h gold and
glory. I confess I have had my doubts of the gold, for after all, these
Indians may have more sense than they appear to have."

"People often do, but in what way, especially?"

"_Amigo_, put yourself in the place of one of these caciques, with white
men bedeviling you for a treasure which you never even troubled yourself
to pick up when it lay about loose. What can be more easy than to tell
them that there is plenty of it somewhere else--in the land of your
enemies? That is Pizarro's theory, at any rate."

Saavedra laughed. "Pizarro is wise in his way, but as I have said,
Cortes is our commander."

"What has that to do with it?"

"If you had been at Salamanca in his University days you wouldn't ask.
He never got caught in a scrape, and he always got what he was after."

"And kept it?"

"Is that a little more of Pizarro's wisdom? No; he always shared the
spoils as even-handedly as you please. But if any of us lost our heads
and got into a pickle he never was concerned in it--or about it."

"He will lose his, if Velasquez catches him. Remember Balboa."

"Now there is an example of the chances he will take. Cortes first
convinces the Governor that nobody else is fit to trust with this
undertaking. Cordova failed; Grijalva failed; Cortes will succeed or
leave his bones on the field of honor. No sooner are we fairly out of
harbor than Velasquez tries to whistle us back. He might as well blow
his trumpets to the sea-gulls. All Cortes wanted was a start. You will
see--either the Governor will die or be recalled while we are gone, or
we shall come back so covered with gold and renown that he will not dare
do anything when we are again within his reach. Somebody's head may be
lost in this affair, but it will not be that of Hernan' Cortes."

The man of whom they were speaking just then approached, summoning
Alvarado to him. Saavedra leaned on the rail musing.

"Sometimes," he said to himself, "one hastens a catastrophe by warning
people of it, but then, that may be because it could not have been
prevented. Cortes is inclined to make that simple fellow his aide
because they are so unlike, and so, I suspect, are others. At any rate I
have done my best to make him see whose leadership is safest."

The fleet was a rather imposing one for those waters. There were eleven
ships altogether, the flagship and three others being over seventy tons'
weight, the rest caravels and open brigantines. These were manned by o