Chapter XXI.Nothingless than the strong desire to escape from the domination of the admiral would ever have kept Martin Alonzo beating to windward in that storm, when he could have run before it to shelter on the Cuban coast.As it was, he had to give up all idea of making the island of Bohio; and all the night long the little vessel plunged through the towering waves, carrying almost no canvas at all, but being hurried along at a rapid rate towards the north.During all the next day, and the next, the storm raged, and the sailors, with the faint-heartedness that seemed characteristic of them, began to murmur that they had only exchanged one evil for a worse, when land hove in sight and closed their lips.The Indians could tell Diego nothing of this new land, and so Martin Alonzo determined to make it and explore it, in the hope of finding there the much-desired gold. Besides, it was advisable to go into shelter; and as he drew nearer to the land he saw that it was a collection ofislands, none of a very great size, giving him the assurance of a harbor in some one of the channels between the islands.He was fortunate in finding a safe harbor before night came on, and there he dropped anchor and remained until morning. At the first streak of dawn the deck was alive with the sailors, eagerly scanning the land to gain some notion of its promise. It was sadly disappointing, being neither so attractive nor so populous as the country they had just left, and, what was far worse, gave every augury of containing no metal of any sort.As the bad weather continued, however, Martin Alonzo spent several days in the comparative security of the inland sea formed by the far-stretching cluster of islands, going ashore every day only to confirm the first dismal impression of the barrenness of the land, and at last emerging into the open sea again, determined to sail to the south and come upon the famed Bohio, which they all had come to regard as their promised land.The weather was not propitious for the voyage, but all hands were agreed that they would rather take their chances of a storm than to remain among the profitless islands where they were; so Martin Alonzo set his course to thesoutheast, and took leave of the islands that had done no more than shelter him.For several days they beat about in an unusually tempestuous sea, and the only consolation Martin Alonzo drew out of the long voyage was the belief that the admiral would be unlikely to make the attempt to cross over from Cuba in such weather.However, the voyage bade fair to come to an end at last; for one afternoon the men on the lookout gave the welcome cry of land. By the time it was near enough to be seen distinctly, it was too late to enable them to make out anything but that it was a rocky coast, with high mountains rising up in the background.The storm, too, had been gradually increasing in violence, so that the ship could not even lay to until daylight, but was obliged to take an easterly course and run before the wind, which seemed suddenly to have altered its course, and was now blowing steadily from the northwest—a sign, according to Martin Alonzo, that the storm would presently abate.The storm, however, did not trouble the sailors now; for the prospect of soon fingering that gold for which they were all so eager gave them patience in the midst of their impatience. It was now that Diego was in great demand among them.His merry humor and constant flow of spirits had long ago made him a prime favorite with the men, while his knowledge of the Indian language made him of importance. It was to him that all questions relative to the nature of Bohio were always addressed, and now that thePintahad broken loose from the fleet, Martin Alonzo had given him permission to answer all questions freely.It may not be amiss to say that Miguel was the only one of the crew who had not taken kindly to Diego; and his aloofness was due as much to his jealousy of Juan’s liking of Diego as to his own sullen temper. Once or twice, when an occasion had offered, he had made a showing of being ready to injure Diego; but he had been very quickly warned that any such act on his part would end disastrously for himself, and therefore, although it was very well known that he was unfriendly to the boy, no one gave it any serious thought, and Miguel, indeed, always acted as if he had yielded to the force of public opinion.“Where is Fray Diego?” asked Rodrigo de Triana, on the evening after Bohio had been sighted. The sailors had fallen into the way of calling him fray, partly as a jest and partly because his superior knowledge of book learningseemed to make the sobriquet a natural and proper one.“Here he is,” answered Diego, who, with Juan, had been lying on the deck near the foremast, but in the shadow, so that he had not been recognizable. “What is it, my son?”By way of joke he often assumed the clerical manner, which he mimicked as well as he did most things.“Come hither, and tell us more of this land we have sighted, at last.”“Ay, do, good fray,” cried one after another of the men. Although a stiff gale was blowing, it was not a cold one, but rather laden with heat, as if it had come from a warm region, and the men were lying about the deck, clad in only shirts and trousers.“Why,” said Diego, “there is nothing new to tell you. I have told you all I know twenty times over.”“Then tell us for the twenty-first time,” said Rodrigo.“How well that worthy Rodrigo calculates!” said Diego, paternally. “He can add one to twenty and know the result. It is because he has taken to counting maravedis lately, no doubt.”Everybody laughed, for it was very well knownthat Rodrigo had spent many times over, in imagination, the ten thousand maravedis which were to be his for first seeing land.“If he get them,” interposed Miguel, sourly. “Deserters are not like to have many favors shown them.”“Oh,” interposed Juan, who often came between Miguel’s crookedness and the anger of the men, “he will never think again of his maravedis after he has been a few days at Bohio, if what Diego tells has but a grain of truth in it.”“This is Bohio, then?” demanded one of the men, eagerly.“The Indians say so,” answered Diego, “and are so mightily afraid at the very thought of landing here that I think they must be right.”“They say the inhabitants are great warriors and cannibals, do they not, Diego?” asked Juan.“They do, indeed,” answered he.“But the gold,” inquired one, as if the question had not already been asked and answered a hundred times. “Do they say there is a plenty of it?”“Plenty and plenty; but what is the use of my telling that so many times? By the morning we shall know all about it; and if we are not all roasted and served up before we can getaway, I have no doubt that we shall all be as rich as we ought to be.”“Ay! if we are not roasted,” growled Miguel.“Have no fear, my son,” said Diego, in his most benevolent tones; “for unless it should be in the dark, I doubt if any savage would take so much as one bite of you. And unless your flesh be far sweeter than your temper, even the darkness would not win you a second bite.”The men laughed heartily, and Miguel muttered under his breath; while Juan, leaning over to Diego, whispered uneasily:“I pray you, Diego! You promised you would not torment him.”“Then let him stop his croaking. If there be mischief, he is in it. If there be doubts, he has bred them. Always scowling at me, and always ready with his eternal croaking.”“It is true, Diego; but he is almost alone on the ship now, and you have all the friends. Besides, you promised me.”“Well,” said Diego, contritely, “I will try to rule my tongue.”With his change to better thoughts and feelings, Juan had been unable to continue the close intimacy with Miguel which had been begun in the prison; but he was of too generous and loyal a nature to cast him off, and so he had allthrough been placed in a very uncomfortable attitude towards him.It is quite likely that there would have been more said on this occasion that would have led up to harder words, for there is nothing your idle sailor likes better than a quarrel, unless it be a good story. There was now, however, no time for either of those time-killers; for the lookout suddenly shouted that ominous word which always sends terror to the sailor’s heart:“Breakers! Breakers off the starboard bow!”In an instant all was confusion, and Martin Alonzo was shouting orders that sent the men flying about the vessel, some here and some there. ThePintawas suddenly brought about, and pointed almost at right angles to her course. Diego, Juan, Rodrigo, and Miguel, quick to the order of the captain, had jumped into the bow, and were hanging on by the low rail, awaiting the next word, when thePintaswung around in the topping seas.The frail craft quivered and shook for a moment, and then buried her nose in a monster wave. When she came up again a cry—wild and terrified—fell upon the ears of the men.“Save him! save him! O Miguel!” The cry was from the lips of Juan.And Rodrigo, straining his eyes from the otherside of the deck, saw three terrible things: Diego dropping through the blackness of the night, Miguel with his hand upraised, Juan leaping from his place into the air.“Man overboard!” yelled Rodrigo.But the ship was in great danger, and no boat could live in such a sea; and so, though shuddering and anxious, Martin Alonzo continued to give orders, and the ship shot away through the waves after a moment of quivering hesitation.“DIEGO DROPPING THROUGH THE BLACKNESS OF THE NIGHT.”
Chapter XXI.Nothingless than the strong desire to escape from the domination of the admiral would ever have kept Martin Alonzo beating to windward in that storm, when he could have run before it to shelter on the Cuban coast.As it was, he had to give up all idea of making the island of Bohio; and all the night long the little vessel plunged through the towering waves, carrying almost no canvas at all, but being hurried along at a rapid rate towards the north.During all the next day, and the next, the storm raged, and the sailors, with the faint-heartedness that seemed characteristic of them, began to murmur that they had only exchanged one evil for a worse, when land hove in sight and closed their lips.The Indians could tell Diego nothing of this new land, and so Martin Alonzo determined to make it and explore it, in the hope of finding there the much-desired gold. Besides, it was advisable to go into shelter; and as he drew nearer to the land he saw that it was a collection ofislands, none of a very great size, giving him the assurance of a harbor in some one of the channels between the islands.He was fortunate in finding a safe harbor before night came on, and there he dropped anchor and remained until morning. At the first streak of dawn the deck was alive with the sailors, eagerly scanning the land to gain some notion of its promise. It was sadly disappointing, being neither so attractive nor so populous as the country they had just left, and, what was far worse, gave every augury of containing no metal of any sort.As the bad weather continued, however, Martin Alonzo spent several days in the comparative security of the inland sea formed by the far-stretching cluster of islands, going ashore every day only to confirm the first dismal impression of the barrenness of the land, and at last emerging into the open sea again, determined to sail to the south and come upon the famed Bohio, which they all had come to regard as their promised land.The weather was not propitious for the voyage, but all hands were agreed that they would rather take their chances of a storm than to remain among the profitless islands where they were; so Martin Alonzo set his course to thesoutheast, and took leave of the islands that had done no more than shelter him.For several days they beat about in an unusually tempestuous sea, and the only consolation Martin Alonzo drew out of the long voyage was the belief that the admiral would be unlikely to make the attempt to cross over from Cuba in such weather.However, the voyage bade fair to come to an end at last; for one afternoon the men on the lookout gave the welcome cry of land. By the time it was near enough to be seen distinctly, it was too late to enable them to make out anything but that it was a rocky coast, with high mountains rising up in the background.The storm, too, had been gradually increasing in violence, so that the ship could not even lay to until daylight, but was obliged to take an easterly course and run before the wind, which seemed suddenly to have altered its course, and was now blowing steadily from the northwest—a sign, according to Martin Alonzo, that the storm would presently abate.The storm, however, did not trouble the sailors now; for the prospect of soon fingering that gold for which they were all so eager gave them patience in the midst of their impatience. It was now that Diego was in great demand among them.His merry humor and constant flow of spirits had long ago made him a prime favorite with the men, while his knowledge of the Indian language made him of importance. It was to him that all questions relative to the nature of Bohio were always addressed, and now that thePintahad broken loose from the fleet, Martin Alonzo had given him permission to answer all questions freely.It may not be amiss to say that Miguel was the only one of the crew who had not taken kindly to Diego; and his aloofness was due as much to his jealousy of Juan’s liking of Diego as to his own sullen temper. Once or twice, when an occasion had offered, he had made a showing of being ready to injure Diego; but he had been very quickly warned that any such act on his part would end disastrously for himself, and therefore, although it was very well known that he was unfriendly to the boy, no one gave it any serious thought, and Miguel, indeed, always acted as if he had yielded to the force of public opinion.“Where is Fray Diego?” asked Rodrigo de Triana, on the evening after Bohio had been sighted. The sailors had fallen into the way of calling him fray, partly as a jest and partly because his superior knowledge of book learningseemed to make the sobriquet a natural and proper one.“Here he is,” answered Diego, who, with Juan, had been lying on the deck near the foremast, but in the shadow, so that he had not been recognizable. “What is it, my son?”By way of joke he often assumed the clerical manner, which he mimicked as well as he did most things.“Come hither, and tell us more of this land we have sighted, at last.”“Ay, do, good fray,” cried one after another of the men. Although a stiff gale was blowing, it was not a cold one, but rather laden with heat, as if it had come from a warm region, and the men were lying about the deck, clad in only shirts and trousers.“Why,” said Diego, “there is nothing new to tell you. I have told you all I know twenty times over.”“Then tell us for the twenty-first time,” said Rodrigo.“How well that worthy Rodrigo calculates!” said Diego, paternally. “He can add one to twenty and know the result. It is because he has taken to counting maravedis lately, no doubt.”Everybody laughed, for it was very well knownthat Rodrigo had spent many times over, in imagination, the ten thousand maravedis which were to be his for first seeing land.“If he get them,” interposed Miguel, sourly. “Deserters are not like to have many favors shown them.”“Oh,” interposed Juan, who often came between Miguel’s crookedness and the anger of the men, “he will never think again of his maravedis after he has been a few days at Bohio, if what Diego tells has but a grain of truth in it.”“This is Bohio, then?” demanded one of the men, eagerly.“The Indians say so,” answered Diego, “and are so mightily afraid at the very thought of landing here that I think they must be right.”“They say the inhabitants are great warriors and cannibals, do they not, Diego?” asked Juan.“They do, indeed,” answered he.“But the gold,” inquired one, as if the question had not already been asked and answered a hundred times. “Do they say there is a plenty of it?”“Plenty and plenty; but what is the use of my telling that so many times? By the morning we shall know all about it; and if we are not all roasted and served up before we can getaway, I have no doubt that we shall all be as rich as we ought to be.”“Ay! if we are not roasted,” growled Miguel.“Have no fear, my son,” said Diego, in his most benevolent tones; “for unless it should be in the dark, I doubt if any savage would take so much as one bite of you. And unless your flesh be far sweeter than your temper, even the darkness would not win you a second bite.”The men laughed heartily, and Miguel muttered under his breath; while Juan, leaning over to Diego, whispered uneasily:“I pray you, Diego! You promised you would not torment him.”“Then let him stop his croaking. If there be mischief, he is in it. If there be doubts, he has bred them. Always scowling at me, and always ready with his eternal croaking.”“It is true, Diego; but he is almost alone on the ship now, and you have all the friends. Besides, you promised me.”“Well,” said Diego, contritely, “I will try to rule my tongue.”With his change to better thoughts and feelings, Juan had been unable to continue the close intimacy with Miguel which had been begun in the prison; but he was of too generous and loyal a nature to cast him off, and so he had allthrough been placed in a very uncomfortable attitude towards him.It is quite likely that there would have been more said on this occasion that would have led up to harder words, for there is nothing your idle sailor likes better than a quarrel, unless it be a good story. There was now, however, no time for either of those time-killers; for the lookout suddenly shouted that ominous word which always sends terror to the sailor’s heart:“Breakers! Breakers off the starboard bow!”In an instant all was confusion, and Martin Alonzo was shouting orders that sent the men flying about the vessel, some here and some there. ThePintawas suddenly brought about, and pointed almost at right angles to her course. Diego, Juan, Rodrigo, and Miguel, quick to the order of the captain, had jumped into the bow, and were hanging on by the low rail, awaiting the next word, when thePintaswung around in the topping seas.The frail craft quivered and shook for a moment, and then buried her nose in a monster wave. When she came up again a cry—wild and terrified—fell upon the ears of the men.“Save him! save him! O Miguel!” The cry was from the lips of Juan.And Rodrigo, straining his eyes from the otherside of the deck, saw three terrible things: Diego dropping through the blackness of the night, Miguel with his hand upraised, Juan leaping from his place into the air.“Man overboard!” yelled Rodrigo.But the ship was in great danger, and no boat could live in such a sea; and so, though shuddering and anxious, Martin Alonzo continued to give orders, and the ship shot away through the waves after a moment of quivering hesitation.“DIEGO DROPPING THROUGH THE BLACKNESS OF THE NIGHT.”
Nothingless than the strong desire to escape from the domination of the admiral would ever have kept Martin Alonzo beating to windward in that storm, when he could have run before it to shelter on the Cuban coast.
As it was, he had to give up all idea of making the island of Bohio; and all the night long the little vessel plunged through the towering waves, carrying almost no canvas at all, but being hurried along at a rapid rate towards the north.
During all the next day, and the next, the storm raged, and the sailors, with the faint-heartedness that seemed characteristic of them, began to murmur that they had only exchanged one evil for a worse, when land hove in sight and closed their lips.
The Indians could tell Diego nothing of this new land, and so Martin Alonzo determined to make it and explore it, in the hope of finding there the much-desired gold. Besides, it was advisable to go into shelter; and as he drew nearer to the land he saw that it was a collection ofislands, none of a very great size, giving him the assurance of a harbor in some one of the channels between the islands.
He was fortunate in finding a safe harbor before night came on, and there he dropped anchor and remained until morning. At the first streak of dawn the deck was alive with the sailors, eagerly scanning the land to gain some notion of its promise. It was sadly disappointing, being neither so attractive nor so populous as the country they had just left, and, what was far worse, gave every augury of containing no metal of any sort.
As the bad weather continued, however, Martin Alonzo spent several days in the comparative security of the inland sea formed by the far-stretching cluster of islands, going ashore every day only to confirm the first dismal impression of the barrenness of the land, and at last emerging into the open sea again, determined to sail to the south and come upon the famed Bohio, which they all had come to regard as their promised land.
The weather was not propitious for the voyage, but all hands were agreed that they would rather take their chances of a storm than to remain among the profitless islands where they were; so Martin Alonzo set his course to thesoutheast, and took leave of the islands that had done no more than shelter him.
For several days they beat about in an unusually tempestuous sea, and the only consolation Martin Alonzo drew out of the long voyage was the belief that the admiral would be unlikely to make the attempt to cross over from Cuba in such weather.
However, the voyage bade fair to come to an end at last; for one afternoon the men on the lookout gave the welcome cry of land. By the time it was near enough to be seen distinctly, it was too late to enable them to make out anything but that it was a rocky coast, with high mountains rising up in the background.
The storm, too, had been gradually increasing in violence, so that the ship could not even lay to until daylight, but was obliged to take an easterly course and run before the wind, which seemed suddenly to have altered its course, and was now blowing steadily from the northwest—a sign, according to Martin Alonzo, that the storm would presently abate.
The storm, however, did not trouble the sailors now; for the prospect of soon fingering that gold for which they were all so eager gave them patience in the midst of their impatience. It was now that Diego was in great demand among them.
His merry humor and constant flow of spirits had long ago made him a prime favorite with the men, while his knowledge of the Indian language made him of importance. It was to him that all questions relative to the nature of Bohio were always addressed, and now that thePintahad broken loose from the fleet, Martin Alonzo had given him permission to answer all questions freely.
It may not be amiss to say that Miguel was the only one of the crew who had not taken kindly to Diego; and his aloofness was due as much to his jealousy of Juan’s liking of Diego as to his own sullen temper. Once or twice, when an occasion had offered, he had made a showing of being ready to injure Diego; but he had been very quickly warned that any such act on his part would end disastrously for himself, and therefore, although it was very well known that he was unfriendly to the boy, no one gave it any serious thought, and Miguel, indeed, always acted as if he had yielded to the force of public opinion.
“Where is Fray Diego?” asked Rodrigo de Triana, on the evening after Bohio had been sighted. The sailors had fallen into the way of calling him fray, partly as a jest and partly because his superior knowledge of book learningseemed to make the sobriquet a natural and proper one.
“Here he is,” answered Diego, who, with Juan, had been lying on the deck near the foremast, but in the shadow, so that he had not been recognizable. “What is it, my son?”
By way of joke he often assumed the clerical manner, which he mimicked as well as he did most things.
“Come hither, and tell us more of this land we have sighted, at last.”
“Ay, do, good fray,” cried one after another of the men. Although a stiff gale was blowing, it was not a cold one, but rather laden with heat, as if it had come from a warm region, and the men were lying about the deck, clad in only shirts and trousers.
“Why,” said Diego, “there is nothing new to tell you. I have told you all I know twenty times over.”
“Then tell us for the twenty-first time,” said Rodrigo.
“How well that worthy Rodrigo calculates!” said Diego, paternally. “He can add one to twenty and know the result. It is because he has taken to counting maravedis lately, no doubt.”
Everybody laughed, for it was very well knownthat Rodrigo had spent many times over, in imagination, the ten thousand maravedis which were to be his for first seeing land.
“If he get them,” interposed Miguel, sourly. “Deserters are not like to have many favors shown them.”
“Oh,” interposed Juan, who often came between Miguel’s crookedness and the anger of the men, “he will never think again of his maravedis after he has been a few days at Bohio, if what Diego tells has but a grain of truth in it.”
“This is Bohio, then?” demanded one of the men, eagerly.
“The Indians say so,” answered Diego, “and are so mightily afraid at the very thought of landing here that I think they must be right.”
“They say the inhabitants are great warriors and cannibals, do they not, Diego?” asked Juan.
“They do, indeed,” answered he.
“But the gold,” inquired one, as if the question had not already been asked and answered a hundred times. “Do they say there is a plenty of it?”
“Plenty and plenty; but what is the use of my telling that so many times? By the morning we shall know all about it; and if we are not all roasted and served up before we can getaway, I have no doubt that we shall all be as rich as we ought to be.”
“Ay! if we are not roasted,” growled Miguel.
“Have no fear, my son,” said Diego, in his most benevolent tones; “for unless it should be in the dark, I doubt if any savage would take so much as one bite of you. And unless your flesh be far sweeter than your temper, even the darkness would not win you a second bite.”
The men laughed heartily, and Miguel muttered under his breath; while Juan, leaning over to Diego, whispered uneasily:
“I pray you, Diego! You promised you would not torment him.”
“Then let him stop his croaking. If there be mischief, he is in it. If there be doubts, he has bred them. Always scowling at me, and always ready with his eternal croaking.”
“It is true, Diego; but he is almost alone on the ship now, and you have all the friends. Besides, you promised me.”
“Well,” said Diego, contritely, “I will try to rule my tongue.”
With his change to better thoughts and feelings, Juan had been unable to continue the close intimacy with Miguel which had been begun in the prison; but he was of too generous and loyal a nature to cast him off, and so he had allthrough been placed in a very uncomfortable attitude towards him.
It is quite likely that there would have been more said on this occasion that would have led up to harder words, for there is nothing your idle sailor likes better than a quarrel, unless it be a good story. There was now, however, no time for either of those time-killers; for the lookout suddenly shouted that ominous word which always sends terror to the sailor’s heart:
“Breakers! Breakers off the starboard bow!”
In an instant all was confusion, and Martin Alonzo was shouting orders that sent the men flying about the vessel, some here and some there. ThePintawas suddenly brought about, and pointed almost at right angles to her course. Diego, Juan, Rodrigo, and Miguel, quick to the order of the captain, had jumped into the bow, and were hanging on by the low rail, awaiting the next word, when thePintaswung around in the topping seas.
The frail craft quivered and shook for a moment, and then buried her nose in a monster wave. When she came up again a cry—wild and terrified—fell upon the ears of the men.
“Save him! save him! O Miguel!” The cry was from the lips of Juan.
And Rodrigo, straining his eyes from the otherside of the deck, saw three terrible things: Diego dropping through the blackness of the night, Miguel with his hand upraised, Juan leaping from his place into the air.
“Man overboard!” yelled Rodrigo.
But the ship was in great danger, and no boat could live in such a sea; and so, though shuddering and anxious, Martin Alonzo continued to give orders, and the ship shot away through the waves after a moment of quivering hesitation.
“DIEGO DROPPING THROUGH THE BLACKNESS OF THE NIGHT.”
“DIEGO DROPPING THROUGH THE BLACKNESS OF THE NIGHT.”
“DIEGO DROPPING THROUGH THE BLACKNESS OF THE NIGHT.”