1492 - Mary Johnston (best novels to read in english txt) 📗

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.