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breastplates, all made of gold; tweezers, bells, crystals, and boxes of small copper axe heads in three sizes like those the Indians of the Isthmus use for coin; many mantles of wool and cotton; shirts, tunics, and other clothing like that of the Moors—some fine as silk and everything richly coloured and adorned. And they had weights and scales for weighing gold, like those of Roman workmanship.
    They also carried much food and good water, cotton bales, strong ropes, bronze crowbars, and barrels of pitch (of which we are in great need against the shipworm).
    We were unable to learn where they had come from and where all these wonderful things were made. We took as much of the freight as we could stow aboard the Santa Elena . We also took fruit, vegetables, corn, potatoes, and other supplies. In return we left axes, pig iron, and glass beads. Lastly, we took on board a boy, that he may come with us to our camp and learn our tongue. In due course, if it pleases God, he will guide us to his home port and marvellous land.
    The Pilot stops writing and strokes his ear with the quill. He sighs. A long exhalation of guilt. He wipes his face with a kerchief. Nothing he has set down is untrue. And at least we left iron, he thinks. We were not thieves. Though iron is cheap to us, the natives of the Indies esteem it more highly than gold. He consoles himself that soon after the
Santa Elena
cast off and headed north for Gallo, he saw survivors climb back onto the drifting ship, freeing her captain from the mast.
    Pilot Ruiz shuts the log. He prays. He goes to his bunk.

3
    W aman awakes in darkness. Is he awake? Or mired in that other world his spirit wanders while his body sleeps? His head feels thick. The air, too, is thick; close, yet also chilly and damp. He is panting and his tongue is dry. He must be in the deckhouse, surfacing from a bad dream. As his breathing becomes more regular he notices the smell: foul, smothering, with the fetor of turned meat, as if he were trying to catch a condor, lying in wait under a rotting deerskin, ready to seize the bird’s feet as it alights. Soreness, heaviness, about his ankle. Cold metal. It is he who has been caught. Shackled and chained.
    Now memory wells up, a flood of terror. Men like ghosts or fiends, bursting in, seizing him, a cadaverous hand at his throat. Waman begins to tremble. They are
runa mikhuq
, eaters of men, and they have thrown him in their larder. The dead and dying from Tumbes must be with him in the dark. His breathing races but his lungs can’t fill. He blacks out.
    Waman is roused by a strange vibration, a purring sound, as if a puma were with him in the reeking darkness, very near. Of course! He is trussed here as food for wild beasts as well as wild men. He imagines bodies all around him, half devoured. Next, he feels soft fur against his cheek and the purr loud in his ear. He cries out and flails against the beast, but it’s too quick. He lies rigid a long time,straining to hear the cat’s stealthy movements above the roaring in his temples. But if it moves, it makes no sound. He drowses fitfully until awakened by another touch of fur, this time against his shackled leg. The creature is still. Slowly he understands that it has crept beside him for warmth in the dank hold. Too small to harm him, only a youngster, a puma kitten purring in its sleep.
    Footsteps on the roof above. Words he can’t understand. Then the barbarian ship falls silent except for groans of timber and rope, the
clop
of waves against the wooden wall to which he’s chained. Later there comes a strange sound, drifting, keening, as if from bowstrings; weirdly beautiful.
    He comes fully awake to a shaft of sunlight. A door in the roof slides open and someone descends into the wooden cave: a youth not much older than himself, bringing a tray. The youth smiles broadly, makes a beckoning gesture, sets food and water within reach. Still dazzled, Waman takes some time to notice