Caonabo's bands what had
been done and not done. Guacanagari, wounded, was fled after fighting
a while, he and his brother and the butio and all the people. But the
mighty strangers found in the village, were dead. They had run down to
the sea, but Caonabo's men had caught them, and after hard work killed
them. Juan Lepe and Beltran, passing, saw the five bodies.

I do not think that Caonabo had less than a thousand with him. He had
come in force, and the whole as silent as a bat or moth. We were to
learn over and over again that "Indians" could do that, travel very
silently, creatures of the forest who took by surprise. Well, Guarico
was destroyed, and Guacanagari and Guarin fled, and in all Hispaniola
were only two Spaniards, and we saw no sail upon the sea, no sail at
all!

CHAPTER XXVI

WE turned from the sea. Thick forest came between us and it. We were
going with Caonabo to the mountains. Beltran and I thought that it had
been in question whether he should kill us at once, or hold us in life
until we had been shown as trophies in Maguana, and that the pride and
vanity of the latter course prevailed. After two days in this ruined
place, during which we saw no Guarico Indian, we departed. The raid was
over. All their war is by raid. They carried everything from the fort
save the fort itself and the two lombards. In the narrow paths that are
this world's roads, one man must walk after another, and their column
seems endless where it winds and is lost and appears again. Beltran and
I were no longer bound. Nor were we treated unkindly, starved nor hurt
in any way. All that waited until we should reach Caonabo's town.

Caonabo was a most handsome barbarian, strong and fierce and
intelligent, more fierce, more intelligent than Guacanagari. All had
been painted, but the heat of the lowland and their great exertion had
made the coloring run and mix most unseemly. When they left Guarico
they plunged into the river and washed the whole away, coming out clear
red-brown, shining and better to look upon. Caonabo washed, but then he
would renew his marking with the paint which he carried with him in a
little calabash.

A pool, still and reflecting as any polished shield, made his mirror.
He painted in a terrific pattern what seemed meant for lightning and
serpent. It was armor and plume and banner to him. I thought of our own
devices, comforting or discomforting kinships! He had black, lustrous
hair, no beard--they plu