Out of boat sprang
men running after them, running across low white lines of foam. The
women, that strong woman cacique ahead, left water, raced across sand
toward forest. Two men were gaining, they caught at the least swift
woman. The dark, naked form broke from them, leaped like a hurt deer and
running at speed passed with all into the ebony band that was forest.

Alonso de Ojeda burst into a great laugh. "Well done, Catalina!"

The Admiral's place could ever be told by his head over all. Moreover
his warm, lifted, powerfully pulsing nature was capable of making around
him a sphere that tingled and drew. One not so much saw him as felt him,
here, there. Now I stood beside him where he leaned over rail. "Gone,"
he said. "They are gone!" He drew a deep breath. I can swear that he,
too, felt an inner joy that they had escaped clutching.

But in the morning he sent ashore a large party under his brother, Don
Diego. We received another surprise. No Indians on the beach, none
in the forest, and when they came to the village, only houses, a few
parrots and the gardens, dewy fresh under the sun's first streaming. No
Indians there, nor man nor woman nor child, not Guacanagari, not Guarin,
not Catalina and her crew--none! They were gone, and we knew not where,
Quisquaya being a huge country, and the paths yet hidden from us or of
doubtful treading. But the heaped mountains rose before us, and Juan
Lepe at least could feel assured that they were gone there. They
vanished and for long we heard nothing of them, not of Guacanagari, nor
of Guarin who had saved Juan Lepe, not of Catalina, nor any.

This neighborhood, La Navidad and the shipwreck of the _Santa Maria_,
burned Guarico and now this empty village, perpetual reminder that in
some part our Indian subjects liked us not so well as formerly and
could not be made Christian with a breath, grew no longer to our
choice. Something of melancholy overhung for the Admiral this part of
Hispaniola. He was seeking a site for a city, but now he liked it not
here. The seventeen ships put on sail and, a stately flight of birds
greater than herons, pursued their way, easterly now, along the coast of
Hispaniola.

Between thirty and forty leagues from the ruin of La Navidad opened to
us a fair, large harbor where two rivers entered the sea. There was
a great forest and bright protruding rock, and across the south the
mountains. When we landed and explored we found a small Indian village
t