like a rowboat with teeth."
"Ah, you are not so dumb after all. Well, your job is to go first and make friends with them. Then maybe you will be smart enough not to cheat at Truco next time."
Hijo de puta! I didn't need to cheat to take Garcia's money. El idiota! His cards were written all over his fat estúpido face.
So Hernan and I went ahead, supposedly to warn the men. I felt more like bait than savior.
The two of us, along with the rest of our miserable battalion, floundered across the malodorous marshes. We gagged on the foul gas that bubbled up around our legs from the fetid swamp floor. Sweat dripped from our heavy morion helmets, stinging our eyes. The sun was unusually oppressive for early April, even for these latitudes, and the air was thick and still enough to stop an arquebus ball in its tracks. I speak poetically, because our powder was so damp it would not flash; it could have been used for caulking. We tripped and sprawled over the impossible tangle of roots that humped and coiled, writhing invisibly like anacondas under the tea-colored brine. The only relief was when we crawled up on to one of the many treed mounds that were a mean mockery of dry land. They were more of a sodden carpet that gave way without warning to boot-sucking muck on every third footfall. Several times we had to search for narrows to ford the broad shallow rivers that webbed the marshes.
"Mosquitos de mierda!" Hernan slapped his face for the hundredth time, leaving a bloody smear the size of a vellón coin on his cheek.
I swear on my abuela's grave that the hijos de puta were the size of a Spanish hummingbird. And they wielded the teeth and temperament of a famished puma. Lucky for me they favored the bouquet of the blood of Hernan over that of Tonio. Maybe they were just entertained by his vigorous arm-flapping and cursing. I was.
We had left the Santiago lolling on the crystalline warm waters of a large southwest-facing bay. Shipwrights stayed aboard to make some repairs and take on water for the return voyage to San Juan Bautista. We rowed to a glorious sandy beach, which was swept by a fragrant breeze. And which stretched inland for all of one hundred paces. The sand sifted into a band of tortuous trees. Their slender trunks appeared to balance precariously upon the heads of a snarl of petrified octopi, each standing daintily high on its toes in the swamp as if to avoid getting any wetter than necessary. I would hardly have been surprised if they tiptoed about when no one was looking. We came to call them los manglares, because of their mangled appearance. On this coast there was not the proliferation of flowers we had encountered on our landing a month earlier on the eastern coast of this land. On that landfall our captain, enamored of claiming and naming every piece of land larger than a turtle, had assembled his small crew between the brigantine's two masts.
