“He is.  It is his brother, Don Diego.  He is a good man, able, too, though not able like the Admiral.  They say the other brother, Bartholomew, who is in England or in France, is almost as able.  How dizzily turns the wheel for some of us!  Yesterday plain Diego and Bartholomew, a would-be churchman and a shipmaster and chart-maker!  Now Don Diego—­Don Bartholomew!  And the two sons watching us off from Cadiz!  Pages both of them to the Prince, and pictures to look at! `Father!’ and `Noble father! and `Forget not your health, who are our Dependance!’ "

Waiting for all to start, I yet regarded that huge dazzle upon the beach, so many landed, so many coming from the ships, the ships themselves so great a drift of sea birds!  As for those dark folk—­what should they think of all these breakers-in from heaven?  It seemed to me to-day that despite their friendliness shown us here from the first, despite the miracle and the fed eye and ear and the excitement, they knew afar a pale Consternation.

At last, to drum and trumpet, we passed from shining beach into green forest.  I found myself for a moment beside Diego Colon—­not the Admiral’s brother, but the young Indian so named.  Now he was Christian and clothed, and truly the Haitiens stared at him hardly less than at the Admiral.  I greeted him and he me.  He tried to speak in Castilian but it was very hard for him, and in a moment we slipped into Indian.

I asked him, “How did you like Spain?”

He looked at me with a remote and childlike eye and began to speak of houses and roads and horses and oxen.

A message came from the Admiral at head of column.  I went to him.  Men looked at me as I passed them.  I was ragged now, grizzle-bearded and wan, and they seemed to say, “Is it so this strange land does them?  But those first ones were few and we are many, and it does not lie in our fortune!  Gold lies in ours, and return in splendor and happiness.”  But some had more thoughtful eyes and truer sense of wonder.

We found Guacanagari in a new, large, very clean house, and found him lying in a great hammock with his leg bound with cotton web, around him wives and chief men.  He sat up to greet the Admiral and with a noble and affecting air poured forth speech and laid his hand upon his hidden hurt.

Now I knew, because Guarin had told me so, that that wound was healed.  It had given trouble—­the Caribs poisoned their darts—­but now it was well.  But they are simpler minded than we, this folk, and I read Guacanagari that he must impress the returning gods with his fidelity.  He had proved it, and while Juan Lepe was by he did not need this mummery, but he had thought that he might need.  So, a big man evidently healthful, he sighed and winced and half closed his eyes as though half dying still in that old contest when he had stood by the people from the sky.  I interpreted his speech, the Admiral already understanding, but not the surrounding cavaliers.  It was a high speech or high assurance that he had done his highest best.