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It was dark before the wind stirred again and the ships resumed their course. At half-past eleven they reached the French. The "San Pelayo" slowly moved to windward of Ribaut's flag-ship, the "Trinity," and anchored very near her. The other ships took similar stations.
“The Americans are on duty night and day on the lookout for boats which endeavour to run the blockade with food supplies. The hospital is supported by the Americans. The Spaniards are boasting that their big battle-ship Pelayo is coming, and will demolish the Americans in ten minutes.”
An Arab historian said later: "Would to God the Moslems had extinguished that spark which was destined to consume the dominion of Islam in the north" and, he might have added, "in Spain." When Alfonso of Cantabria married the daughter of Pelayo in 751, the cave of Covadonga no longer held the insurgent band.
While the sons of the nobility were revelling amid the pleasures of a licentious court, and sunk in that vicious and effeminate indulgence which led to the perdition of unhappy Spain, the youthful Pelayo, in his rugged mountain school, was steeled to all kinds of hardy exercise.
Proudly onward came the Moslem captain, full of confidence in his powerful force and despising his handful of opponents. Pelayo drew him on into the narrow river passage by a clever stratagem. He had posted a small force at the mouth of the pass, bidding them to take to flight after a discharge of arrows.
The proposal for a shameful peace was indignantly refused, and the Moors, confident of victory, and outnumbering the Christian warriors many times, swept up the broad slope of the long and winding valley to the cavern's mouth. The summits of the rocky walls on either side were filled with people, many of them women, who were waiting for the signal from Pelayo and his brave handful of followers.
"This is no time," said the latter, "to be sleeping; arise and listen to my words, and hear of the great work for which thou art chosen!" Then Pelayo arose and seated himself on a rock, and the hermit continued his discourse. "Behold," said he, "the ruin of Spain is at hand! It will be delivered into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to the spoiler.
They considered Don Pelayo as a leader of some rival band of robbers; and when the bonds were loosed by which they were tied to the trees, they fell at his feet and implored mercy.
Pelayo then inquired of them if they did not desire to eat; they were too much in awe of him to decline, though they felt a loathing at the thought of partaking of this hunter's fare; but he ordered a linen cloth to be spread under the shade of a great oak, on the grassy margin of a clear running stream; and to their astonishment, they were served, not with the flesh of the boar, but with dainty cheer, such as the merchant had scarcely hoped to find out of the walls of his native city of Bordeaux.
But Pelayo escaped and returned in time to save his sister; mad with wrath and swearing eternal revenge, he retreated to the mountainous vales of Asturias, bearing Hermesinda away with him. Up a narrow pass between two high ridges went the pagan army, paying little heed to the growing asperity and savageness of the path it was treading.
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