.

At first, however, he and his men welcomed the refuge of the harbor. It
was the port which he had called Santa Gloria, on his first visit there.
He was at once surrounded by Indians, ready to barter with them and
bring them provisions. The poor Spaniards were hungry enough to be glad
of this relief.

Mendez, a spirited sailor, had the oversight of this trade, and in one
negotiation, at some distance from the vessels, he bought a good canoe
of a friendly chief. For this he gave a brass basin, one of his two
shirts, and a short jacket. On this canoe turned their after fortunes.
Columbus refitted her, put on a false keel, furnished her with a mast
and sail.

With six Indians, whom the chief had lent him, Diego Mendez, accompanied
by only one Spanish companion, set sail in this little craft for San
Domingo. Columbus sent by them a letter to the sovereigns, which gives
the account of the voyage which the reader has been following.

When Mendez was a hundred miles advanced on his journey, he met a band
of hostile savages. They had affected friendship until they had the
adventurers in their power, when they seized them all. But while the
savages were quarreling about the spoils, Mendez succeeded in escaping
to his canoe, and returned alone to his master after fifteen days.

It was determined that the voyage should be renewed. But this time,
another canoe was sent with that under the command of Mendez. He sailed
again, storing his boats with cassava bread and calabashes of water.
Bartholomew Columbus, with his armed band, marched along the coast, as
the two canoes sailed along the shore.

Waiting then for a clear day, Mendez struck northward, on the passage,
which was long for such frail craft, to San Domingo. It was eight months
before Columbus heard of them. Of those eight months, the history is
of dismal waiting, mutiny and civil war. It is pathetic, indeed, that
a little body of men, who had been, once and again, saved from death
in the most remarkable way, could not live on a fertile island, in a
beautiful climate, without quarrelling with each other.

Two officers of Columbus, Porras and his brother, led the sedition. They
told the rest of the crew that the Admiral's hope of relief from Mendez
was a mere delusion. They said that he was an exile from Spain, and that
he did not dare return to Hispaniola. In such ways they sought to rouse
his people against him and his brother. As for Columbus, he was sick on
boar