we, too, at last; for now it was late August,
and the weather was better, and surely, surely, any day we might see
a white point rise from blue ocean,--a white point and another and
another, like stars after long clouded night skies!

So we watched the sea. And also there was a man to watch the forest. But
we did not conceive that the dragon would come forth in the daytime, nor
that he could come at any time without our hearing afar the dragging of
his body and the whistling of his breath.

It was halfway between sunrise and noon. Five of us were in the village,
seven at La Navidad. The five were there for melons and fruit and
cassava and tobacco which we bought with beads and fishhooks and bits of
bright cloth. Three of the seven at La Navidad were out of gate, down
at the river, washing their clothes. Diego Minas, the archer, on top of
wall, watched the forest. Walking below, Beltran the cook was singing in
his big voice a Moorish song that they made much of year before last
in Seville. I had a book of Messer Petrarca's poems. It had been
Gutierrez's, who left it behind when he broke forth to the mountains.

Beltran's voice suddenly ceased. Diego the archer above him on wall had
cried down, "Hush, will you, a moment!" Diego de Arana came up. "What is
it?"

"I thought," said the archer, "that I heard a strange shouting from
toward village. Hark ye! There!"

We heard it, a confused sound. "Call in the men from the river!" Arana
ordered.

Diego Minas sent his voice down the slope. The three below by the river
also heard the commotion, distant as Guarico. They were standing up,
their eyes turned that way. Just behind them hung the forest out of
which slid, dark and smooth, the narrow river.

Out of the forest came an arrow and struck to the heart Gabriel Baraona.
Followed it a wild prolonged cry of many voices, peculiar and curdling
to the blood, and fifty--a hundred--a host of naked men painted black
with white and red and yellow markings. Guarico did not use bow and
arrow, but a Carib cacique knew them, and had so many, and also lances
flint or bone-headed, and clubs with stones wedged in them and stone
knives. Gabriel Baraona fell, whether dead or not we could not tell.
Juan Morcillo and Gonzalo Fernandez sent a scream for aid up to La
Navidad. Now they were hidden as some small thing by furious bees. Diego
de Arana rushed for his sword. "Down and cut them out!"

Diego Minas fired the big lombard, but for fea