Chapter 17. Sharks
September 1499. Bay of Veragua (modern day Bay of Honduras), near the Island of Boyuca
As de Hojeda’s caravel floated away, John Cabot saw Vespucci give him a forlorn look over the railing, as if to say he was sorry. Cabot floated in the water on his back, his hands bound by ropes behind him and his legs tethered by ropes at the ankles. He grimaced from the pain in his stomach where de Hojeda had cut him. His mind raced. He had to stay alive. He thought of his three boys, Lewis, Sebastian and Sanctus. Young Sebastian he missed the most. He was almost as good a navigator as his father. He had to see his boys again! As soon as de Hojeda’s ship was far enough away, Cabot began wrestling with the back of his tunic. He had learned a trick long ago from a thieving dock hand named Robert Gibson. Cabot had tied Gibson with his hands behind his back and had locked him in the ship’s hold after Cabot had caught Gibson stealing fruit from the other members of the crew. Later that night, however, Cabot had seen Gibson under a cover, drinking rum in one of the rowboats. When questioned how he had escaped his rope bonds, Gibson finally admitted that he had sewn a small knife in the back of his tunic for just such an occasion. Gibson had expected the captain to be angry, but Cabot had laughed, impressed by the sailor’s ingenuity. Gibson’s only punishment was to sew a small knife into the back of Cabot’s tunic. As blood poured out of Cabot’s gut wound, he secretly thanked Robert Gibson for his cleverness.
Cabot poked the knife tip against the fabric until he had made a small hole. He kept ramming the blade through the small hole in the cloth until the hole widened. The one thing he had to make sure of was that the knife did not slip out of his hands into the water. If it did, he would be dead for sure. Rotating back and forth so that he could keep his head above the small waves, Cabot wiggled and thrust the small knife again and again until it finally came free of the tunic. Seizing it with his right hand, he began to saw at the rope bonds.
He tried not to panic. He was losing a lot of blood. He looked into the clear blue sky and momentarily thought of his wife Mattea, whom he had married as a young lad while still in Venice. With her long brown wavy hair and deep brown eyes, she was as beautiful as Venice at dusk. He had not seen her in ages. She was a good wife, understanding of his need for adventure, and she was good with the boys. He managed to saw through most of the cords of the rope, but the bonds were still not giving way. He strained with all his strength to break the rope but it was still hanging on. He cried for a minute in desperation, worried he was going to die here. All of that work, a life full of discoveries, and no one would ever know that he had found the western ocean! It was not fair! De Hojeda! Cabot screamed in rage. I will kill him, he thought. If it was the last thing he ever did he was going to kill that worm and laugh as he put a bullet in his head.
Cabot caught himself. He was embarrassed that he had momentarily cried. He was a man. He was a captain! He was NOT going to die here. He focused all his mental energy on the knife and sawed furiously. With his last saw strike, he managed to cut through the last cord. His hands were free. Rotating, he tried to bend down, sticking his head temporarily in the water to reach his feet, but each time he bent, pain seared from his stomach wound. The water all around him was bright red. He thought of the sharks. Surely there were sharks in these waters. He had heard that a shark could smell blood in water from over a mile away. He looked out over the waves. He did not see any triangular fins. In his travels, he had read a little bit about sharks. While it was true that they liked blood, there were only a few species of shark that would ever come near a human in the water, much less attack it. He was just going to have to pray that no sharks of the right species were in the neighborhood. But the thought of sharks gave him resolve. No matter how much it hurt, he had to cut the ropes on his feet or he would not be able to swim, and he had better do that before the sharks came.
Using every bit of courage he could muster, he clenched his teeth, held his breath and put his head under the water, sawing on his leg ropes furiously. On the third effort under the water, he thought he would pass out from the pain. But his feet were wiggling. The bonds were loosening. That’s when he saw it--three triangular fins off in the distance. The sharks had finally found him! He panicked and began sawing like a lumberjack, diving up and down under the water until he had his feet free in about a minute. As soon as he got free, he swam like an Olympian, thrashing about with strong strokes, despite his stomach wound, trailing blood behind him. He was only a hundred yards or so from the shore of the island now. Only a little more and he might make it. He went into an all-out sprint for the shore, gasping for breath on every third rotation of his arms through the water. As he put his head under the water again, he felt something hard bump him. The sharks were here. He stopped swimming and treaded water, looking around him. They were circling him, obviously crazed by the blood but seemingly unsure of what to do next. He was only fifty yards from the shore. He slowly treaded water toward the shore, like a lion tamer eyeing a lion, wary of the bite but trying to show confidence. Surprisingly, two of the sharks seemed to suddenly swim away, but the third shark swam around him. Cabot kept edging toward the shore slowly, hoping that the waters would soon be too shallow for the shark. As he saw it swim through the water next to him, he thought it looked like a tiger shark. Suddenly, the shark’s head darted to Cabot’s leg and bit, taking out a pound of flesh. Cabot screamed the loudest agonizing wail of his life, writhing in the pain now stabbing at his calf. The shark, for his part, seemed satisfied and swam back into deeper waters. Cabot grasped at air, flailing through the last waves into the beach surf and flopped up on the sand, bleeding badly from his stomach and his leg. Covered in wet sand and pummeled by the whitewash of the surf, Cabot looked at his leg. Half his calf was missing and he could see the white shaft of his fibula. He knew that infection would set in almost immediately. He was going to die on this island for sure. Exhausted, Cabot passed out in the sand.
Hours later, John Cabot woke up and found himself lying with his back on the tall grass. He blinked his eyes and saw the blue sky above. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see that he was no longer on the beach, but in some kind of forest or jungle. He leaned up on one elbow. Where was he? Directly in front of him was a skinny, Hispanic-looking native man with bone earrings, who was huddled over a small smoldering fire, poking the embers with a stick. The native appeared not to notice Cabot. Cabot tried to get up but felt immediate pain in his gut and leg. The native looked over. Cabot looked down at his own body and was amazed. The wound in his stomach was almost completely healed, although it hurt like hell. His calf looked gnarled and brown but it was essentially healed. He could no longer see the bone and there appeared to be no outward signs of infection. Did he get taken to a doctor on the island? How could his wounds possibly be healed? Was he in heaven?
If he was in heaven, God certainly needed to spruce the place up, Cabot thought. Cabot smelled himself, and he smelled bad. He looked over to the native and said “Hello” in Italian. The native man ignored Cabot and pointed with a stick which had been put in the fire. The end of the stick was red and smoking. The native man pointed to the entrance to a cave some fifty feet away. John Cabot stared in confusion. The native man helped Cabot struggle to his feet, and then pointed to the cave with the stick. He pushed Cabot on the back and pointed his finger to the cave, and said, “Xibalba!” Cabot realized that the native wanted him to go into the cave. Just then, two dozen heads appeared from the jungle foliage. Many of the islanders carried spears and did not look happy. Several of the men began yelling and wielding their spears in the air in anger. “Xibalba!” they yelled. Cabot could take a hint. Going into the cave was better than staying out here with these savages. Cabot went into the dark cave. It was the last place he would ever explore.