Juan Morcillo and Gonzalo Fernandez and Diego Minas
were slain. I saw a lifted club and swerved, but
too late.
Blackness and neither care nor delight. Then,
far off, a little beating of surf on shore, very far
and nothing to do with anything. Then a clue
of pain that it seemed I must follow or that must
follow me, and at first it was a little thin thread,
but then a cable and all my care was to thin it again.
It passed into an ache and throb that filled my being
like the rain clouds the sky. Then suddenly there
were yet heavy clouds but the sky around and behind.
I opened my eyes and sat up, but found that my arms
were bound to my sides.
“We aren’t dead, and that’s some
comfort, Doctor, as the cock said to the other cock
in the market pannier!” It was Beltran the cook
who spoke and he was bound like me. Around us
lay the five dead. A score of Indians warded
us, mighty strangers in bonds, and we heard the rest
up at the fort where they were searching and pillaging.
Guarico, and the men there?
We found that out when at last they were done with
La Navidad and they and we were put on the march.
We came to where had been Guarico, and truly for long
we had smelled the burning of it, as we had heard
the crying and shouting. It was all down, the
frail houses. I made out in the loud talking
that followed the blending of Caonabo’s bands
what had been done and not done. Guacanagari,
wounded, was fled after fighting a while, he and his
brother and the butio and all the people. But
the mighty strangers found in the village, were dead.
They had run down to the sea, but Caonabo’s
men had caught them, and after hard work killed them.
Juan Lepe and Beltran, passing, saw the five bodies.
I do not think that Caonabo had less than a thousand
with him. He had come in force, and the whole
as silent as a bat or moth. We were to learn
over and over again that “Indians” could
do that, travel very silently, creatures of the forest
who took by surprise. Well, Guarico was destroyed,
and Guacanagari and Guarin fled, and in all Hispaniola
were only two Spaniards, and we saw no sail upon the
sea, no sail at all!
WE turned from the sea. Thick forest came between
us and it. We were going with Caonabo to the
mountains. Beltran and I thought that it had been
in question whether he should kill us at once, or hold
us in life until we had been shown as trophies in
Maguana, and that the pride and vanity of the latter
course prevailed. After two days in this ruined
place, during which we saw no Guarico Indian, we departed.
The raid was over. All their war is by raid.
They carried everything from the fort save the fort
itself and the two lombards. In the narrow paths
that are this world’s roads, one man must walk
after another, and their column seems endless where
it winds and is lost and appears again. Beltran
and I were no longer bound. Nor were we treated
unkindly, starved nor hurt in any way. All that
waited until we should reach Caonabo’s town.
