They had been stranded on Jamaica for eight months. Columbus’s two ships, eaten through by shipworm, a sea creature that bores holes in timber, lay beached on the sand and served as huts. More than a hundred men were left, and among them was Gaspar, a thirteen-year-old ship’s boy who counted the days with a nail on a plank. Months earlier, Diego Méndez, the admiral’s secretary, had set off in a canoe to ask for help from Hispaniola. Nobody knew whether he had arrived.
Until recently, the Taíno people of the nearby village had brought them cassava bread, fish and fruit in exchange for small bells, glass beads and combs. But in January a group of sailors mutinied, roamed the island and took food by force. Since then the baskets had stopped coming. The chief said they had nothing left to give, and his eyes said something wearier: that they no longer trusted the strangers.
One night Gaspar found Columbus awake, leafing by candlelight through a book with worn covers. It was an almanac by a German scholar, Regiomontanus, with tables giving the day and hour of every eclipse in the coming years. The admiral marked a page with his finger and murmured, “Here it is.” Then he spoke in a low voice to his brother Bartholomew, and the two of them looked at each other like men who had just found a key.
On 29 February, as evening fell, Columbus gathered the chief and the other leaders. Through an interpreter he told them his God was angry because they were refusing food, and that very night he would prove it: the moon would rise inflamed and red. The leaders laughed. Nobody had ever seen a man give orders to the moon.
Night fell. The moon rose, big and white. Hidden behind a boat, Gaspar watched a shadow begin to bite at its edge, slowly, until it covered almost the whole disc. The moon turned the colour of copper. Shouts and wailing rose from the village, and the leaders ran down to the beach.
“Admiral, make it come back!” the chief begged. “We will bring you whatever you ask.” Columbus said he must pray and shut himself in his hut. Through a crack, Gaspar saw him turn an hourglass and never take his eyes off it. When the sand was nearly gone, the admiral came out and announced that God would forgive them if they kept their word. Then, along its edge, the moon began to regain its white light.
The next morning the first baskets arrived. Gaspar, his stomach empty, dared to ask Bartholomew: “Is it true the admiral commands the moon?” Bartholomew looked at the book, which lay on a chest, and smiled without answering.