Diego
strengthened. He was bold enough, Margarite! on a dark night, at eve,
there were so many ships before Isabella but when morn broke they
were fewer by two. Margarite and the Apostolic Vicar and a hundred
disaffected were departed the Indies! "Have they gotten to Spain? And
what do they say? God, He knoweth!--There have been great men and they
have been stung to death."

"Ay, ay, the old story!" I said, and would learn about the pacification
of the Indians.

"Why, they are not pacified," answered Luis. "Worse follows worse. Pedro
Margarite left two bands in the Vega, and from all I hear they turned
devils. It looked like peace itself, didn't it, this great, fair, new
land, when first we stepped upon it, and raised the banner and then the
cross? It's that no longer. They're up, the Indians, Caonabo and three
main caciques, and all the lesser ones under these. In short, we are
at war," ended Luis. "Alonso de Ojeda at the moment is the Cid. He
maneuvers now in the Vega."

I looked around. We were sitting under palm trees, by the mud wall of
our town. Beyond the forest waved in the wind, and soft white clouds
sailed over it in a sky of essential sapphire. "There's an aspect here
of peace!"

"That is because Guacanagari, from his new town, holds his people still.
For that Indian the scent of godship has not yet departed! He sees the
Admiral always as a silver-haired hero bringing warmth and light. He
is like a dog for fidelity!--But I saw three Indians from outside his
country curse him in the name of all the other tribes, with a kind
of magical ceremony. Is he right, or is he wrong, Juan Lepe? Or is he
neither the one nor the other, but Something moves him from above?"

"Have you never seen again the butio, Guarin?"

"No."

We sat and looked at the rich forest, and at that strange, rude, small
town called Isabella, and at the blue harbor with the ships, and the
blue, blue sea beyond. Over us--what is over us? Something seemed to
come from it, stealing down the stair to us!

The fourth day after his return, Don Francisco de Las Casas, Don Juan
Ponce de Leon, and others told to the Viceroy, lying upon his bed in his
house, much what Luis Torres told Juan Lepe. "Sirs," he said, when they
had done, "here is my brother, Don Bartholomew, who will take order.
He is as myself. For Christopherus Columbus, he is ill, and must be ill
awhile."

The sixth day came Guacanagari, and sat in the room and talked
sorrowfully