“senor, I am glad to see you living!”
“Yes, I live, senor. Are you well in San
Domingo?”
“Well in body, but sick at heart because of
the fleet.”
“Because of the fleet?”
“The fleet, senor, was a day away when the hurricane
burst. Half the ships were split, lost, sunken!
The others, broken, returned to us. One only
went on to Spain. The gold ships are lost.
Only, they say, the gold that pertains to you, goes
on safely on that one to Cadiz. Gwarionex the
Indian is drowned, and Bobadilla and Roldan are drowned.”
THE Indians called it Guanaja, but the Admiral, the
Isle of Pines. It was far, far, from Hispaniola,
far, far, from Jamaica, over a wide and stormy sea,
reached after many days of horrible weather.
Guanaja, small, lofty, covered with rich trees among
which stood in numbers the pines we loved because
they talked of home. To the south, far off, across
leagues of water, we made out land. Mainland
it seemed to us, stretching across the south, losing
itself in the eastern haze. The weather suddenly
became blissful. We had sweet rest in Guanaja.
A few Indians lived upon this small island, like,
yet in some ways unlike all those we knew. But
they were rude and simple and they talked always of
gods to the west. We had rested a week
when there came a true wonder to us from the west.
That was a canoe, of the mightiest length we had yet
seen, long as a tall tree, eight feet wide, no less,
with twenty-five rowing Indians—tall,
light bronze men—with cotton cloth about
their loins. Middle of this giant canoe was built
a hut or arbor, thatched with palm. Under this
sat a splendid barbarian, tall and strong, with a
crown of feathers and a short skirt and mantle of
cotton. Beside him sat two women wrapped in cotton
mantles, and at their feet two boys and a young maid.
All these people wore golden ornaments about their
necks.
It was in a kind of amaze that we watched this dragon
among canoes draw near to and pass the ships and to
the shore where we had built a hut for the Admiral
and the Adelantado and the youth Fernando, and to
shelter the rest of us a manner of long booth.
It seemed that it was upon a considerable voyage,
and wanting water, put in here. The Guanaja Indians
cried, “Yucatan! Yucatan!”
The Admiral stepped down to meet these strangers.
His face glowed. Here at last was difference
beyond the difference of the Paria folk!
We found that they were armed,—the newcomers.
Strangely made swords of wood and flint, lances, light
bucklers and hatchets of true copper. They
were strong and fearless, and they seemed to say,
“Here before us is great wonder, but wonder
does not subdue our minds!”
Their language had, it is true, the flow and clink
of Indian tongues, yet was greatly different.
We had work to understand. But they were past
masters of gesture.
