Headlong the staggering ship was driven upon Los Viboros, (The Vipers) that infamous group of hidden rocks off Jamaica.  She was pounded to pieces almost before Valdivia could get his one boat into the water, with its crew of twenty men.  Without food or drink, sails or proper oars, the survivors tossed for thirteen dreadful days on the uncharted cross-currents of unknown seas.  Seven died of hunger, thirst and exposure before the tide that drifted northwest along the coast of the mainland caught them and swept them ashore.

None of them had ever seen this coast.  Valdivia cherished a faint hope that it might be a part of the kingdom of walled cities and golden temples, of which they had all heard.  There were traces of human presence, and they could see a cone-shaped low hill with a stone temple or building of some kind on the top.  Natives presently appeared, but they broke the boat in pieces and dragged the castaways inland through the forest to the house of their cacique.

That chief, a villainous looking savage in a thatched hut, looked at them as if they had been cattle—­or slaves—­or condemned heretics.  What they thought, felt or hoped was nothing to him.  He ordered them taken to a kind of pen, where they were fed.  So great is the power of the body over the mind that for a few days they hardly thought of anything but the unspeakable joy of having enough to eat and drink, and nothing to do but sleep.  The cacique visited the enclosure now and then, and looked them over with a calculating eye.  Aguilar was haunted by the idea that this inspection meant something unpleasant.

All too soon the meaning was made known to them.  Valdivia and four other men who were now less gaunt and famine-stricken than when captured, were seized and taken away, to be sacrificed to the gods.

It was the custom of the Mayas of Yucatan to sacrifice human beings, captives or slaves for choice, to the gods in whose honor the stone pyramids were raised.  When the victim had been led up the winding stairway to the top, the central figure in a procession of priests and attendants, he was laid upon a stone altar and his heart was cut out and offered to the idol, after which the body was eaten at a ceremonial feast.  The eight captives who remained now understood that the food they had had was meant merely to fatten them for future sacrifice.  Half mad with horror, they crouched in the hot moist darkness, and listened to the uproar of the savages.

A strong young sailor by the name of Gonzalo Guerrero, who had done good service during the hurricane, pulled Jeronimo by the sleeve, “What in the name of all the saints can we do, Padre?” he muttered.  “Jose and the rest will be raving maniacs.”

Aguilar straightened himself and rose to his feet where the rays of the moon, white and calm, shone into the enclosure.  Lifting his hands to heaven he began to pray.

All he had learned from books and from the disputations and sermons of the Fathers fell away from him and left only the bare scaffolding, the faith of his childhood.  At the familiar syllables of the Ave Maria the shuddering sailors hushed their cries and oaths and listened, on their knees.