Columbus, meanwhile, with his half the crew, was waiting.  He had established as good order as he could between his men and the natives, but he was obliged to keep a strict watch over such European food as he still had, knowing how necessary it was for the sick men in his number.  On the other hand, the Indians, wholly unused to regular work, found it difficult to supply the food which so many men demanded.

The supplies fell off from day to day; the natives no longer pressed down to the harbor; the trinkets, with which food had been bought, had lost their charm; the Spaniards began to fear that they should starve on the shore of an island which, when Columbus discovered it, appeared to be the abode of plenty.  It was at this juncture, when the natives were becoming more and more unfriendly, that Columbus justified himself by the tyrant’s plea of necessity, and made use of his astronomical science, to obtain a supernatural power over his unfriendly allies.

He sent his interpreter to summon the principal caciques to a conference.  For this conference he appointed a day when he knew that a total eclipse of the moon would take place.  The chiefs met as they were requested.  He told them that he and his followers worshipped a God who lived in the heavens; that that God favored such as did well, but punished all who displeased him.

He asked them to remember how this God had protected Mendez and his companions in their voyage, because they went obedient to the orders which had been given them by their chief.  He asked them to remember that the same God had punished Porras and his companions with all sorts of affliction, because they were rebels.  He said that now this great God was angry with the Indians, because they refused to furnish food to his faithful worshippers; that he proposed to chastise them with famine and pestilence.

He said that, lest they should disbelieve the warning which he gave, a sign would be given, in the heavens that night, of the anger of the great God.  They would see that the moon would change its color and would lose its light.  They might take this as a token of the punishment which awaited them.

The Indians had not that confidence in Columbus which they once had.  Some derided what he said, some were alarmed, all waited with anxiety and curiosity.  When the night came they saw a dark shadow begin to steal over the moon.  As the eclipse went forward, their fears increased.  At last the mysterious darkness covered the face of the sky and of the world, when they knew that they had a right to expect the glory of the full moon.

There were then no bounds to their terror.  They, seized on all the provisions that they had, they rushed to the ships, they threw themselves at the feet of Columbus and begged him to intercede with his God, to withhold the calamity which he had threatened.  Columbus would not receive them; he shut himself up in his cabin and remained there while the eclipse increased, hearing from within, as the narrator says, the howls and prayers of the savages.