any and
grievous a sea had dashed over him and retreated and he had stood! What
he said now was, "The tide of the spirit goes out; the tide comes back
in. Let it come back a spring tide!"

Guacanagari entered. This cacique, whose fortunes now began to be
intertwined with ours, had his likeness, so far as went state and
custom, to that Cuban chieftain whom Luis Torres and I had visited.
But this was an easier, less strongly fibred person, a big, amiable,
indolent man with some quality of a great dog who, accepting you and
becoming your friend, may never be estranged. He was brave after his
fashion, gifted enough in simple things. In Europe he would have been
an easy, well-liked prince or duke of no great territory. He kept a
simple state, wore some slight apparel of cotton and a golden necklet.
He brought gifts and an unfeigned sympathy for that death upon the sand
bar.

He and the Admiral sat and talked together. "Gods from
heaven?"--"Christian men and from Europe," and we could not make him,
at this time, understand that that was not the same thing. We began
to comprehend that "heaven" was a word of many levels, and that they
ascribed to it everything that they chose to consider good and that was
manifestly out of the range of their experience.

In his turn the Admiral was ready for all that Guacanagari could tell
him. "Gold?" His eyes were upon the Indian's necklet. Removing it, the
cacique laid it in the god's hand. All Indians now understood that
we made high magic with gold, getting out of it virtues beyond their
comprehension. In return the Admiral gave him a small brazen gong and
hammer. "Where did they get the gold?" Again like the Cuban chief this
cacique waved his hand to the mountains. "Cibao!" and then turning he
too pointed to the south. "Much gold there," said Diego Colon. "Inland,
in the mountains," quoth the Admiral, "and evidently, in very great
quantity, in some land to the south! This is not Cipango, but I think
that Cipango lies to the south." He asked who ruled Hayti that we called
Hispaniola. We understood that there were a number of caciques, but that
for a day's journey every way it was Guacanagari's country.

"A cacique who ruled them all?" No, there was no such thing.

"Had ships like ours and clothed men ever before come to them?"

No, never! But then he seemed to say that there was undoubtedly a
tradition. Gods had come, and would come again, and when they did so
great things would fol