ck out all body hair save the head thatch--high
features, a studied look of settled and cold fierceness. Such was this
Carib in Hispaniola.

Presently they put a watch and the rest all lay down and slept, Beltran
beside me. The day had been clear, and now a great moon made silver,
silver, the land around. It shone upon the Spanish sailor and upon the
Carib chief and all the naked Manguana men. I thought of Europe, and
of how all this or its like had been going on hundred years by hundred
years, while perished Rome and quickened our kingdoms, while Charlemagne
governed, while the Church rose until she towered and covered like the
sky, while we went crusades and pilgrimages, while Venice and Genoa
and Lisbon rose and flourished, while letters went on and we studied
Aristotle, while question arose, and wider knowledge. At last Juan Lepe,
too, went to sleep.

Next day we traveled among and over mountains. Our path, so narrow,
climbed by rock and tree. Now it overhung deep, tree-crammed vales, now
it bore through just-parted cliffs. Beltran and Juan Lepe had need for
all their strength of body.

The worst was that that old tremor and weakness of one leg and side,
left after some sea fight, which had made Beltran the cook from Beltran
the mariner, came back. I saw his step begin to halt and drag. This
increased. An hour later, the path going over tree roots knotted like
serpents, he stumbled and fell. He picked himself up. "Hard to keep deck
in this gale!"

When he went down there had been an exclamation from those Indians
nearest us. "Aiya!" It was their word for rotten, no good, spoiled,
disappointing, crippled or diseased, for a misformed child or an old man
or woman arrived at helplessness. Such, I had learned from Guarin, they
almost invariably killed. It was why, from the first, we hardly saw
dwarfed or humped or crippled among them.

We had to cross a torrent upon a tree that falling had made from side
to side a rounded bridge. Again that old hurt betrayed him. He slipped,
would have fallen into the torrent below, but that I, turning, caught
him and the Indian behind us helped. We managed across. "My ship," said
Beltran, "is going to pieces on the rocks."

The path became ladder steep. Now Beltran delayed all, for it was a lame
man climbing. I helped him all I could.

The sun was near its setting. We were aloft in these mountains. Green
heads still rose over us, but we were aloft, far above the sea. And now
we