THE FOODLESS BOAT AND THE ISLAND.
We sat, for a few moments after the catastrophe, in silence. Then
quoth I, ‘Let us pull back, there can be no danger now, and try
whether there be any floating wreck with any poor wretch clinging to
it.’
So we were soon, as nearly as we could judge, floating upon the exact
spot where the ‘Saucy Susan’ foundered. It was Rumbold’s opinion,
that the powder below the cabin had been so stowed, that the force
of the explosion when it took fire was downwards and laterally,
rather than upwards—and that the sides of the afterpart of the ship
had been actually driven asunder. In such case, of course, the sea
would pour like a whirlpool into her, and she would have gone down,
as had actually been the case, as though she were a lump of lead.
The mizen-mast, with a heap of scorched and blackened wreck floating
about, was the sole memorial left of the ‘Saucy Susan;’ the mast in
question having no doubt been broken by the force of the explosion,
and so saved from going to the bottom with the ship. We rowed for
hours and hours round the spot, returning often to the mast, as it
lay all blackened and scorched, weltering in the sea, but no other
piece of wreck could we see. Not a box, or cask, or spar, but seemed
to have gone right down into the awful depths of the ocean. There
was something curiously dreamlike in our situation. My mind seemed
wavering and flickering as I thought of what had happened. Sometimes
it would appear as though the debauch had taken place years and
years ago, so that I remembered it quite faintly. In another moment
I would deem that the orgy was roaring around me still. Then I would
see the livid faces and fiery hair of the drunkards so plainly that I
pressed my aching eyes with my hands to shut out the vision; and anon
I would deem that it must be all a nightmare, and that I was still
keeping the dreary mid watch upon the deck of the ‘Saucy Susan.’ But,
no; when under the pressure of such a thought, I started up, my feet
would slip on the uneven planks in the boat’s bottom, and I would
start to hear the plunges of the mizen-mast as it rolled and wallowed
beside us in the sea.
And so the grey dawn came, and after it the sun, and we stood upon
the seats of the boat, and gazed anxiously all round. The ocean was
landless and shipless. The fresh morning breeze came merrily down,
curling the black summit of the swells and flecking the sombre sea
with white bars. The daylight, however, was a great relief, and we
sat and talked of the terrible event of the night before, like two
men telling each other sad dreams.
‘We could have done nothing to save them,’ said Rumbold; ‘nothing.
Every man was mad drunk, except Nixon, and Jerry had him clutched
as though he were squeezed in an iron vice. They both went down, I
warrant you, grappling each other. Their bones are lying in the wreck
now, with their arms round each other’s necks, hundreds of fathoms
under the boat’s keel.’
I asked him what he thought of Nixon’s refusal to drink, which had
been the real cause of the mate’s mad freak and its consequences, and
Rumbold’s thoughts jumped with mine, when he said, that he nothing
doubted that Nixon had determined, if he could, to fell him, and rob
him of the pearls in the drunken riot. As he spoke this, I produced
the shining morsels from the pouch. Rumbold looked sadly at them.
‘For these gauds,’ he said, ‘two poor ignorant Indians have very
probably been sacrificed, and now a whole ship’s company have gone
to the bottom of the sea. True, they were villains almost every
man, but the more need was there that they should not be hurried to
their last account with all their unrepented sins crimson on their
foreheads.’
After some more talk in this strain, we roused ourselves, and began
to converse of our own situation, which was bad enough, not having a
strip of canvas in the boat to make a sail, and what was much worse,
being without a morsel of water or food. By the best calculation
I could make, we were near the centre of the Caribbean Sea, about
half-way between Jamaica and Curaçoa. The regular trade-wind, blowing
nearly from the north-east, might drift us, if we went before it,
aided by the gulf stream, to somewhere about Cape Gracias à Dios, the
great headland, west of which the main-land trends away to form the
Bay of Honduras. Rumbold agreed with me as to our probable situation,
and we computed the nearest point at which we could hope to make
land, if we did not succeed in stumbling upon some of the small bushy
islands or keys which lie sprinkled nor-east of Cape Gracias—we
computed, I say, the nearest land that we could make without sails to
be about six hundred miles distant.
‘Well,’ said Rumbold, ‘we must try to get there, that is all; so let
us set to work.’
Accordingly, in about two hours, we succeeded in setting, upon one of
the oars, a sort of tattered sail only adapted for going before the
wind, and patched out of our shirts, by tying the sleeves together.
Then pointing the boat’s head about west-south-west, as near as we
could judge by the sun, we set forth upon our almost hopeless voyage,
rowing at the same time to help the boat on, and going about four
knots an hour.
‘Four knots an hour,’ said Rumbold, ‘and six hundred miles to be
sailed over; that gives one hundred and fifty hours or thereby, if
the wind keeps as fair as now, and we row night and day. Now, one
hundred and fifty hours make rather more than six days; add two days
more—that is a reasonable allowance for resting and times of calm—in
all eight days. Can a man live eight days without food, and, in this
climate, without water?’
‘No,’ says I, tossing aside my oar, and clapping—I confess it—my
hands to my face; ‘no, we are fools to try it. Better to jump
overboard at once among the sharks.’
‘Take up your oar, sir,’ says Rumbold, sternly; ‘God helps those
who help themselves. Work, sir, work. There are many chances before
us. Perhaps an English ship—at the worst, a Spanish ship; perhaps
an island with rain-water in the crevices of the rocks, and turtle
sleeping on the sandy beaches, and plenty of birds and eggs.’
The very words put new life into me, and we tugged away for a time
as cheerily as, under our circumstances, might be. The wind blew
so fresh that we feared it would blow our frail sail right before
it. The following seas hove us, as it were, from one to the other,
and we made better progress than we hoped for. But the heat of the
sun, as the day wore on, was terrible, and we began to thirst. At
night, by Rumbold’s advice, we washed our mouths with salt water, and
afterwards, finding a pebble or two lying in the bottom of the boat,
we sucked them to promote the flow of saliva, and keep our tongues
cool. We tugged at the oars, but very faintly, until late in the
night, and then we fell asleep over them.
The second day was the same as the first—cloudless and hot. We
stripped, dipped our clothes in the sea, and then put them on
dripping; as soon as the hot sun dried them we plunged the garments
into the sea again. It assuaged our thirst a little, but our lips
and tongues began to swell, and turn to a horrid blackness. In the
afternoon we were hungry for a short space, and directly afterwards
sick at stomach, particularly Rumbold, who at length slipped down
into the bottom of the boat, where he lay moaning. That night we
suffered intensely from the cold, and our skins being irritated by
the salt water, every motion was painful to us.
The third day several sea-birds swam near us, regarding us curiously,
just as the marrot had done me when I lay drowning, as I thought,
upon the spars of the ‘Golden Grove,’ in the Bay of Biscay. The
breeze blew very strong this day, with a heavy sea. Towards noon I,
standing on the thafts, holding on by the oar, which was shipped for
a mast, descried a sail at a great distance, but, losing it after a
few moments, said nothing. Rumbold, who had been by far the stoutest
hearted of the twain at starting, grew weak rapidly; and, as his
strength left him, his spirits drooped. He was, indeed, an older man
than I was, and perhaps naturally not of such a strong constitution.
He only rowed a little this day, and towards nightfall sank into a
sort of delirious state, and raved.
The fourth day I felt I was in a hot fever, and so weak I could
scarce crawl. Rowing was now out of the question, and Rumbold and I
lay staring at the sky, and at each other, in the stern sheets. We
had suffered very little from hunger, but the thirst was terrible.
The night before I had dreamed troubled visions of wells and cool
clear pools, and, starting up, I had much ado to refrain from
flinging myself in my agony into the sea. Towards the afternoon
Rumbold said, with a sad smile—
‘Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, drank dissolved pearls. Pity we have not
the means to make the beverage here?’
By sundown he was raving again.
The fifth day the morning breeze was long of coming, and we watched
it, with longing eyes, ruffling the water astern. Rumbold lay silent,
as if worn out; his eyes had a glassy, fixed look, and there were
black rings under them. As the forenoon wore on, he pointed to the
water around, and I saw the black fins of sharks moving along with
the boat.
‘They know when death is coming,’ he said.
The sixth day Rumbold was alive, and that was all. He took my hand in
both of his, and whispered hoarsely, ‘I have no wife—and no child—no
one who will grieve—that is a great comfort at a time like this.’
Presently black clouds arose out of the sea to windward, and began
to spread over the whole firmament. I pointed them out, and besought
Rumbold to take heart. ‘Rain is coming,’ I said, ‘we will live to
reach the land yet.’ He shook his head, and his eyes grew more
and more fixed and glazed. ‘I told you—I made you my—legatee,’ he
muttered, with great difficulty; ‘think sometimes of the Peralta who
helped you from the Spaniards, or of the Rumbold who died with you
in the boat at sea.’ All this time the black clouds became heavier,
but still no rain fell. The air was like an oven, and the rude linen
sail drooped motionless about the mast. I took Rumbold’s head on my
lap; he was past speaking, but he looked up from time to time in my
eyes. At length I felt his heart flutter, and presently the beating
stopped. No change whatever took place upon his face, except that it
assumed that thin pinched look to which men’s features shrink when
death lays its hand upon them. He was dead—probably for some time
before I was certain of it. When I knew that it was so, I laid the
corpse gently down in the stern sheets. In half an hour the windows
of Heaven were opened, and the rain poured down in bucketfuls. Oh,
those blessed, blessed drops! I knelt, and with my mouth agape
swallowed them. I wrung the dripping sail above my wet lips. I licked
the water as it trinkled in large drops down the mast. I lapped it
up as it accumulated in the little inequalities and hollows in the
thafts of the boat. I had soon drunk my fill. The rain gave me fresh
strength, fresh spirits, fresh soul. But as for Rumbold, the cool
sweet water pattered upon his rigid face—the blessed rain drenched
his hair, and great drops ran down his hollow cheeks—but it was of no
avail. The manna fell not soon enough, and there lay the corpse, with
its white wet face staring starkly up to the sky!
Towards night the rain-clouds broke up, and the sun came slanting
in golden bursts down upon the leaden-coloured sea. The breeze also
began to blow again—the well-drenched sail caught the first faint
puffs of the wind, and we moved forward—the living and the dead,
upon our dreary path. It was very terrible, all that long night,
to sit alone beside the corpse. The moon rose in all her glory, and
the ocean gleamed like molten silver about me. The white sail showed
before me like a pale phantom, and at my side lay the stark dead man,
with his damp pallid skin glistening in the moonlight. A dozen times
I made up my mind to fling the corpse overboard, but I saw those
horrible triangular fins, how they glided all round the boat, and
my heart failed me. At length, I stripped off Rumbold’s doublet and
covered his face with the cloth.
The blackness of night faded at length—then came the grey dawn and
the red bright sunrise—the seventh I had seen since the ‘Saucy
Susan’ went down. I must have been in a half torpid state, for I lay
listlessly, with my face turned to the east, waiting for the breeze
to blow, and the morning was already becoming hot, when looking
languidly to see if the sail was properly set, I bounded forwards
from the stern-sheets, as though all the strength they ever possessed
had suddenly come back to my muscles.
Land! yes—land! right ahead—not a mile from me—rocks, with the surf
white upon them—sandy beaches glistening in the sun—knolls all green
and bushy, and slopes carpeted with Bahama grass. Here and there a
feathery palmetta tree rising from the underwood, and clouds of gulls
and plovers, ducks and flamingos, pelicans and man-of-war birds,
sporting or resting in the air, on the water, or the land. I was
close to, as near as I could judge, a group of islets, the principal
one being surrounded by many smaller,—some of them indeed mere
rocks,—but rocks as I saw teeming with food, and brimming, as I did
not doubt, in all their crevices, with fresh, sweet water, from last
night’s rain.
My heart melted within me, and I sank into the bottom of the boat,
and wept, and prayed, and gave thanks. Meantime, the sea-breeze
coming on to blow fresh, drove the boat quickly before it, and I
had enough to do—steering with an oar to avoid the coral reefs, and
spits, and banks of sand, between which I was hurried—and over
which the sea went flashing in thunder. Several times the keel of
the boat grazed the bottom, and we were swung round and round in the
eddies and counter-currents—but still she bore me safely on, until we
approached a fair sandy beach, on which the surf broke high. I could
see no better landing-place, so let the boat drive, and tied myself,
as well as I could, for I was more dead than alive, to an oar, that
I might have a last chance of reaching the shore. In a minute or two
the boat was in the broken water,—she rode over two or three fierce
crests of tumbling seas very gallantly, but then a heavier breaker
than common curling up astern of us, fell, as it were, down upon
the boat, and I found myself faintly struggling in the white frothy
water, which foamed, and buzzed, and roared in my ears, and down
into which, at length, losing all sense and consciousness, I sank—a
drowning man.
When I opened my eyes again, I knew not where I was, or what had
happened to me. I lay in a sort of half-waking torpid state, being
dimly conscious that I was stripped and in a bed, and that above
me was a roof of wattled branches, and that dark figures of naked
men—Indians as I deemed, were moving about me. Then I felt a cup put
to my mouth, and some warm liquid, which seemed to revive and comfort
me, and flow, as it were, through my poor wasted limbs, warming and
refreshing them, was poured down my throat, my head being raised by
some one behind me for the purpose. But all this might or might not
be. For all I knew, it was a dream of delirium. I was too weak to
speak, and even to think,—consciousness forsook me again, and I fell
into a deep dreamless sleep.
I returned again to sense and life. I was in a bed, a hammock,
laid upon a cool mat. There was a roof of wattled branches above
me, and there were Indians, two very old men, with grey hair and
grey beards flowing down upon their swarthy breasts, sitting beside
me. Furthermore, I saw that I was in a hut or cottage, artfully
contrived in a recess or split of rock; that part of the walls
were formed of the natural living stone, and part of very neat and
artificial wattle-work, quite wind and weather tight. The door seemed
to open at the end of the passage, leading upwards from the chamber,
which nestled, as it were, down between the rocks; and through this
door, I saw bushes and long grass waving in the wind. The light in
the hut was somewhat dim and grey, but I could see around me great
numbers of fishing lines, and bows, and arrows; and, looking more
closely, I saw in little cupboards, or niches, wrought out of the
rock, stores of provisions, with drinking-cups made from cocoa-nuts
and great shells, and rude clay-pots for cooking. But all the
attention I could bestow was taken up upon my hosts. They were so
like each other, that I supposed they were brothers; the same lank
grey hair, the same brown or chestnut hue of the skin, the same
rather flat noses, the same black eyes, so full of cheerfulness and
kindness, and so completely the same expression of face, that I could
positively see no difference betwixt their features. In all respects,
save one, the ornaments they wore were also the same. Each had a sort
of fillet of different-coloured pebbles, through which a string had
been passed, placed round his head, and a similar adornment round
his neck. Each also wore thin plates of gold dangling from his ears,
but in the fillet of one of them was fastened a wing feather of the
toucan; this was the mark by which I distinguished one from the
other. Their dress was very simple. It consisted merely of a sort
of bead-embroidered petticoat, or kilt, tied round the waist, and
reaching nearly to the knee, and a sort of mantle of strange-looking
fabric, very soft and fleecy, which, when they sat down in the hut or
cave, they allowed to fall from their shoulders upon the floor.
While I gazed at these Indians, they conversed softly in a language
which I had never heard, but which was very soft and melodious. At
length, seeing my eyes open, and fixed upon them, both rose, and
standing over me, he who wore the toucan’s feather said, gravely,
and in excellent Spanish—
‘Be of good cheer, stranger, for you are among friends.’ I was too
weak to do aught but take their hands in mine, and try to press
them to my breast. Presently the drink I had before taken was again
administered to me, and one of the Indians going forth into the open
air, returned with a savoury morsel of broiled fish.
‘Eat, stranger,’ he said, in most sonorous Spanish; ‘eat, and be
refreshed.’
Thus these kind Indians fed me by degrees, and caused me to sleep
with soothing and stilling draughts, I eating, drinking, and
slumbering by turns; but all in moderation, so that at length I
was enabled to sit up in the hammock, propped against a chest, and
to falter forth my thanks, and ask how long I had been lying in
that dreamy state? They told me, nigh three days. I asked, if they
had found me upon the beach. They replied, the two often speaking
together, in a low chanting tone of voice: ‘Yes, they had, flung
there by the waves, and near me a broken boat.’ I think my eyes must
have told them what I intended for the next question, because, before
I had spoken it, the Indian who wore the feather said—
‘And also the body of a white man. We buried him beneath a palm-tree,
when the moon was in the heavens and the air still. He sleeps well.’
Then the other took up the word—
‘Truly he sleeps well; but you have been preserved; for which thank
the God of many names and many nations.’
This was towards dusk. When it grew dark the Indians lighted a torch
of resinous wood, which burnt bright and clear, and sitting by it,
with their cloaks or blankets wrapped round them, smoked gravely from
long pipes made of reeds, and drank, but very moderately, the rich
juice of the palm-tree—I meantime regarding them attentively, for I
was still so weak that to speak was a painful effort. At last, after
a long silence, the Indian with the feather, turning to me, said,
solemnly—
‘I am called Buonahari, and my fathers were caciques.’
The other then said—
‘And I am called Behecheco. I am the brother of Buonahari, born but
an hour after him. He is still a cacique, because our fathers were
caciques, and he is the eldest of our race.’
The first Indian again interposed—
‘Our fathers were caciques of Guanhani, where first white men came.
Now, there are none of our people there, and the island is called St.
Salvador.’
The second Indian resumed—
‘When we die, the race of the caciques of Guanhani will be no more.
We are the last; but still my brother Buonahari is a cacique, because
the blood of our fathers is the blood of caciques.’
I here touched my head where Buonahari wore the feather. He seemed
to understand the mute question, for he replied: ‘The feather of the
toucan is the crown of a cacique. If I die first my brother Behecheco
will take it from my head and wear it; when he dies no one will take
it from his head; it will lie flat and rot, because the caciques of
Guanhani are no more.’
At this point I became too far exhausted to listen to more, and the
Indians bade me sleep again. When I wakened in the night they were
still sitting beside the torch, singing, in their melodious language,
a low, mournful chant, which presently sent me to the land of dreams
again. The very next day, however, after a famous breakfast of fish
and fowl, for now the Indians allowed me to eat as much as I would,
and that the reader may conceive was not little, I managed to crawl
out of the hut and sit in the shade of wavy bushes, stirred by the
cool sea breeze. The abode was contrived, as I have said, deep in
a ravine of rocks, half clothed with bushes and rustling grass,
which were disposed partly, as I thought, by nature, and partly by
art, so as artificially to hide the entrance to the cave—for it
was rather that than anything else—from any except a very curious
and a very keen investigator. But presently the Indians returning
from fishing, they having left me still in the hammock, they led
me slowly and tenderly out of the ravine, and forth upon an open,
breezy space, a sort of terrace, amid the cluster of rocks in which
was their dwelling, and from which I could look down upon the greater
part of the island, which seemed to be some four or five miles in
circumference, uneven and rocky, with abundance of bays and creeks on
the leeward side, formed by smaller islets and natural indentations
in the coast of the greater. It was curious to observe, the trade
wind blowing strong, the space of smooth glancing water left in the
lee of the island, and tapering away towards the south-west. On the
windward side, the sea broke high upon the rocks, and Behecheco
informed me, that in stormy weather the salt spray flew over and over
the island from beach to beach. Among the bushes and trees there
fluttered and coo’d countless flocks of pigeons and other small birds
of brilliant plumage; and down by the shore, the fowls which wade and
swim dotted all the grey rocks, and glancing shingle beds, and fair
beaches of hard dry sand.
I sat long enjoying the prospect, the Indians being gravely squatted
beside me; then I asked if there were other inhabitants of the isle
except themselves?
They replied, ‘No. None else.’
‘Did not privateers sometimes come there?’
‘Ships of white men of divers nations sometimes come,’ replied
Behecheco; ‘but then we mostly hide closely in the cave. The sailors
land, and seek for turtle, and perhaps pigeons. Then they go away
again, and we come forth.’
I then prayed them to tell me how long they had lived in that
solitude, and from what land they came? Buonahari replied a follows:—
‘Nigh two-score of years have passed away since we landed upon this
island in a canoe. We fled here from Hispaniola, where we were slaves
to the Spaniards. It was when we were slaves that we learned the
tongue in which we now speak to you. Still we know that you are not
a Spaniard, for your skin is too white, and your eyes are blue. You
are, perhaps, then, one of those nations which come from across the
ocean, and make war on the Spaniards?’
Having assented to this conjecture, the Indian resumed thus:—
‘We were slaves in Hispaniola, my brother Behecheco and I. We dug
in the mines for gold. Our father and mother were also slaves—they
also dug in the mines for gold. Their father and mother were likewise
slaves, and they likewise dug in the mines for gold. So it was with
our family for five descents. We were slaves in Hispaniola. But when
our father and mother died, I said to my brother, “We are strong. We
know the ways of the mountains. We have found in the woods the plant,
which, strewed upon the path of a flying man, causes the bloodhound
to lose the scent. Let us be no longer slaves—let us flee.” As I
said, so we did. We fled from the mines. The Spaniards pursued us,
but the blood-hounds lost the scent, and we came to the sea. There we
hollowed a tree into a great canoe, according as the traditions of
our fathers had taught us—and in this canoe we put to sea, drifting
before the wind. We had water, and meal, and cassava, and fruits,
and in half a moon we saw this island and landed on it. Here we have
continued to live, and here we will die.’
I was much interested in this account, for I conjectured that the
Indians were descendants of the race of original inhabitants of
the Leeward or Lucayas group, now called the Bahama Islands, which
the Spaniards had first discovered, and from which they had, about
fifteen years after the first voyage of Columbus, inveigled a great
number of the inhabitants to make them slaves in Cuba and Hispaniola.
This I say was my conjecture, and it was speedily verified.
‘I have said,’ continued Behecheco, ‘that the blood in our veins is
the blood of ancient caciques—the caciques of Guanhani. Though we
were slaves, we had that blood still. Our father told us so. His
father told him. We speak the old language of Guanhani, for it was
taught us in our childhood. We worship the old gods of Guanhani, for
we were instructed so to do in our childhood, and we could recount to
you the beautiful things of Guanhani, the trees and the rocks, the
rivers and the shores, the hills and the streams, the birds and the
beasts, although we never saw them. Our father, who taught us, never
saw them. His father, who taught him, never saw them. But ever from
father to son, and mother to daughter, there flows the knowledge of
what our race was once, and what land it ruled over. Now, alas! that
knowledge is to perish, even as water sinks in dry sand.’
I thought, as the Indian spoke thus, that both the brothers
experienced some kind of satisfaction in recounting to another
the secret, which would otherwise die with them, and thus keeping
it a little longer floating in the world. Presently, after their
accustomed fashion of alternate speaking, Buonahari chimed in—
‘Our forefather, who came from Guanhani and Hispaniola, was the
son of him who was cacique in Guanhani, when the white men landed
upon it, and said, “Here is a New World.” Five years after he began
to reign, there came many ships with white men. Our forefathers
thought that the white men were gods come down from the sun, and
they honoured them, and feared them. Then said the white men—“Would
you see again your fathers and your mothers, who have died and gone
to the happy valleys—to the land of Coyaba—to that land where are
cool shades and delicious fruits—where the drought burns not up the
ground—and the hurricane tears not up the trees? If you would go
thither, come into our ships and we will sail with you to Coyaba, and
we will also see your departed friends.” So our forefathers believed
the white men, and went into their ships, and the white men did not
take them to Coyaba, but to Hispaniola and to Cuba, and made them
slaves to dig for gold in the mountains. Most of our forefathers died
there, and gradually the nation wasted away—but our family did not
come to an end, but went on, generation after generation, until we
were begotten, and with us our family will die, and the last of the
race of Guanhani will be taken from the earth.’
Both the old men spoke as though they had already outlived all sorrow
for their lot. Their words and gestures were grave and solemn, but
not mournful, for their trust was, that when they died, they would at
length go to Coyaba, and see again all their forefathers, those who
had been slaves in Cuba and Hispaniola, and those who had borne rule
in Guanhani.
In about a week’s time I was quite restored, and daily went a
hunting and a fishing with my Indian hosts. I had told them my
story, to which they listened eagerly, and I had assured them, that
if, perchance, there should come to the island a ship manned by my
countrymen, and which might carry me away, that I would reveal to
none the secret of their habitation, but leave them undisturbed in
their solitary abode. I made them lead me also to where Rumbold
lay buried beneath the palm. It was a breezy, sunny spot, and upon
the turf I piled a little heap, or cairn of stones, such as, in
Scotland, where they are found heaped on dreary moors, and among lone
hills, are said by the country-people to mark the grave of a hero.
Weeks glided away thus. The old Indians were always the same—grave,
courteous, and kind. They fished, and set snares for birds, when
they wanted them for food, but killed none wantonly. They ever went
together, and with the same slow, stately step. Their talk was
almost always of Coyaba, and the friends who had gone before them,
and who they would meet there. In short, their demeanour and their
speech were those of men whose minds were set upon the things of
the new world into which they were soon to enter. The space between
them and death was short, and their eyes seemed to be able to look
beyond it, and to care little for what was on this side of the dark
river. Notwithstanding, however, I drew from them many traditionary
accounts of their people before white men had visited them; and one
night, in particular, I asked whether there had been handed down any
remembrance of the first white men who landed upon Guanhani—they
being, indeed, no other than Columbus and his followers. To this
question, Buonahari readily answered, that he had often heard from
his father the full account of that event, as it had been handed
down, and that, if I pleased, he would narrate it. Then, filling his
cup with palm-wine, and trimming the torch, which cast a sparkling
glow upon the rock-walls and wattled roof of the hut—the descendant
of the caciques began the tale.