The King's Fifth Read Online Free PDF Page A

phosphorescence. Another fin cut through the water and a third.
    Shortly thereafter, Lunes crawled to where I lay in the bow. He put his mouth close to my ear. "The Captain sleeps," he whispered. "I will take his sword and the goatskin. Then we row to the shore. It is near. Listen. Hear the surf?"

    "The boat would founder," I said. "We would lose everything."
    "You wish to die here?"
    "Better this than the other."
    Lunes leaned across the rail and put his hand in the water. He rose to his knees and said something I could not hear. Again he leaned over the rail and before I could stop him he had slipped into the sea and was swimming slowly away from the boat.
    I called to Mendoza, but he was already awake.
    "Let him go," he said. "His kind we do not need."
    I watched Lunes swim down the moon's path, a spot that grew small and was lost at last from view. Once more I heard the sound of knives cutting through silk.
    I lay down and closed my eyes but did not sleep. Time passed, perhaps an hour. There was movement in the stern of the longboat. It was Mendoza. He held the goatskin above his head and was drinking.
    He put down the goatskin. "Do you sleep, conceiver of maps?" he said.
    I did not answer, not wanting him to know that I had seen.
    "You are awake," he said. "I have heard before the sounds you make while sleeping. You wonder why I drink the water and fail to share it with you."
    I remained silent. I could not have spoken had I wished to.

    "You do not ask the question of me," he said. "But I will tell you. By drinking I save my own life and thus shall you save yours. For without me, you perish. Furthermore, I have consumed all the water, only a mouthful, but the last. This is for you to know. Not Zuñiga. Not Roa. This is a secret between us."
    It is true, I thought as I lay there in the bow of the longboat. Only he has kept us alive, through the storm and the terrible days since. Without him the boat would have foundered, or we would have gone mad, like Lunes, or fought among ourselves, but somehow perished.
    As I listened to him in silence, the suspicion crossed my mind that he was thinking only of himself, of saving his own life, not ours. It was a treacherous act, which I, who had broken my pledge to Admiral Alarcón would not have done. Or so I told myself, not knowing that the dream of gold can bend the soul and even destroy it, unaware that one day it would do the same to me.
    Mendoza fell silent. The boat drifted northward on a slow tide. Everything about us was silver, moon-bright and shimmering.
    During the night the sea changed. It was now the color of parchment, with dark streaks running through and fronds of a weedlike plant floating. The cliffs had gone and there were low dunes instead, rolling away to the east. Mendoza reset the ragged sail and changed course toward them. There was no wind, so he picked up the oar and began to row, the rest of us too weak to help.
    We moved slowly across the flat water, which soon glittered like a burnished shield. None of us thought that he would ever reach the land. One by one, except for Captain Mendoza, we prayed aloud to San Nicolas of Mira and committed ourselves to God.

    Clouds came up in the south. Again they reared themselves and formed castles and battlements, but no one spoke of them.
    Of a sudden Roa staggered to his feet. He was very fat and it took him a while to do so. "I die of thirst," he cried. "There is fire in my throat."
    Crouching, he moved toward Mendoza, who held the empty goatskin in his lap.
    "We drink at noon," Mendoza said. He stopped rowing and grasped his sword. "At noon, only."
    Roa glanced at the sword. He took a step backward, muttering, then threw himself across the rail and began to claw the water. I tried to pull him back but he wrestled free. With a lunge he was out of the boat, to flounder in the sea, drinking mouthfuls of sea water from cupped hands.
    He stopped drinking. He looked up at me and a strange light came into his