There was made a huge water column,
a moving column that fast grew larger. Crying out, our
sailors flung themselves upon their knees. It passed us
with a mighty sound, and we were not engulfed.
The Admiral said, "God tries us, but he will not destroy
us utterly!"
The boy Fernando, in a moment's wild terror who was
ordinarily courageous as any, clung to him. "O my son!
I would that you were in La Rabida, safe beside Fray Juan
Perez! My son and my brother Bartholomew!"
Now came to us all scarcity of food and a misery of sickness.
Now two thirds would have mutinied had we not
been going back--but we were going back--creeping,
crawling back as the tempest would allow us.
Christmas! We remembered our first Christmas in this
world, by Guarico in Hispaniola, when the _Santa Maria_
sank. Again we found a harbor, and we lay there between
dead and alive, until early January. We sailed and on
Epiphany Day entered a river that we knew to be in golden
Veragua. The Admiral called it the Bethlehem.
Gold again, gold! Not on the Bethlehem, but on the
river of Veragua, not far away, to which the Admiral sent
the Adelantado and two long boats filled with our stoutest
men. They brought back gold, gold, gold!
The cacique of these parts was Quibian, a barbarian whom
at the last, not the first, we concluded to be true brother of
Caonabo.
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