The sudden vehemence of his attack startled me, and for a moment I struggled for a response. “No, sir,” I said. “There were native people there and they came out in seventy or more canoes to greet him, all painted and dressed in feathers.”
“Ah”—he leaned back in his chair—“there was a battle.”
“No, sir, there was not, because Columbus made a big show of friendship, and even later, when he thought it necessary, he brought forth his crossbows and after a few of the natives were wounded, they left off any more shows of defiance. Also, he had a dog.”
Mr. Lincoln raised his eyebrows. “He had a dog?”
“A very big one, sir. A frighteningly big one.”
“Did the natives have no weapons?”
“Yes, sir, they did have some, but only lances and bows and arrows. No crossbows, which are more powerful and can be used from a greater distance.”
“Come join us for tea and tell us the rest,” he said, as if I had piqued his interest. “Athena!” he called. “It’s past our teatime.”
I gathered up my books and brought them to the table in case I needed to make reference. At some point, Athena brought the tea, but I hardly took notice; I was so busy reporting on all that I had learned. It was the first time such a thing had ever happened to me: one adult and two other boys listening raptly to my accounts of the Spanish colonization, the pirates who circled the Caribbean, the battle with the English for the island and their use of buccaneers against both the Spanish and the French, the great sea battles for control of the island, the slaves and the Maroons and the Creoles—both white and black—the cocoa and later the sugar plantations, the earthquakes and the hurricanes, the slave trade; all of it taking place on this exotic, sand-garlanded island. I had, on that day, fallen in love with Jamaica.
It was nearly bedtime by the time I finished. Carrot was staring at me. Touch was drawing figures with his finger on the tabletop. Mr. Lincoln was beaming. “Very good,” he said, nodding. Then he leaned forward. “But there is more, you know.”
“I don’t understand, sir,” I said.
He leaned back and smiled. “But you will,” he said. “You will.” He gazed at each of the other boys in turn, before looking again at me. “You have made a start at least, and that is enough for one day.” He rose then and lifted a candlestick as signal that it was time to retire. He started away from the table but suddenly turned back to me. “Jamaica,” he said, “is a very interesting place. Very interesting. Jamaica. We shall be calling you that: Jamaica.”
“Very good, sir,” I said, not knowing at all whether it would be good or not.
Chapter 4
Icould not get Jamaica out of my head. As I climbed into my cot—barely noticing that Athena had put a quilt on it—I was already recounting more than I had told at teatime, starting with Columbus’ huge black dog, larger than any such animal the natives had ever seen, frightening them so terribly that, after their first attempt, they rarely tried to attack again.
“That’s no surprise,” Carrot said. “He probably ate some of them.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “I’m sure. The book never said it, anyway.”
“I bet he did, though.” In the dark, I could tell he was grinning.
“Tell again about the buccaneers,” Touch said.
“No, tell about the earthquake,” Carrot said. “But here, come get in bed with us. Tell about the man who was buried alive and then washed out to sea.”
So I climbed in between them, as they insisted, pulling my quilt on top of the three of us, and I whispered to them about Lewis Galdy, who was first swallowed up by a massive chasm when the Great Earthquake erupted, and afterwards, in a subsequent shock, was spat out of the ground and cast into the sea, whence he escaped by swimming to a boat.
“Could you do that?” Carrot asked. “Or would you be too afraid?”
I imagined the earth closing around me, imagined the panic.
“You would be afraid, wouldn’t you?” he challenged.
“I would be,” Touch said.
“I don’t know how to swim,” I said.
“I don’t either,” Touch said.
“We’ll have to learn,” Carrot said.
We all went to sleep that night imagining ourselves sitting down to dinner and hearing the terrible noise when the ground opened with choking fumes of sulfur, everyone thinking hell was coming forth on earth as the streets washed into the harbor and the sea rose in mighty waves, tearing ships from their anchorages and sweeping them inland over the sunken ruins of the town.
After that, we three always slept together, with me in the middle. It was cozy, and we found it easy to imagine ourselves bunked together in a pirate ship, sailing in the West Indies. Some nights I told stories about Captain Morgan, who quit being a buccaneer when he was made lieutenant governor of Jamaica; and Blackbeard and Calico Jack; and the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who were not executed with the rest of their gang because they were both with child at the time.
