They will say, `See that dark mark
moving round edge of cloud mountain! That is he!' "
I asked him, "Where are Guacanagari and the rest?"
"Guacanagari had an arrow through his thigh and a
deep cut upon the head. He was bleeding and in a swoon.
His brother and the Guarico men and I with them took
him, and the women took the children, and we went
away, save a few that were killed, upon the path that we
used when in my father's time, the Caribs came in canoes.
After a while we will go down to Guacanagari. But now
rest!"
He looked at me, and then from a little trickling spring
he took water in a calabash no larger than an orange and
from another vessel a white dust which he stirred into it,
and made me drink. I did not know what it was, but I
went to sleep.
But that sleep did not refresh. It was filled with heavy
and dreadful dreams, and I woke with an aching head and
a burning skin. Juan Lepe who had nursed the sick down
there in La Navidad knew feebly what it was. He saw in
a mist the naked priest, his friend and rescuer, seated upon
the sandy floor regarding him with a wrinkled brow and
compressed lips, and then he sank into fever visions uncouth
and dreadful, or mirage-pleasing with a mirage-ecstasy.
Juan Lepe did not die, but he lay ill and like to die for
two months. It was deep in October, that day at dawn
when I came quietly, evenly, to myself again, and lay most
weak, but with seeing eyes.
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