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 the _Santa
Maria_ which 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 the_ Santa Maria_ and the _Nina_? 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 evil
_zemes_ and 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!