int of shore darted a long canoe with many rowers. Other
canoes gave way for it, and the Indians already upon the _Santa Maria_
exclaimed that it was the boat of the cacique, though not the cacique
but his brother sat in it. Guacanagari was the cacique. His town was
yonder! They pointed to a misty headland beyond St. Thomas's bay.

The Indian from the great canoe came aboard, a handsome fellow, and he
brought presents not like any we had seen. There was a width of cotton
embroidered thick with bits of gleaming shell and bone, but what was
most welcome was a huge wooden mask with eyes and tongue of gold. Fray
Ignatio crossed himself. "The devil they worship,--poor lost sheep!"
The third gift was a considerable piece of that mixed and imperfect gold
which afterwards we called guanin. And would we go to visit the cacique
whose town was not so far yonder?

It was Christmas Eve. We sailed with a small, small wind for the
cacique's village, out from harbor of St. Thomas, around a headland and
along a low, bright green shore. So low and fitful was the wind that we
moved like two great snails. Better to have left the ships and gone, so
many of us, in our boats with oars, canoes convoying us! The distance
was not great, but distance is as the power of going. "I remember,"
quoth the Admiral, "a calm, going from the Levant to Crete, and our
water cask broken and not a mouthful for a soul aboard! That was a long,
long two days while the one shore went no further and the other came
no nearer. And going once to Porto Santo with my wife she fell ill
and moaned for the land, and we were held as by the sea bottom, and I
thought she would die who might be saved if she could have the land. And
I remember going down the African coast with Santanem--"

Diego de Arana said, "You have had a full life, senor!"

He was cousin, I had been told, to that Dona Beatrix whom the Admiral
cherished, mother of his youngest son, Fernando. The Admiral had
affection for him, and Diego de Arana lived and died, a good, loyal
man. "A full outward life," he went on, "and I dare swear, a full inward
one!"

"That is God's truth!" said the Admiral. "You may well say that, senor!
Inside I have lived with all who have lived, and discovered with all who
have discovered!"

I remember as a dream this last day upon the _Santa Maria_. Beltran the
cook had scalded his arm. I dressed it each day, and dressing it now,
half a dozen idling by, watching the operation, I