"Nombre de San Martin! who is that up there like a cat?"
"Un gato! Cucarucha en palo!"
"If Alonso de Ojeda hears of your calling him a cockroach on a mast, he
will grind your ribs to a paste with a cudgel (os moliesen las costillas
a puros palos)!" observed a pale, sharp-faced lad in a shabby doublet.
The sailor who had made the comparison glanced at him and chuckled.
"Your pardon--hidalgo. I have been at sea so much of late that the
comparison jumped into my mind. Is he a caballero then?"
"One of the household of the Duke of Medina Coeli. He is always doing
such things. If he happened to think of flying, he would fly. Every one
must be good at something."
The performance which they had just been watching would fix the name of
Ojeda very firmly in the minds of those who saw. Queen Ysabel, happening
to ascend the tower of the cathedral at Seville with her courtiers and
ladies, remarked upon the daring and skill of the Moorish builders.
Everywhere in the newly conquered cities of Granada were their
magnificent domes and lofty muezzin towers, often seeming like the airy
minarets of a mirage. The next instant Alonso de Ojeda had walked out
upon a twenty-foot timber projecting into space two hundred feet above
the pavement, and at the very end he stood on one leg and waved the
other in the air. Returning, he rested one foot against the wall and
flung an orange clean over the top of the tower. He was small, though
handsome and well-made, and he had now shown a muscular strength of
which few had suspected him.
It was natural that the sailor should be interested in the people of the
court, for he had business there. The Admiral of the Indies was making
his arrangements for his second voyage, and he had desired Juan de la
Cosa to meet him at Seville. As the pilot stood waiting for the Admiral
to come out from an interview with Fonseca he had a good look at many of
the persons who were to join in this second expedition.
"There will be no unlocking the jail doors to scrape together crews for
this fleet, I warrant you," thought the old sailor exultantly as he
stood in the shadow of the Giralda watching Castile parade itself before
the new hero. Here were Diego Colón, a quiet-looking youth, the youngest
brother of the Admiral; Antonio de Marchena the astronomer, a learned
monk; Juan Ponce de León, a nobleman from the neighborhood of Cadiz with
a brilliant military record; Francisco de las Casas with his son
Bartolomé; and the valiant young courtier whom all Seville had seen
flirting with death in mid-air.
"Oh, it was nothing," La Cosa heard Ojeda say when Las Casas made some
kindly compliment on his daring. "I will tell you," he added in a lower
voice, pulling something small out of his doublet, "I have a sure
talisman in this little picture of the Virgin. The Bishop gave it to me,
and I always carry it. In all the dangers one naturally must encounter
in the service of such a master as mine, it has kept me safe. I have
never even been wounded."
The Duke of Medina Coeli was in fact a stern master in the school of
arms. He was always at the front in the wars just concluded between
Spaniard and Moor, and where he was, there he expected his squires to
be. There was no place among the youths whose fathers had given him
charge of their military training, for a lad with a grain of physical
cowardice. Ojeda moreover had a quick temper and a fiery sense of honor,
and it really seemed to savor of the miraculous that he had escaped all
harm. At any rate he had reached the age of twenty-one with unabated
faith in the little Flemish painting.
"These youngsters--" the veteran seaman said to himself as he looked at
the straight, proud, keen-faced squires and youthful knights marching
along the streets of the temporary capital, "now that the Moors are
vanquished what won't they do in the Indies! I think the golden days
must be come for Christians. And shall you be a soldier also, my lad?"
he asked of the sharp-faced boy, who still stood near him.
"My father says not. He wants me to be a lawyer," said the youngster
indifferently. Then he slipped away as some companions of his own age,
or a little older, came by, and one said enviously,
"Where have you been, Hernan' Cortes? Lucky you were not with us. My
faith--" the speaker wriggled expressively, "we caught a drubbing!"
"Told you so," returned the lad addressed, with cool unconcern. "Why
can't you see when to let go the cat's tail?"
"He has a head on him, that one," the seaman chuckled. "There is always
one of his sort in every gang of boys. But that young gallant Ojeda! A
fine young fellow, and as devoted as he is brave." Juan de la Cosa had
conceived at first sight an admiration and affection for Ojeda which was
to last as long as they both should live.
The fleet that stately sailed from Cadiz on September 25, 1493, was a
very different sight from the three shabby little caravels that slipped
down the Tinto a year and a half before. The Admiral now commanded
fourteen caravels and three great carracks or store-ships, on board of
which were horses, mules, cattle, carefully packed shoots of grape-vines
and sugar-cane, seeds of all kinds, and provisions ready for use. The
fleet carried nearly fifteen hundred persons,--three hundred more than
had been arranged for, but the enthusiasm in Spain was boundless. It
carried also the embittered hatred of Fonseca. The Bishop, having been
the Queen's confessor, naturally became head of the Department of the
Indies in order to forward with all zeal the conversion of the native
races. But when he tried to assert his authority over the Admiral and
appealed to Fernando and Ysabel to support him, he was told mildly but
firmly that in the equipment and command of the fleet Colón's judgment
was best. This royal snub Fonseca never forgave, and he was one of those
persons who revenge a slight on some one else rather than the one who
inflicted it. It was also his nature never to forgive any one for
succeeding in an undertaking which he himself had prophesied would fail.
All seemed in order on the morning of the embarkation. At this time of
year storms were unlikely, and there was no severity of climate to be
feared. Half Castile and Aragon had come to see the expedition off. The
young cavaliers' heads were filled with visions of rich dukedoms and
principalities in the golden empire upon whose coast the discovered
islands hung, like pendants of pearl and gold upon the robe of a
monarch.
The first incident of the voyage was not, however, romantic. The fleet
touched at the Canary Islands to take on board more animals--goats,
sheep, swine and fowls, for the Admiral had seen none of these in any of
the islands he had visited. In fact the people had no domestic animal
whatever except their strange dumb dogs. The cavaliers, glad of a chance
to stretch their legs in a space a little greater than the deck of a
crowded ship, strolled about discussing past and future with large
freedom.
Ojeda was asking Juan de la Cosa about the nature of the country. It
seemed to him the ideal field for a man of spirit and high heart. How
glorious a conquest would it be to abolish the vile superstitions of the
barbarians and set up the altars of the true faith!
The pilot was a little amused and somewhat doubtful; he knew something
of savages, and Ojeda and the priests on board did not. It was not, he
suggested, always easy to convert stubborn heathen. A pig was a small
animal, but Ojeda would remember that to the Moslem it was as great an
object of aversion as a lion.
"Ho!" said Ojeda superbly, "that is quite--" He was interrupted by a
blow that knocked his legs out from under him and landed him on the
ground in a sitting position with his hat over his eyes.
"Who did that?" he cried, leaping to his feet, hand on sword.
"Only a pig, my lord," the sailor answered choking with half-swallowed
laughter. It was a pig, which the sailors had goaded to such a state of
desperation that it had bolted straight into the group as a pig will,
and was now galloping away, pursued by a great variety of maledictions
and persons. "They have got the creature now," he added, "You are not
hurt?" for Ojeda was actually pale with indignation and disgust.
"No," sputtered the youth, "but that pig--that p-pig--" He looked around
him with an eye which seemed to challenge any beholder of whatever
condition, to laugh and be instantly run through. Fortunately most of
those on the wharf had been too much occupied to see Ojeda fall before
the pig, and just then the trumpets blew, and all hastened to get back
on board ship.
When an expedition is composed largely of hot-headed youths trained to
the use of arms, each of whom has a code of honor as sensitive as a
mimosa plant and as prickly as a cactus, the lot of their commanders is
not happy. It may have been Ojeda's treasured talisman which saved him
from several sudden deaths during the following weeks, but Juan de la
Cosa privately believed it was partly the memory of the pig. The young
man had what might in another time and civilization have developed into
a sense of humor. It would not do for a hero with the world before him
to get himself sent back to Spain because of some trivial personal
quarrel.
On reaching Hispaniola the adventurers found plenty of real occupation
awaiting them. The little colony which the Admiral had left at Navidad
on his first voyage had been wiped out. The natives timidly explained
that a fierce chief from the interior, Caonaba, had killed or captured
all the forty men of the garrison and destroyed their fort. Colón was
obliged to remodel all his plans at a moment's notice. Instead of
finding a colony well under way, and in control of the wild tribes or at
least friendly with them, he found the wreck of a luckless attempt at
settlement, and the kindly native villagers turned aloof and suspicious,
and living in dread of a second raid by Caonaba. He chose a site for a
second settlement on the coast, where ships could find a harbor, not far
from gold-bearing mountains which the natives described and called
Cibao. This sounded rather like Cipangu.
Ojeda led an exploring party into the mountains, and found gold nuggets
in the beds of the streams. In March a substantial little town had been
built, with a church, granary, market-square, and a stone wall around
the whole. The Admiral then organized an expedition to explore the
interior.
On March 12, 1494, Colón with his chief officers went out of the gate of
the settlement, which had been named for the Queen, at the head of four
hundred men, many of whom were mounted, and all armed with sword,
cross-bow, lance or arquebus. With casques and breastplates shining in
the sun, banners flying, pennons fluttering, drums and trumpets
sounding, they presented a sight which should have brought ambassadors
from any monarch of the Indies who heard of their approach. But although
a multitude of savages came from the forest to see, no signs of any such
capital as that of the Great Khan appeared. At the end of the first
day's march they camped at the foot of a rocky mountain range with no
way over it but a footpath, winding over rocks and through dense
tropical jungles. There appeared to be no roads in the country.
But this was not an impossible situation to the young Spanish cavaliers,
for in the Moorish wars it had often been necessary to construct a road
over the mountains. A number of them at once volunteered for the
service, and with laborers and pioneers, to whom they set an example by
working as valiantly as they were ready to fight, they made a road for
the little army, which was named in their honor El Puerto de los
Hidalgos, the Gentlemen's Pass. When they reached the top of this steep
defile and could look down upon the land beyond they saw a vast and
magnificent plain, covered with forests of beautiful trees, blossoming
meadows and a network of clear lakes and rivers, and dotted here and
there with thatch-roofed villages. Near the top of the pass a spring of
cool delicious water bubbled out in a glen shaded by palms and one tall
and handsome tree of an unknown variety, with wood so hard that it
turned the ax of a laborer who tried to cut a chip of it. Colón gave the
plain the name of the Vega Reál or Royal Plain.
Of all the events, exploits and intrigues of those first years in the
Spanish Indies, no one historian among those who accompanied the
expedition ever found time to write. Where all was so new, and every
man, whether priest, cavalier, soldier, sailor, clerk or artisan, had
his own reasons and his own aims in coming to this land of promise,
nothing went exactly according to anybody's plans. The Admiral was soon
convinced that in Hispaniola at least no civilized capital existed. To
their amazement and amusement the Spaniards found that the savages
feared their horses more than their weapons. It was discovered after a
while that horse and rider were at first supposed to be one supernatural
animal. When the white men dismounted the people fled in horror,
believing that the ferocious beasts were going to eat them.
It became evident that with the fierce chief Caonaba to reckon with,
military strength and capacity would be the only means of holding the
country. The commander could not count on patriotism, religious
principle or even self-interest to keep the colonists united. In this
tangled situation one of the few persons who really enjoyed himself was
Alonso de Ojeda. Instead of spending his time in drinking, quarreling or
getting himself into trouble with friendly natives, the young man seemed
bent on proving himself an able and sagacious leader of men. A little
fortress of logs had been built about eighteen leagues from the
settlement, in the mining country, defended on all sides but one by a
little river, the Yanique, and on the remaining side by a deep ditch.
Gold dust, nuggets, amber, jasper and lapis lazuli had been found in the
neighborhood, and it was the Admiral's intention to send miners there as
soon as possible, protected by the fort, which he called San Tomás.
Ojeda happened to be in command of the garrison, in the absence of his
superior, when Caonaba came down from his mountains with an immense
force of hostile tribes. The young lieutenant in his rude eyrie, perched
on a hill surrounded by the enemy, held off ten thousand savages under
the Carib chief for more than a month. Finally the chief, whose people
had never been trained in warfare after the European fashion, found them
deserting by hundreds, tired of the monotony of the siege. Ojeda did not
merely stand on the defensive. He was continually sallying forth at the
head of small but determined companies of Spaniards, whenever the enemy
came near his stronghold. He never went far enough from his base to be
captured, but killed off so many of the best warriors of Caonaba that
the chief himself grew tired of the unprofitable undertaking and
withdrew his army. During the siege provisions ran short, and when
things were looking very dark a friendly savage slipped in one night
with two pigeons for the table of the commander. When they were brought
to Ojeda, in the council chamber where he was seated consulting with his
officers, he glanced at the famine-pinched faces about him, took the
pigeons in his hands and stroked their feathers for an instant.
"It is a pity," he said, "that we have not enough to make a meal. I am
not going to feast while the rest of you starve," and he gave the birds
a toss into the air from the open window and turned again to his plans.
When some one reported the incident to the Admiral his eyes shone.
"I wish we had a few more such commanders," he said.
Caonaba's next move was to form a conspiracy among all the caciques of
Hispaniola, to join in a grand attack against the white men and wipe
them out, as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A friendly
cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the
first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by
Colón's acute mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small force,
torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive fight at this
stage of his enterprise would almost surely be a losing one. The
territory of Caonaba included the most mountainous and inaccessible part
of the island, where that wily barbarian could hold out for years; and
as long as he was loose there would be no safety for white men. To the
Admiral, who was just recovering from a severe illness, the prospect
looked very gloomy.
Pedro the Vizcayan cabin-boy, who was his confidential servant, was
crossing the plaza one day with a basket of fruit, when Alonso de Ojeda
stopped him to inquire after his master's health.
"His health," said Pedro, "would improve if I had Caonaba's head in this
basket. I wish somebody would get it."
Ojeda laughed, showing a flash of white teeth under his jaunty
mustachios. Then he grew thoughtful. "Wait a moment, Pedro," he said.
"Will you ask the Admiral if he can see me for a few minutes, this
morning?"
When Ojeda appeared Colón detected a trace of excitement in the young
man's bearing, and tactfully led the conversation to Caonaba. He frankly
expressed his perplexity.
"Have you a plan, Ojeda?" he asked with a half smile. "It has been my
experience, that you usually have."
Ojeda felt a thrill of pleasure, for the Admiral did not scatter his
compliments broadcast. He admitted that he had a plan.
"Let me hear it," said Colón.
But as the youthful captain unfolded his scheme the cool gray eye of the
Genoese commander betrayed distinct surprise. It seemed only yesterday
that this youngster had been a little monkey of a page in the great
palace of the Duke of Medina Coeli, when he was entertained there, on
arriving in Spain.
"You see," Ojeda concluded, "I have observed in fighting these people
that if their leader is killed or captured, they seem to lose their
heads completely. I think that with a dozen men I can get Caonaba and
bring him in. If I do not--the loss will not be very great."
"I should not like to lose you," said the Admiral, with his hand on the
young man's shoulder. "Go, if you will,--but do not sacrifice your own
life if you can help it."
Ojeda had faith in his talisman, and he also believed that if any man
could go into Caonaba's territory and come back alive, he was that man.
He knew that he himself, in the place of the chief, would respect a man
whom he had not been able to beat.
With ten soldiers he rode up into the mountains, his blood leaping with
the wild joy of an adventure as great as any in the Song of the Cid. To
be sure, Caonaba would not in his mountain camp have any such army as
when he surrounded the fort, for then he commanded whole tribes of
allies. In case of coming to blows Ojeda believed that he and his men
with their superior weapons could cut their way out. Still, the odds
were beyond anything that he had ever heard of.
He found the Carib chief, and began by trying diplomacy. He said that
his master, the Guamaquima or chief of the Spaniards, had sent him with
a present. Would he not consent to make a visit to the colony, with a
view of becoming the Admiral's ally and friend? If he would, he should
be presented with the bell of the chapel, the voice of the church, the
wonder of Hispaniola.
Caonaba had heard that bell when he was prowling about the settlement,
and the temptation to become its owner was great. He finally agreed to
accompany Ojeda and his handful of Spaniards back to the coast. But
when they were ready to start, the force of warriors in Caonaba's escort
was out of all proportion to any peaceful embassy. Ojeda turned to his
original plan.
He proposed that Caonaba, after bathing in the stream at the foot of the
mountain, and attiring himself in his finest robe, should put on the
gift the Spanish captain had brought, a pair of metal bracelets, and
return to his followers mounted with Ojeda on his horse. The chief's
eyes glittered as he saw the polished steel of the ornaments Ojeda
produced. He knew that nothing could so impress his wild followers with
his power and greatness as his ability to conquer all fear of the
terrible animals always seen in the vanguard of the white men's army. He
consented to the plan, and after putting on his state costume, and being
decorated with the handcuffs, he cautiously mounted behind the young
commander, and his followers, in awe and admiration, beheld their
cacique ride.
[Illustration: "HE PROPOSED THAT CAONABA SHOULD PUT ON THE GIFT THE
SPANISH CAPTAIN HAD BROUGHT."--_Page_ 78]
Ojeda, who was a perfect horseman, made the horse leap, curvet and
caracole, taking a wider circuit each time, until making a long sweep
through the forest the two disappeared from the view of the Carib army
altogether. Ojeda's own men closed in upon him, bound Caonaba hand and
foot, behind their leader, and thus the chief was taken into the Spanish
settlement. The conspiracy fell to pieces and the colony was saved.
Caonaba showed no respect to Colón or any one else in the camp while a
prisoner there, except Ojeda. When Ojeda entered he promptly rose to his
feet. They had many conversations together, and Caonaba, who evidently
rather admired the stratagem by which he had been captured, agreed with
his captor that Ojeda was The Man Who Could Not Die.