THE butio of this town had been absent for some reason in the great wood those days of the shipwreck and the building of La Navidad. Now he was again here, and I consorted with him and chiefly from him learned their language. The Admiral had taken Diego Colon to Spain, and to Spain was gone too Luis Torres, swearing that he would come again. To Spain was gone Sancho, but Beltran the cook stayed with us. Pedro and Fernando also.
Time passed. With the ending of January the heat increased. The butio knew all manner of simples; he was doctor and priest together. He had a very simple magic. He himself did not expect it to reach the Great Spirit, but it might affect the innumerablezemesor under and under-under spirits. These barbarians, using other words for them, had letter-notion of gnome, sylph, undine and salamander. All things lived and took offense or became propitious. Effort consisted in making them propitious. If the effort was too great one of them killed you. Then you went to the shadowy caves. There was a paradise, too, beautiful and easy. But the Great Spirit could not be hurt and had no wish to hurt any one else, whetherzemesor men. To live with the Great Spirit, that was really the Heron wish, though the little herons could not always see it.
This butio—Guarin his name—was a young man with eyes that could burn and voice that fell naturally into a chant. He took me into the forest with him to look for a very rare tree. When it was found I watched him gather plants from beneath it and scrape bits off its bark into a small calabash. I understood that it was good for fever, and later I borrowed from him and found that he had grounds for what he said.
La Navidad and Guarico neighbored each other. The Indians came freely to the fort, but Diego de Arana made a goodalcaydeand he would not have mere crowding within our wooden wall. Half of our thirty-eight, permitted at a time to wander, could not crowd Guarico. But in himself each Spaniard seemed a giant. At first a good giant, profoundly interesting. But I was to see pleased interest become a painful interest.
Women. The first complaint arose about the gods or the giants and women. Guacanagari came to La Navidad with Guarin and several old men his councilors. Diego de Arana received them and there was talk under the great tree within our gate. Then all the garrison was drawn up, and in the presence of the cacique Arana gave rebuke and command, and the two that had done the outrage had prison for a week. It was our first plain showing in this world that heaven-people or Europeans could differ among themselves as to right and wrong, could quarrel, upbraid and punish. But here was evidently good and bad. And what might be the proportion? As days went by the question gathered in this people’s bosom.
It was not that their women stood aloof from our men. Many did not so in the least! But it was to be free will and actual fondness, and in measure.—But there were those among us who, finding in lonely places, took by force. These became hated.
Diego de Arana was to collect the gold that was a royal monopoly. Trading for gold for one’s self was forbidden. Assuredly taking it by force—assuredly all robbery of that or anything else—was forbidden. But there came a robbery, and since it was resisted, murder followed. This was a league from Guarico and from La Navidad. The slain Indian’s companion escaping, told.
This time Diego de Arana went to Guarico and Guacanagari. He took with him a rich present, and he showed how the guilty men were punished. “You do not slay them?” asked Guacanagari. Arana shook his head. He thought we were too few in this land to be ridding of life the violent and lustful. But the Indians seemed to think that he said that he could not. They still doubted, I think, our mortality. As yet they had seen no mighty stranger bleed or die.
Arana would have kept his garrison within the walls. But indeed it was not healthful for them there, and at the very word of confinement faction rose. There were now two parties in La Navidad, the Commandant’s party and Escobedo’s party.
The heat increased. It was now March. An illness fell among us. I took Guarin into counsel and gave in water the bitter inner bark of that tree shredded and beaten fine. Those who shook with cold and burned with fever recovered.
Fray Ignatio was among those who sickened. He left after some days his hammock, but his strength did not come back to him. Yet, staff in hand, he went almost daily to Guarico. Then, like that! Fray Ignatio died. He died—his heart stopped—on the path between Guarico and La Navidad. He had been preaching, and then, Guarin told me, he put his hand to his side, and said, “I will go home!” He started up the path, but at the big tree he dropped. Men and women ran to him, but the butio was dead.
We buried Fray Ignatio beneath the cross on the hilltop. The Indians watched, and now they knew that we could die.
The heat increased.
At first Diego de Arana sent out at intervals exploring parties. We were to learn, at least, Guacanagari’s country. But the heat was great, and so many of those left at La Navidad only idle and sensual. They would push on to a village—we found in Guacanagari’s country many hamlets, but no other town like Guarico—and there they would stop, with new women, new talk, and the endless plenty to eat and sleep in the shade. When, at their own sweet will, they returned to La Navidad, the difficulties had been too great. They could not get to the high mountains where might or might not be the mines. But what they did was to spread over the country scandalous news of scandalous gods.
At last Arana sorted out those who could be trusted at least to strive for knowledge and self-control and sent these. But that weakened him at La Navidad, draining him of pure blood and leaving the infected, and by mid-April he ceased any effort at exploration. It must wait until the Admiral returned, and he began to be hungry indeed for that return.
Escobedo and Pedro Gutierrez were not hungry for it—not yet. These two became the head and front of ill, encouraging every insubordinate, infuriating all who suffered penalties, teaching insolence, self-will and license. They drew their own feather to them, promising evil knows what freedom for rapine.
All the silver weather, golden weather, diamond weather since we had left Gomera in the Canaries—how many ages since!—now was changed. We had thought it would last always, but now we entered the long season of great heat and daily rain. At first we thought these rains momentary, but day after day, week after week, with stifling heat, the clouds gathered, broke, and came mighty rain that at last ceased to be refreshing, became only wearying and hateful. It did not cool us; we lived in a sultry gloom. And the garrison of La Navidad became very quarrelsome. La Navidad showed the Indians Europeans cursing one another, giving blows, only held back by those around from rushing at each other, stabbing and cutting. Finally they saw Tomaso Passamonte kill one Jacamo. Diego de Arana hung Tomaso Passamonte. But what were the Indians to think? Not what they thought when first we came from the winged canoes to their beaches.
The last of April fell the second sickness and it was far worse than the first. Eleven men died, and we buried them. When it passed we were twenty-five Spaniards in Hispaniola, and we liked not the Indians as well as we had done, and they liked not us. Oh, the pity—pity—pity, the pity and the blame!
Guacanagari came to visit the commandant, none with him but the butio Guarin, and desiring to speak with Arana out of the company. They talked beneath the big tree, that being the most comfortable and commodious council chamber. Don Diego was imperfect yet in the tongue of Guarico, and he called Juan Lepe to help him out.
It was a story of Caonabo, cacique of Maguana that ran into the great mountains of Cibao, that cacique of whom we had already heard as being like Caribs. Caonabo had sent quite secretly two of his brothers to Guacanagari. He had heard ill of the strangers and thought they were demons, not gods! He advised the cacique of Guarico to surprise them while they slept and slay them. It was in his experience that all who ate and slept could be slain. If his brother Guacanagari needed help in the adventure, Caonabo would give it. He would even come in person.
Diego de Arana said, “What did you answer, O Cacique.”
Guacanagari spoke at some length of our Great Cacique and his longing that he might return. Everything had gone well while he was here! “He will return,” said Arana. “And he has your word.”
Guacanagari stated that he meant to keep his word. He had returned answer to Caonabo that there had been misfortunes but that the mighty strangers were truly mighty, and almost wholly beneficent. At any rate, he was not prepared to slay them, did not wish to slay them.
Arana spoke vigorously, pointing out to the cacique all the kindliness that had attended our first intercourse. The unhappinesses of February, March and April he attributed to real demons, not to our own fiend but to small powers at large, maleficent and alarmed, heathen powers in short, jealous of the introduction of the Holy Catholic religion. Guacanagari seemed to understand about these powers. He looked relieved. But Guarin who was with him regarded the sea and I saw his lip curl.
The commandant wished to know if there were any danger of Caonabo, alone, descending upon us from the mountains. But no! Maguana and Guarico were friends. They had not always been so, but now they were friends. De Arana looked doubtfully, and I saw him determine to keep watch and ward and to hold the men within or near to fort. But Guacanagari sat serene. He repeated that there were always preliminaries before wars, and that for a long time there had only been peace between Guarico and Maguana. “Caonabo is Carib,” said the young copper priest. The cacique answered, “Carib long ago. Not now.”
At sunset, the rain ceasing for a little, the earth smoking, the west a low, vaporous yellow, the swollen river sounding, Diego de Arana had summoned by the drum every man in La Navidad. He stood beneath our banner and put his hand upon the staff and spoke earnestly to those gathered before him, in their duty and out of their duty. He told of Caonabo, and of his own sense that Guacanagari was too confident. He told of Guacanagari’s fidelity to the Admiral, and he appealed to every Christian there to be at least as faithful. We were few and far from Spain, and we had perhaps more than we could conceive in trust. “Far from Spain, but no farther than we will from the blessed saints and the true Christ. Let us put less distance there, being few in this land and in danger!”
He knew that he had a dozen with him, and looked straight at Escobedo.
The latter said, “Live in the open and die there, if need be! To live in this rat hole, breathing plague, is dying already! Caonabo is a fable! These people! Spaniards have but to lift voice and they flee!”
He received from his following acquiescent sound. Spoke Pedro Gutierrez. “Guacanagari wishes to bottle us here; that is the whole of it. Why play his game? I never saw a safer land! Only La Navidad is not safe!”
Those two had half and perhaps more than half of the garrison. Arana cried, “Don Roderigo de Escobedo and Don Pedro Gutierrez, you serve the Queen ill!”
“You, Senor,” answered Gutierrez, “serve my Lady Idle Fear and my Lord Incapacity!”
Whereupon Arana put him in arrest and he lay that night in prison. The cloud was black over La Navidad.
IT did not lighten. Escobedo waited two days, then in the dark night, corrupting the watch, broke gaol for Pedro Gutierrez and with him and nine men quitted La Navidad. Beltran the cook it was who heard and procured a great smoking torch, and sent out against them a voice like a bull of Bashan’s. Arana sprang up, and the rest of us who slept. They were eleven men, armed and alert. There were shouts, blows, a clutching and a throwing off, a detaining and repelling. In the east showed long ghost fingers, the rain held away. They were at the gate when we ran upon them; they burst it open and went forth, leaving one of their own number dead, and two of them who stayed with Arana desperately hurt. We followed them down the path, through the wood, but they had the start. They did not go to Guarico, but they seized the boat of theSanta Mariawhich the Admiral had left with us and went up the river. We heard the dash of their oars, then the rain came down, with a weeping of every cloud.
The dead man they left behind was Fernando. I had seen Pedro in the gate, going forth.
Fourteen men, two of whom were ill and two wounded, stayed at La Navidad. Arana said with passion, “Honest men and a garrison at one! There is some gain!”
That could not be denied. Gain here, but how about it yonder?
It was May. And now the rain fell in a great copious flood, huge-dropped and warm, and now it was restrained for a little, and there shone a sun confused and fierce. Earth and forest dripped and streamed and smoked. We were Andalusians, but the heat drained us. But we held, we fourteen men. Arana did well at La Navidad. We all did what we could to live like true not false Castilians, true not false Christians. And I name Beltran the cook as hero and mighty encourager of hearts.
We went back and forth between La Navidad and Guarico, for though the Admiral had left us a store of food we got from them fruit and maize and cassava. They were all friendly again, for the fourteen withheld themselves from excess. Nor did we quarrel among ourselves and show them European weakness.
Guacanagari remained a big, easy, somewhat slothful, friendly barbarian, a child in much, but brave enough when roused and not without common sense. He had an itch for marvels, loved to hear tales of our world that for all one could say remained to them witchcraft and cloudland, world above their world! What could they, who had no great beasts, make of tales of horsemen? What could their huts know of palace and tower and cathedral, their swimmers of stone bridges, their canoes of a thousand ships greater far than theSanta Mariaand theNina? What could Guarico know of Seville? In some slight wise they practiced barter, but huge markets and fairs to which traveled from all quarters and afar merchants and buyers went with the tales of horsemen. And so with a thousand things! We were the waving oak talking to the acorn.
But there were among this folk two or three ready for knowledge. Guarin was a learning soul. He foregathered with the physician Juan Lepe, and many a talk they had, like a master and pupil, in some corner of La Navidad, or under a palm-thatched roof, or, when the rain held, by river or sounding sea. He had mind and moral sense, though not the European mind at best, nor the European moral sense at highest. But he was well begun. And he had beauty of form and countenance and an eager, deep eye. Juan Lepe loved him.
It was June. Guacanagari came to La Navidad, and his brown face was as serious as a tragedy. “Caonabo?” asked Diego de Arana.
A fortnight before this the cacique, at Arana’s desire, had sent three Indians in a canoe up the river, the object news if possible of that ten who had departed in that direction. Now the Indians were back. They had gone a long way until the high mountains were just before them, and there they heard news from the last folk who might be called Guarico and the first folk who might be called Maguana. The mighty strangers had gone on up into the mountains and Caonabo had put them to death.
“To death!”
It appeared that they had seized women and had beaten men whom they thought had gold which they would not give. They were madmen, Escobedo and Gutierrez and all with them!
Guacanagari said that Caonabo had invited them to a feast. It was spread in three houses, and they were divided so, and around each Spaniard was put a ring of Indians. They were eating and drinking. Caonabo entered the first house, and his coming made the signal. Escobedo and Pedro Gutierrez were in this house. They raised a shout, “Undone, Spaniards!” But though they were heard in the other houses—these houses being nothing more than booths—it was to no use. There followed struggle and massacre; finally Gutierrez and Escobedo and eight men lay dead. But certain Indians were also killed and among them a son of Caonabo.
It was July. We began to long toward the Admiral’s return. A man among us went melancholy mad, watching the sea, threatening the rain when it came down and hid the sea, and the Admiral might go by! At last he threw himself into ocean and was drowned. Another man was bitten by a serpent, and we could not save him. We were twelve Spaniards in La Navidad. We rested friends with Guarico, though now they held us to be nothing more than demigods. And indeed by now we were ragged!
Then, in a night, it came.
Guacanagari again appeared. It had reached him from up the river that Caonabo was making pact with the cacique of Marien and that the two meant to proceed against us. Standing, he spoke at length and eloquently. If he rested our friend, it might end in his having for foes Maguana and Marien. There had been long peace, and Guarico did not desire war. Moreover, Caonabo said that it was idle to dread Caribs and let in the mighty strangers! He said that all pale men, afraid of themselves so that they covered themselves up, were filled with evilzemesand were worse than a thousand Caribs! But Caonabo was a mocker and a hard-of-heart! Different was Guacanagari. He told us how different. It all ended in great hope that Caonabo would think better of it.
We kept watch and ward. Yet we could not be utterly cooped within La Navidad. Errands must be done, food be gathered. More than that, to seem to Guarico frightened, to cry that we must keep day and night behind wall with cannon trained, notwithstanding that Caonabo might be asleep in the mountains of Cibao, would be but to mine our own fame, we who, for all that had passed, still seemed to this folk mighty, each of us a host in himself! And as nothing came out of the forest, and no more messengers of danger, they themselves had ceased to fear, being like children in this wise. And we, too, at last; for now it was late August, and the weather was better, and surely, surely, any day we might see a white point rise from blue ocean,—a white point and another and another, like stars after long clouded night skies!
So we watched the sea. And also there was a man to watch the forest. But we did not conceive that the dragon would come forth in the daytime, nor that he could come at any time without our hearing afar the dragging of his body and the whistling of his breath.
It was halfway between sunrise and noon. Five of us were in the village, seven at La Navidad. The five were there for melons and fruit and cassava and tobacco which we bought with beads and fishhooks and bits of bright cloth. Three of the seven at La Navidad were out of gate, down at the river, washing their clothes. Diego Minas, the archer, on top of wall, watched the forest. Walking below, Beltran the cook was singing in his big voice a Moorish song that they made much of year before last in Seville. I had a book of Messer Petrarca’s poems. It had been Gutierrez’s, who left it behind when he broke forth to the mountains.
Beltran’s voice suddenly ceased. Diego the archer above him on wall had cried down, “Hush, will you, a moment!” Diego de Arana came up. “What is it?”
“I thought,” said the archer, “that I heard a strange shouting from toward village. Hark ye! There!”
We heard it, a confused sound. “Call in the men from the river!” Arana ordered.
Diego Minas sent his voice down the slope. The three below by the river also heard the commotion, distant as Guarico. They were standing up, their eyes turned that way. Just behind them hung the forest out of which slid, dark and smooth, the narrow river.
Out of the forest came an arrow and struck to the heart Gabriel Baraona. Followed it a wild prolonged cry of many voices, peculiar and curdling to the blood, and fifty—a hundred—a host of naked men painted black with white and red and yellow markings. Guarico did not use bow and arrow, but a Carib cacique knew them, and had so many, and also lances flint or bone-headed, and clubs with stones wedged in them and stone knives. Gabriel Baraona fell, whether dead or not we could not tell. Juan Morcillo and Gonzalo Fernandez sent a scream for aid up to La Navidad. Now they were hidden as some small thing by furious bees. Diego de Arana rushed for his sword. “Down and cut them out!”
Diego Minas fired the big lombard, but for fear of hurting our three men sent wide the ball. We looked for terror always from the flame, the smoke and great noise, and so there was terror here for a moment and a bearing back in which Juan and Gonzalo got loose and made a little way up path. But a barbarian was here who could not long be terrified. Caonabo sent half his horde against Guarico, but himself had come to La Navidad. That painted army rallied and overtook the fleeing men.
Shouting, making his swung sword dazzle in light, Diego de Arana raced down path, and Diego Minas and Beltran the cook and Juan Lepe with him. Many a time since then, in this island, have I seen half a dozen Christians with their arms and the superstitious terror that surrounded them put to flight twenty times their number. But this was early, and the spirit of these naked men not broken, and Caonabo faced us. It was he himself who, when three or four had been wounded by Arana, suddenly rushed upon the commandant. With his stone-headed club he struck the sword away, and he plunged his knife into Arana’s breast. He died, a brave man who had done his best at La Navidad.
Juan Morcillo and Gonzalo Fernandez and Diego Minas were slain. I saw a lifted club and swerved, but too late.
Blackness and neither care nor delight. Then, far off, a little beating of surf on shore, very far and nothing to do with anything. Then a clue of pain that it seemed I must follow or that must follow me, and at first it was a little thin thread, but then a cable and all my care was to thin it again. It passed into an ache and throb that filled my being like the rain clouds the sky. Then suddenly there were yet heavy clouds but the sky around and behind. I opened my eyes and sat up, but found that my arms were bound to my sides.
“We aren’t dead, and that’s some comfort, Doctor, as the cock said to the other cock in the market pannier!” It was Beltran the cook who spoke and he was bound like me. Around us lay the five dead. A score of Indians warded us, mighty strangers in bonds, and we heard the rest up at the fort where they were searching and pillaging.
Guarico, and the men there?
We found that out when at last they were done with La Navidad and they and we were put on the march. We came to where had been Guarico, and truly for long we had smelled the burning of it, as we had heard the crying and shouting. It was all down, the frail houses. I made out in the loud talking that followed the blending of Caonabo’s bands what had been done and not done. Guacanagari, wounded, was fled after fighting a while, he and his brother and the butio and all the people. But the mighty strangers found in the village, were dead. They had run down to the sea, but Caonabo’s men had caught them, and after hard work killed them. Juan Lepe and Beltran, passing, saw the five bodies.
I do not think that Caonabo had less than a thousand with him. He had come in force, and the whole as silent as a bat or moth. We were to learn over and over again that “Indians” could do that, travel very silently, creatures of the forest who took by surprise. Well, Guarico was destroyed, and Guacanagari and Guarin fled, and in all Hispaniola were only two Spaniards, and we saw no sail upon the sea, no sail at all!
WE turned from the sea. Thick forest came between us and it. We were going with Caonabo to the mountains. Beltran and I thought that it had been in question whether he should kill us at once, or hold us in life until we had been shown as trophies in Maguana, and that the pride and vanity of the latter course prevailed. After two days in this ruined place, during which we saw no Guarico Indian, we departed. The raid was over. All their war is by raid. They carried everything from the fort save the fort itself and the two lombards. In the narrow paths that are this world’s roads, one man must walk after another, and their column seems endless where it winds and is lost and appears again. Beltran and I were no longer bound. Nor were we treated unkindly, starved nor hurt in any way. All that waited until we should reach Caonabo’s town.
Caonabo was a most handsome barbarian, strong and fierce and intelligent, more fierce, more intelligent than Guacanagari. All had been painted, but the heat of the lowland and their great exertion had made the coloring run and mix most unseemly. When they left Guarico they plunged into the river and washed the whole away, coming out clear red-brown, shining and better to look upon. Caonabo washed, but then he would renew his marking with the paint which he carried with him in a little calabash.
A pool, still and reflecting as any polished shield, made his mirror. He painted in a terrific pattern what seemed meant for lightning and serpent. It was armor and plume and banner to him. I thought of our own devices, comforting or discomforting kinships! He had black, lustrous hair, no beard—they pluck out all body hair save the head thatch—high features, a studied look of settled and cold fierceness. Such was this Carib in Hispaniola.
Presently they put a watch and the rest all lay down and slept, Beltran beside me. The day had been clear, and now a great moon made silver, silver, the land around. It shone upon the Spanish sailor and upon the Carib chief and all the naked Manguana men. I thought of Europe, and of how all this or its like had been going on hundred years by hundred years, while perished Rome and quickened our kingdoms, while Charlemagne governed, while the Church rose until she towered and covered like the sky, while we went crusades and pilgrimages, while Venice and Genoa and Lisbon rose and flourished, while letters went on and we studied Aristotle, while question arose, and wider knowledge. At last Juan Lepe, too, went to sleep.
Next day we traveled among and over mountains. Our path, so narrow, climbed by rock and tree. Now it overhung deep, tree-crammed vales, now it bore through just-parted cliffs. Beltran and Juan Lepe had need for all their strength of body.
The worst was that that old tremor and weakness of one leg and side, left after some sea fight, which had made Beltran the cook from Beltran the mariner, came back. I saw his step begin to halt and drag. This increased. An hour later, the path going over tree roots knotted like serpents, he stumbled and fell. He picked himself up. “Hard to keep deck in this gale!”
When he went down there had been an exclamation from those Indians nearest us. “Aiya!” It was their word for rotten, no good, spoiled, disappointing, crippled or diseased, for a misformed child or an old man or woman arrived at helplessness. Such, I had learned from Guarin, they almost invariably killed. It was why, from the first, we hardly saw dwarfed or humped or crippled among them.
We had to cross a torrent upon a tree that falling had made from side to side a rounded bridge. Again that old hurt betrayed him. He slipped, would have fallen into the torrent below, but that I, turning, caught him and the Indian behind us helped. We managed across. “My ship,” said Beltran, “is going to pieces on the rocks.”
The path became ladder steep. Now Beltran delayed all, for it was a lame man climbing. I helped him all I could.
The sun was near its setting. We were aloft in these mountains. Green heads still rose over us, but we were aloft, far above the sea. And now we were going through a ravine or pass where the walking was better. Here, too, a wind reached us and it was cooler. Cool eve of the heights drew on. We came to a bubbling well of coldest water and drank to our great refreshment. Veritable pine trees, which we never saw in the lowlands, towered above and sang. The path was easier, but hardly, hardly, could Beltran drag himself along it. His arm was over my shoulder.
Out of the dark pass we came upon a table almost bare of trees and covered with a fine soft grass. The mountains of Cibao, five leagues—maybe more—away, hung in emerald purple and gold under the sinking sun. The highest rocky peaks rose pale gold. Below us and between those mountains on which we stood and the golden mountains of Cibao, spread that plain, so beautiful, so wide and long, so fertile and smiling and vast, that afterwards was called the Royal Plain! East and west one might not see the end; south only the golden mountains stopped it. And rivers shone, one great river and many lesser streams. And we saw afar many plumes of smoke from many villages, and we made out maize fields, for the plain was populous.Vega Real! So lovely was it in that bright eve! The very pain of the day made it lovelier.
The high grassy space ran upon one side to sheer precipice, dropping clear two hundred feet. But there was camping ground enough—and the sun almost touched the far, violet earth.
The Indians threw themselves down. When they had supper they would eat it, when they had it not they would wait for breakfast. But Caonabo with twenty young men came to us. He said something, and my arms were caught from behind and held. He faced Beltran seated against a pine. “Aiya!” he said. His voice was deep and harsh, and he made a gesture of repugnance. There was a powerfully made Indian beside him, and I saw the last gleam of the sun strike the long, sharp, stone knife. “Kill!” said the cacique.
A dozen flung themselves upon Beltran, but there was no need, for he sat quite still with a steady face. He had time to cry to Juan Lepe, who cried to him, “That’s what I say! Good cheer and courage and meet again!”
He had no long suffering. The knife was driven quickly to his heart. They drew the shell to the edge of the precipice and dropped it over.
It was early night, it was middle night, it was late night. They had set no watch, for where and what was the danger here on this mountain top?
One side went down in a precipice, one sloping less steeply we had climbed from the pine trees and the well, one of a like descent we would take to-morrow down to the plain, but the fourth was mountain head hanging above us and thick wood,—dark, entangled, pathless. And it chanced or it was that Juan Lepe lay upon the side toward the peak, close to forest. The Indians had no thought to guard me. We lay down under the moon, and that bronze host slept, naked beautiful statues, in every attitude of rest.
The moon shone until there was silver day. Juan Lepe was not sleeping.
There was no wind, but he watched a branch move. It looked like a man’s arm, then it moved farther and was a full man,—an Indian, noiseless, out clear in the moon, from the wood. I knew him. It was the priest Guarin, priest and physician, for they are the same here. Palm against earth, I half rose. He nodded, made a sign to rise wholly and come. I did so. I stood and saw under the moon no waking face nor upspringing form. I stepped across an Indian, another, a third. Then was clear space, the wood, Guarin. There was no sound save only the constant sound of this forest by night when a million million insects waken.
He took my hand and drew me into the brake and wilderness. There was no path. I followed him over I know not what of twined root and thick ancient soil, a powder and flake that gave under foot, to a hidden, rocky shelf that broke and came again and broke and came again. Now we were a hundred feet above that camp and going over mountain brow, going to the north again. Gone were Caonabo and his Indians; gone the view of the plain and the mountains of Cibao. Again we met low cliff, long stony ledges sunk in the forest, invisible from below. I began to see that they would not know how to follow. Caonabo might know well the mountains of Cibao, but this sierra that was straight behind Guarico, Guarico knew. It is a blessed habit of their priests to go wandering in the forest, making their medicine, learning the country, discovering, using certain haunts for meditation. Sometimes they are gone from their villages for days and weeks. None indeed of these wild peoples fear reasonable solitude. Out of all which comes the fact that Guarin knew this mountain. We were not far, as flies the bird, from the burned town of Guarico, from the sea without sail, from the ruined La Navidad. When the dawn broke we saw ocean.
He took me straight to a cavern, such another as that in which Jerez and Luis Torres and I had harbored in Cuba. But this had fine sand for floor, and a row of calabashes, and wood laid for fire.
Here Juan Lepe dropped, for all his head was swimming with weariness.
The sun was up, the place glistered. Guarin showed how it was hidden. “I found it when I was a boy, and none but Guarin hath ever come here until you come, Juan Lepe!” He had no fear, it was evident, of Caonabo’s coming. “They will think your idol helped you away. If they look for you, it will be in the cloud. They will say, ‘See that dark mark moving round edge of cloud mountain! That is he!’” I asked him, “Where are Guacanagari and the rest?”
“Guacanagari had an arrow through his thigh and a deep cut upon the head. He was bleeding and in a swoon. His brother and the Guarico men and I with them took him, and the women took the children, and we went away, save a few that were killed, upon the path that we used when in my father’s time, the Caribs came in canoes. After a while we will go down to Guacanagari. But now rest!”
He looked at me, and then from a little trickling spring he took water in a calabash no larger than an orange and from another vessel a white dust which he stirred into it, and made me drink. I did not know what it was, but I went to sleep.
But that sleep did not refresh. It was filled with heavy and dreadful dreams, and I woke with an aching head and a burning skin. Juan Lepe who had nursed the sick down there in La Navidad knew feebly what it was. He saw in a mist the naked priest, his friend and rescuer, seated upon the sandy floor regarding him with a wrinkled brow and compressed lips, and then he sank into fever visions uncouth and dreadful, or mirage-pleasing with a mirage-ecstasy.
Juan Lepe did not die, but he lay ill and like to die for two months. It was deep in October, that day at dawn when I came quietly, evenly, to myself again, and lay most weak, but with seeing eyes. At first I thought I was alone in the cavern, but then I saw Guarin where he lay asleep.
That day I strengthened, and the next day and the next. But I had lain long at the very feet of death, and full strength was a tortoise in returning. So good to Juan Lepe was Guarin!
Now he was with me, and now he went away to that village where was Guacanagari. He had done this from the first coming here, nursing me, then going down through the forest to see that all was well with his wounded cacique and the folk whose butio he was. They knew his ways and did not try to keep him when he would return to the mountain, to “make medicine.” So none knew of the cavern or that there was one Spaniard left alive in all Hayti.
I strengthened. At last I could draw myself out of cave and lie, in the now so pleasant weather, upon the ledge before it. All the vast heat and moisture was gone by; now again was weather of last year when we found San Salvador.
I could see ocean. No sail, and were he returning, surely it should have been before this! He might never return.
When Guarin was away I sat or lay or moved about a small demesne and still prospered. There were clean rock, the water, the marvelous forest. He brought cassava cake, fruit, fish from the sea. He brought me for entertainment a talking parrot, and there lived in a seam of the rock a beautiful lizard with whom I made friends. The air was balm, balm! A steady soft wind made cataract sound in the forest. Sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight, were great glories.
It was November; it was mid-November and after.
Now I was strong and wandered in the forest, though never far from that cliff and cavern. It was settled between us that in five days I should go down with Guarin to Guacanagari. He proposed that I should be taken formally into the tribe. They had a ceremony of adoption, and after that Juan Lepe would be Guarico. He would live with and teach the Guaricos, becoming butio—he and Guarin butios together. I pondered it. If the Admiral came not again it was the one thing to do.
I remember the very odor and exquisite touch of the morning. Guarin was away. I had to myself cave and ledge and little waterfall and great trees that now I was telling one from another. I had parrot and lizard and spoke now to the one and now to the other. I remember the butterflies and the humming birds.
I looked out to sea and saw a sail!
It was afar, a white point. I leaned against the rock for I was suddenly weak who the moment before had felt strong. The white point swelled. It would be a goodly large ship. Over blue rim slipped another flake. A little off I saw a third, then a fourth. Juan Lepe rubbed his eyes. Before there came no more he had counted seventeen sail. They grew; they were so beauteous. Toward the harbor sailed a fleet. Now I made out the flagship.
O Life, thou wondrous goddess of happenings!
An hour I sat on cliff edge and watched. They were making in, the lovely white swans. When they were fairly near, when in little time the foremost would bring to, down sail and drop anchor, Juan Lepe, gathering his belongings together, bidding the lizard farewell and taking the parrot with him on shoulder, left cavern and cliff and took Guarin’s path down through the forest.
Halfway to level land he met Guarin coming up; the two met beneath a tree huge and spreading, curtained with a vine, starred with flowers. “He has come!” cried the Indian. “They have come!” In his voice was marveling, awe, perturbation.
The sun in the sky shone, and in the bay hung that wonder of return, the many ships for theNina. Juan Lepe and Guarin went on down through wood to a narrow silver beach, out upon which had cast itself an Indian village.
Guacanagari was not here. He waited within his house for the Admiral. But his brother, and others of Guarico, saw me and there rose a clamor and excitement that for the moment took them from the ships. Guarin explained and Juan Lepe explained, but still this miraculous day dyed also for them my presence here. I had been slain, and had come to life to greet the Great Cacique! It grew to a legend. I met it so, long afterwards in Hispaniola.
ONE by one were incoming, were folding wings, were anchoring, Spanish ships. Three were larger each than theSanta Mariaand thePintatogether; the others caravels of varying size. Seventeen in all, a fleet, crowded with men, having cannon and banners and music. Europe was coming with strength into Asia! The Indians on the beach were moved as by an unresting wind. They had terror, they had delight, and some a mere stupidity of staring. The greatest ship, the first to anchor, carried the banner of Castile and Leon, and the Admiral’s banner. Now a boat put off from her, boats also from the two ships next in grandeur.
As they came over the blue wave Juan Lepe stepped down sand to water edge. Not here, but somewhat to the west, before La Navidad would one look for this anchoring. He thought rightly that the Admiral came here from La Navidad, where he found only ruin, but also some straying Indian who could give news. So it was, for presently in the foremost boat I made out two Guarico men. They had told of Caonabo and of Guacanagari’s fortunes, and of every Spaniard dead of that illness or slain by Caonabo. They would put Juan Lepe among these last, but here was Juan Lepe, one only left of that thirty-eight.
The boat approached. I saw the bared head, higher than any other, the white hair, the blue-gray eyes, the strong nose and lips, the whole majestic air of the man, as of a great one chosen. Master Christopherus—Don Cristoval—el Almirante! One of the rowers, and that was Sancho with whom I had walked on the Fishertown road, first saw me and gave a startled cry. All in the boat turned head. I heard the Admiral’s voice, “Aye, it is! It is!”
Boat touched sand, there was landing. All sprang out. The Admiral took me in his arms. “You alone—one only?”
I answered, “One only. The most died in their duty.”
He released me. “Senors, this is senor Juan Lepe, that good physician whom we left. Now tell—tell all—before we go among this folk!”
By water edge I told, thirty men of Spain around me. A woeful story, I made it short. These men listened, and when it was done fell a silence. Christopherus Columbus broke it. “The wave sucks under and throws out again, but we sail the sea, have sailed it and will sail it!—Now were these Indians false or fair?”
I could tell how fair they had been—could praise Guarico and Guacanagari and Guarin. He listened with great satisfaction. “I would lay my head for that Indian!”
Talk with him could not be prolonged, for we were in a scene of the greatest business and commotion. When I sought for Guarin he was gone. Nor was Guacanagari yet at hand. I looked at the swarming ships and ship boats, and the coming and coming upon the beach of more and more clothed men, and at the tall green palms and the feathered mountains. This host, it seemed to me, was not so artlessly amazed as had been we of theSanta Maria, thePintaand theNina, when first we came to lands so strange to Europe. Presently I made out that they had seen others of these islands and shores. Coming from Spain they had sailed more southerly than we had done before them. They had made a great dip and had come north-by-west to Hispaniola. I heard names of islands given by the Admiral, Dominica, Marigalante, Guadaloupe, Santa Maria la Antigua, San Juan. They had anchored by these, set foot upon them, even fought with people who were Caribs, Caribals or Cannibals. They had a dozen Caribs, men and women, prisoners upon theMarigalantethat was the Admiral’s ship.
This group about Juan Lepe, survivor of La Navidad, talked like seasoned finders and takers. For the most part they were young men and hidalgos, fighters against the Moors, released by the final conquest of those paynims, out now for further wild adventure and for gold with which to return, wealthy and still young, to Spanish country, Spanish cities, Spanish women! They had the virtue and the vice of their sort, courage, miraculous generosities and as miraculous weaknesses. Gold, valor, comradeship—and eyes resting appraisingly upon young Guarico women there upon the silver beach with Guarico men.
I heard one cry “Master Juan Lepe!” and turning found Luis Torres. We embraced, we were so glad each to see the other. My hidalgos were gone, but before I could question Luis or he me, there bore down upon us, coming together like birds, half a dozen friars. “We bring twelve—number of the Apostles!” said Luis. “Monks and priests. Father Bernardo Buil is their head. The Holy Father hath appointed him Vicar here. You won’t find him a Fray Ignatio!”
A bull-necked, dark-browed, choleric looking man addressed me. His Benedictine dress became him ill. He should have been a Captain of Free Lances in whatever brisk war was waging. He said, “The survivor, Juan Lepe?—We stopped at your La Navidad and found ruin and emptiness. There must have been ill management—gross!”
“They are all dead,” I answered. “None of us manage the towers so very well!”
He regarded me more attentively. “The physician, Juan Lepe. Where did you study?”
“In Poitiers and in Paris, Father.”
“You have,” he said, “the height and sinew and something of the eye and voice of a notable disappeared heretic, Jayme de Marchena, who slipped the Dominicans. I saw him once from a doorway. But that the Prior of La Rabida himself told me that he had accurate knowledge that the man was gone with the Jews to Fez, I could almost think—But of course it is not possible, and now I see the differences.”
I answered him with some indifferent word, and we came to the Haytiens, and how many had Fray Ignatio made Christian? “I knew him,” said the Benedictine. “A good man, but weak, weak!”
Juan Lepe asked of the Indians the Admiral had taken to Spain. “But six reached us alive. We instructed them and baptized them. A great event—the Grand Cardinal and the King and the Queen attending! Three died during the summer, but blessedly, being the first of all their people in all time to enter heaven. A great salvation!”
He looked at the forest and mountains, the sands, the Guaricos, as at a city he was besieging.
“Ha!” said Father Buil, and with his missionaries moved up the beach.
Luis and I began to talk. “No need to tell me that Spain gave you welcome!”’
“The royalest ever! First we came to Lisbon, driven in by storm, and had it there from King John, and then to Palos which, so to speak, went mad! Then through Spain to Barcelona, where was the court, and all the bells in every town ringing and every door and window crowded, and here is the Faery Prince on a white charger, his Indians behind him and gold and parrots and his sailors! Processions and processions—alcalde and alcayde and don and friar and priest, and let us stop at the church and kneel before high altar, and vow again in seven years to free the Sepulchre! He hath walked and ridden, waked and slept, in a great, high vision! Most men have visions but he can sustain vision.”
“Aye, he can!”
“So at last into Barcelona, where grandees meet us, and so on to the court, and music as though the world had turned music! And the King and Queen and great welcome, and, ‘Sit beside us, Don Cristoval Colon!’ and ‘Tell and tell again’, and ‘Praise we Most High God!’”
“It is something for which to praise! Ends of the earth beginning to meet.”
“Aye! So we write that very night to the Pope to be confirmed that the glory and profit under God are to Castile and Aragon. But the Queen thought most of the heathen brought to Christ. And the Admiral thinks of his sons and his brothers and his old father, and of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Prophecies, and he has the joy of the runner who touches the goal!—I would you could have seen the royalty with which he was treated—not one day nor week but a whole summer long—the flocking, the bowing and capping, the ‘Do me the honor—‘, the ‘I have a small petition.’ Nothing conquers like conquering!”
“He had long patience.”
“Aye. Well, he is at height now. But he has got with him the old disastrous seeds.—Fifteen hundred men, and among them quite a plenty like Gutierrez and Escobedo! But there are good men, too, and a great lot of romantical daredevils. No pressing this time! We might have brought five thousand could the ships have held them. ‘Come to the Indies and make your fortune!’—‘Aye, that is my desire!’”
I said, “I am looking now at a romantical daredevil whom I have seen before, though I am sure that he never noticed me.”
“Don Alonso de Ojeda? He is feather in cap, and sometimes cap, and even at stress head within the cap! Without moving you’ve beckoned him.”
There approached a young man of whom I knew something, having had him pointed out by Enrique de Cerda in Santa Fe. I had before that heard his name and somewhat of his exploits. In our day, over all Spain, one might find or hear of cavaliers of this brand. War with the Moor had lasted somewhat longer than the old famed war with Troy. It had modeled youth; young men were old soldiers. When there came up a sprite like this one he drank war like wine. A slight young man, taut as a rope in a gale, with dark eyes and red lips and a swift, decisive step, up he came.
“Oh, you are the man who lived out of all your fort? How did you manage it?”
“I had a friend among these friendly Indians who rescued me.”
“Yes! It is excellent warfare to have friends.—You have seen no knight nor men-at-arms, nor heard of such?”
“Not under those names.”
“How far do you think we may be from true houses and cities, castles, fortresses?”
“I haven’t the least idea. By the looks of it, pretty far.”
“It seems to me that you speak truth,” he answered. “Well, it isn’t what we looked for, but it’s something! Room yet to dare!” Off he went, half Mercury, half Mars, and a sprig of youth to draw the eyes.
“Was there nothing ever heard,” I asked Luis, “of thePintaand Martin Pinzon?”
“He is dead.”
“You saw the wreck?”
“No, not that way, though true it is that he wrecked himself! I forget that you know nothing. We met thePintalast January, not a day from here, with Monte Cristi there yet in sight. When he came aboard and sat in the great cabin I do not know what he said, except that it was of separation by that storm, and the feeling that two parties discovering would thereby discover the more, and the better serve their Majesties. The Admiral made no quarrel with him. He had some gold and some news of coasts that we had not seen. And he did not seem to think it necessary to seem penitent or anything but just naturally Martin Pinzon. So on we sailed together, he on thePintaand the Admiral on theNina. But that was a rough voyage home over Ocean-Sea! Had we had such weather coming, might have been mutiny and throat-cutting and putting back, Cathay and India being of no aid to dead men! Six times at least we thought we were drowned, and made vows, kneeling all together and the Admiral praying for us, Fray Ignatio not being there. Then came clear, but beyond Canaries a three days’, three nights’ weather that truly drove us apart, thePintaand theNina. We lost each other in the darkness and never found again. We were beaten into the Tagus, thePintaon to Bayonne. Then, mid-March, we came to Palos, landed and the wonder began. And in three days who should come limping in but thePinta? But she missed the triumph, and Martin Pinzon was sick, and there was some coldness shown. He went ashore to his own house, and his illness growing worse he died there. Well, he had qualities.”
“Aye,” I answered, with a vision of the big, bluff, golden-haired man.
“Vicente Pinzon is here; his ship theCorderayonder. What’s the stir now? The Admiral will go to see Guacanagari?”
That, it seemed, was what it was, and presently came word that Juan Lepe should go with him. A body of cavaliers sumptuously clad, some even wearing shining corselet, greaves and helm, was forming about him who was himself in a magnificent dress. Besides these were fifty of the plainer sort, and there lacked not crossbow, lance and arquebus. And there were banners and music. We were going like an army to be brotherly with Guacanagari. Father Buil was going also, and his twelve gowned men. “Who,” I asked Luis, “is the man beside the Admiral? He seems his kin.”
“He is. It is his brother, Don Diego. He is a good man, able, too, though not able like the Admiral. They say the other brother, Bartholomew, who is in England or in France, is almost as able. How dizzily turns the wheel for some of us! Yesterday plain Diego and Bartholomew, a would-be churchman and a shipmaster and chart-maker! Now Don Diego—Don Bartholomew! And the two sons watching us off from Cadiz! Pages both of them to the Prince, and pictures to look at! ‘Father!’ and ‘Noble father! and ‘Forget not your health, who are our Dependance!’”
Waiting for all to start, I yet regarded that huge dazzle upon the beach, so many landed, so many coming from the ships, the ships themselves so great a drift of sea birds! As for those dark folk—what should they think of all these breakers-in from heaven? It seemed to me to-day that despite their friendliness shown us here from the first, despite the miracle and the fed eye and ear and the excitement, they knew afar a pale Consternation.
At last, to drum and trumpet, we passed from shining beach into green forest. I found myself for a moment beside Diego Colon—not the Admiral’s brother, but the young Indian so named. Now he was Christian and clothed, and truly the Haitiens stared at him hardly less than at the Admiral. I greeted him and he me. He tried to speak in Castilian but it was very hard for him, and in a moment we slipped into Indian.
I asked him, “How did you like Spain?”
He looked at me with a remote and childlike eye and began to speak of houses and roads and horses and oxen.
A message came from the Admiral at head of column. I went to him. Men looked at me as I passed them. I was ragged now, grizzle-bearded and wan, and they seemed to say, “Is it so this strange land does them? But those first ones were few and we are many, and it does not lie in our fortune! Gold lies in ours, and return in splendor and happiness.” But some had more thoughtful eyes and truer sense of wonder.
We found Guacanagari in a new, large, very clean house, and found him lying in a great hammock with his leg bound with cotton web, around him wives and chief men. He sat up to greet the Admiral and with a noble and affecting air poured forth speech and laid his hand upon his hidden hurt.
Now I knew, because Guarin had told me so, that that wound was healed. It had given trouble—the Caribs poisoned their darts—but now it was well. But they are simpler minded than we, this folk, and I read Guacanagari that he must impress the returning gods with his fidelity. He had proved it, and while Juan Lepe was by he did not need this mummery, but he had thought that he might need. So, a big man evidently healthful, he sighed and winced and half closed his eyes as though half dying still in that old contest when he had stood by the people from the sky. I interpreted his speech, the Admiral already understanding, but not the surrounding cavaliers. It was a high speech or high assurance that he had done his highest best.
“Do I not believe that, Guacanagari?” said the Admiral, and thinking of Diego de Arana and Fray Ignatio and others and of the good hope of La Navidad, tears came into his eyes.
He sat upon the most honorable block of wood which was brought him and talked to Guacanagari. Then at his gesture one brought his presents, a mirror, a rich belt, a knife, a pair of castanets. Guacanagari, it seemed, since the sighting of the ships, had made collection on his part. He gave enough gold to make lustful many an eye looking upon that scene.
The women brought food and set before the Spaniards in the house. I found Guarin and presently we came to be standing without the entrance—they had no doors; sometimes they had curtains of cotton—looking upon that strange gathering in the little middle square of the town. So many Spaniards in the palm shadows, and the women feeding them, and Alonso de Ojeda’s hand upon the arm of a slender brown girl with a wreath of flowers around her head. Father Buil was within with the Admiral, truculently and suspiciously regarding the idolater who now had left the hammock and seemed as well of a wound as any there! But here without were eight or ten friars, gathered together under a palm tree, making refection and talking among themselves. One devout brother, sitting apart and fasting, told his beads.
Said Guarin, “I have been watching him. He is talking to hiszeme. —They are all butios?”
“Yes. Most of them are good men.”
“What is going to happen here to all my people? Something is over against me and my people, I feel it! Even the cacique has fear.”
“It is the dark Ignorance and the light Ignorance, the clothed Ignorance and the naked Ignorance. I feel it too, what you feel. But I feel, O Guarin, that the inner and true Man will not and cannot take hurt!”
He said, “Do they come for good?”
I answered, “There is much good in their coming. Seen from the mountain brow, enormous good, I think. In the long run I am fain to think that all have their market here, you no less than I, Guacanagari no less than the Admiral.”
“I do not know that,” he said. “It seems to me the sunny day is dark.”
I said, “In the main all things work together, and in the end is honey.”
Out they came from palm-roofed house, the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy of what Indies he could find for Spain and Spain could take, and the Indian king or grandee or princeling. Perceiving that what he did was appreciated for what it was, Guacanagari had recovered his lameness. The cotton was no longer about his thigh; he moved straight and lightly,—a big, easy Indian.
It was now well on in the afternoon, but he would go with the Mighty Stranger, the Great Cacique his friend, to see the ships and all the wonders. His was a childlike craving for pure novelty and marvel.
So we went, all of us, back through vast woodland to cerulean water. Water was deep, theMarigalanterode close in, and about and beyond her theSanta Clara, theCordera, theSan Juan, theJuana, anotherNina, theBeatrixand many another fair name. They were beautiful, the ships on the gay water and about them the boats and the red men’s canoes.
We went to theMarigalante, I with the Admiral. Dancing across in the boat there spoke to me Don Diego Colon, born Giacomo Colombo, and I found him a sober, able man, with a churchly inclination. Here rose the Marigalante, and now we were upon it, and it was a greater ship than theSanta Maria, a goodly ship, with goodly gear aboard and goodly Spaniards. Jayme de Marchena felt the tug of blood, of home-coming into his country.