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The King himself was badly wounded in the thigh, but Caonabo's principal object seems to have been the destruction of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden with the spoils, retired.
But this had fine sand for floor, and a row of calabashes, and wood laid for fire. Here Juan Lepe dropped, for all his head was swimming with weariness. The sun was up, the place glistered. Guarin showed how it was hidden. "I found it when I was a boy, and none but Guarin hath ever come here until you come, Juan Lepe!" He had no fear, it was evident, of Caonabo's coming.
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.
But the Viceroy meant to send him to Spain trophy and show, and to be made, if it could be, Christian. IT did not end the war. For a fortnight we thought that it had done so. Then came loud tidings. Caonabo's wife, Anacaona, had put on the lioness. With her was Caonabo's brother Manicoatex and her own brother Behechio, cacique of Xaragua. There was a new confederacy, Gwarionex again was with it.
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.
Plunging into the forest, he made his way through sixty leagues of dense undergrowth until he arrived in the very heart of Caonabo's territory and presented himself at the chiefs house. The chief was at home, and, not unimpressed by the valour of Ojeda, who represented himself as coming on a friendly mission, received him under conditions of truce.
Poetry and public policy struggle together in Caonabo's heart, but poetry wins; the great powerful savage, urged thereto by his childish lion-heart, will come to Isabella if they will give him the bell. He sets forth, accompanied by a native retinue, and by Ojeda and his ten horsemen.
It was in Caonabo's country that the gold mines were reported to exist, and it is probable that both the cupidity and the profligacy of the colonists were so gross as to draw down upon them the not unreasonable vengeance of the natives.
The King himself was badly wounded in the thigh, but Caonabo's principal object seems to have been the destruction of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden with the spoils, retired.
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