It became evident that with the fierce chief Caonaba to reckon with, military strength and capacity would be the only means of holding the country.  The commander could not count on patriotism, religious principle or even self-interest to keep the colonists united.  In this tangled situation one of the few persons who really enjoyed himself was Alonso de Ojeda.  Instead of spending his time in drinking, quarreling or getting himself into trouble with friendly natives, the young man seemed bent on proving himself an able and sagacious leader of men.  A little fortress of logs had been built about eighteen leagues from the settlement, in the mining country, defended on all sides but one by a little river, the Yanique, and on the remaining side by a deep ditch.  Gold dust, nuggets, amber, jasper and lapis lazuli had been found in the neighborhood, and it was the Admiral’s intention to send miners there as soon as possible, protected by the fort, which he called San Tomas.  Ojeda happened to be in command of the garrison, in the absence of his superior, when Caonaba came down from his mountains with an immense force of hostile tribes.  The young lieutenant in his rude eyrie, perched on a hill surrounded by the enemy, held off ten thousand savages under the Carib chief for more than a month.  Finally the chief, whose people had never been trained in warfare after the European fashion, found them deserting by hundreds, tired of the monotony of the siege.  Ojeda did not merely stand on the defensive.  He was continually sallying forth at the head of small but determined companies of Spaniards, whenever the enemy came near his stronghold.  He never went far enough from his base to be captured, but killed off so many of the best warriors of Caonaba that the chief himself grew tired of the unprofitable undertaking and withdrew his army.  During the siege provisions ran short, and when things were looking very dark a friendly savage slipped in one night with two pigeons for the table of the commander.  When they were brought to Ojeda, in the council chamber where he was seated consulting with his officers, he glanced at the famine-pinched faces about him, took the pigeons in his hands and stroked their feathers for an instant.

“It is a pity,” he said, “that we have not enough to make a meal.  I am not going to feast while the rest of you starve,” and he gave the birds a toss into the air from the open window and turned again to his plans.  When some one reported the incident to the Admiral his eyes shone.

“I wish we had a few more such commanders,” he said.

Caonaba’s next move was to form a conspiracy among all the caciques of Hispaniola, to join in a grand attack against the white men and wipe them out, as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad.  A friendly cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by Colon’s acute mind to be desperate indeed.  He had only