Chapter II - A Spanish Inquisition
I had escaped the farm for the seminary in Sevilla at fifteen. Always too inquisitive for my own good, my questioning mind had directed me toward God for answers. I believed I had the calling. I was a quick study and became literate, a rarity among Andalusian peasants. But the novelty quickly wore off, or perhaps the rigid discipline and discouragement of inquiry wore me out. Hernan complained in one of his barely decipherable letters from home that he was sick to death of apple trees and orange trees. His exciting plan was to join the Armada Española. So in 1500, at age sixteen, I fled the God-pandering priests for Málaga. There we enlisted, and for two years terrorized Moorish merchant ships on the balmy Mediterranean. In '02 we shipped out of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with Ponce de León and his patron Nicolás de Ovando. That April saw us drop anchor in the port of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. We passed ten long years fighting savages, insects, boredom and each other in the islands, until that fatal campaign to La Florida. But now I was growing old in the Spanish Navy, from my observations a grim and toothless future, albeit mercifully short.
With Hernan gone, I had no close companions on board ship. Also, I could not stomach the thought of sailing without his wickedly cynical wit to distract me from leaping overboard when in one of my moods. If he had not been so lazy he could have been another Boccaccio. Luckily, my terms of enlistment allowed me to resign after ten years' service without challenge. So I became a free man in San Juan on December 21, 1513.
San Juan at that time was a filthy, violent, lawless port settlement. It had little to offer other than the pox or the point of a dagger in a dark alley. It was perfect!
All day and half the night the harbor buzzed with the deafening clamor and turmoil of heavily laden trading ships and bristling naval vessels in the midst of engorging or disgorging. Provisions and equipment were in short supply and constant demand. I am a gambler by nature; I had pocketed many a sailor's wage at the Truco table. It seemed a sure bet to lay my last pay packet down on a commodity that I could go round the corner and sell at twice the price. I rented a dung-fouled stall in a run-down stable to store my goods. It was also my bunk, my galley and my entire estate. After haunting the docks for a week, I purchased ten barrels of whale oil and ten enormous coils of hemp cordage from a captain whose thirst for rum had exceeded his credit at the local tabernas.
I hired a Taíno Indian with a mule cart to start hauling my investment to my stall and another to guard the rest. We had not rolled 300 pasos before a salt-stained, belligerent, rough-looking fellow accosted us.
"What is in those barrels? It stinks of whale!"
He was enormous. I decided a polite approach might end well for me.
"You have a discerning nose, señor. It is the finest spermaceti."
His beady eyes glittered like pitch above an unruly explosion of wiry black yarn. The monstrous tangle of beard fell to his barrel chest, parting to reveal a pair of generous rubbery lips and pearly teeth bared in a snarl. Or was it a grin?
"You talk to an old whaler, boy. Right whale. If that is sperm whale, I'm a ballerina."
I refused to pick up that challenge. "Perhaps I have been tricked, señor. You must be right."
"I want it."
Now I was worried. He outweighed the Taíno and me together, a union that would soon part if it all went wrong.
I quaked but held my ground. "It is for sale, señor."
"You thought I would steal it, boy? I am a Spaniard, not a ruffian. What price?"
