The Adelantado returned to us, and we waited. The weeks
crept by.
Great heat and sickness, and the Indians no longer prompt
to bring us supplies. Sooner or later, each of these dark
peoples found a Quibian or Caonabo.
The most of us determined that Diego Mendez and Fiesco
and their canoe were lost. Hispaniola knew nothing of us
--nothing, nothing! Suddenly the two Porras brothers
led a mad mutiny. "Leave these rotting ships--seize the
canoes we need--all of us row or swim to Hispaniola!"
There were fifty who thought thus. The Admiral withstood
them with strong words, with the reasoning of a
master seaman, and the counsel now--his white and long
hair, and eld upon him--of Jacob or Isaac or Abraham.
But they would not, and they would not, and at last they
departed from us, taking--but the Admiral gave them freely
--the dozen canoes that we had purchased, crowding into
these, rowing away with cries from that sea fortress, melancholy
indeed, in the blinding light.
They vanished. The next day fair, the next a mad storm.
Two weeks, and news came of them. They were not nigh
to Hispaniola; wrecked, they lost five men, but got, the rest
of them, to land, where they now roved from village to
village. Another week, and the Indians who came to us
and whom we kept friendly, related with passionate and
eloquent word and gesture evils that that band was working.
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