"Oh, sorrow, sorrow! The sea lies still, the tides whisper low. Guided by the stars, we sail toward an island with no one upon it. Soothed by the Lord, all grief is smoothed away!..."
A deep, mournful song drifted over the battered Portuguese flagship, like fallen leaves sinking into the azure deep. The deep sea was a deathly silent graveyard, the sailing ship a wooden coffin underway, holding no corpses yet, only the bloodstains left before death. And the nine scarred Sailors were the last gravekeepers aboard, standing low around the mast, singing a ghostly song of death.
"Farewell, death, oh death! Their voyage has ended, the deep blue their final home. Virgin Mary, hear my prayer! May the dead sink into the deep sea, and be lonely no more!~~"
Hearing such a dispirited sea shanty, Captain Bruno opened his mouth, displeasure flashing across his face. Yet he could not show a captain's authority; he could not even utter a rebuke or a word of encouragement.
"The fleet is beaten, and the men's hearts have scattered!... If I say more, punish more... I might not even keep this head of mine..."
By now, a full five days had passed since that nightmare no one wished to look back on, since the night raid by the native sailing ships. And of the exploration fleet's sixty sailors who had set out, only the last eight remained, almost every one of them wounded!...
Even though ocean voyages had always been death journeys from which sailors did not return, casualties like these were still far too horrific!
"Damn it! Those base, savage, deceitful, ambushing devil Native tribes! They'd long since colluded with Cipangu's Native Kingdom—maybe they were even part of it! The gold, pearls, and books they took out were all to trick us,