Balboa laughed again.  “Why do you ask me questions when you know my mind almost as well as I do?  You see, now that Enciso is about to go, we shall have some freedom to do something besides quarrel among ourselves.  Gold is an apology for whatever one does, out here.  If there is as much of it as they say, in this Coyba, the King may be able to gild the walls of another salon, and if he puts Pizarro’s portrait in it in the place of honor I shall not weep over that.  There is glory enough for all of us, who choose to earn it.”

Pizarro and his men had not gone ten miles from Darien before they ran into an ambush of Indians armed with slings.  The seven Spaniards charged instantly, and actually put the enemy to flight, then beat a quick retreat.  Every man of them despite their body armor had wounds and bruises, and one was left disabled upon the field.  Balboa met them as they limped painfully in.  His quick eye took in the situation.

“Only six of you?  Where is Francisco Hernan?”

“He was crippled and could not walk,” answered Pizarro sulkily; he saw what was coming.  Balboa’s eyes blazed.

“What!  You—­Spaniards—­ran away from savages and left a comrade to die?  Go back and bring him in!”

Pizarro turned in silence, took his men back over the road just traversed, and brought Hernan safely in.

This was one of the many incidents by which the colony learned the mettle of the new captain-general.  Under his direction exploration of the neighboring provinces was undertaken.  Balboa with eighty men made a friendly visit to Comagre, a cacique who could put three thousand fighting men in the field.  Comagre and his seven sons entertained the white men in a house larger and more like a palace of the Orient than any they had before seen.  It was one hundred and fifty paces long by eighty paces broad, the lower part of the walls built of logs, the floors and upper walls of beautiful and ingenious wood-work.  The son of this cacique presented to Balboa seventy slaves, captives taken by himself, and golden ornaments weighing altogether four thousand ounces.  The gold was at once melted into ingots, or bars of uniform size, for purposes of division.  One-fifth of it was weighed out for the Crown, the rest divided among the members of the expedition.  The young cacique stood by watching with scornful curiosity as the Spaniards argued and squabbled over the allotment.  Suddenly he struck up the scales with his fist, and the shining treasure tumbled over the porch floor like spilt corn.

“Why do you quarrel over this trash?” he asked.  “If this gold is so precious to you that you leave your homes, invade the land of peaceable nations and endure desperate perils, I will tell you where there is plenty of it.”