This was towards dusk. When it grew dark the Indians lighted a torch of resinous wood, which burnt bright and clear, and sitting by it, with their cloaks or blankets wrapped round them, smoked gravely from long pipes made of reeds, and drank, but very moderately, the rich juice of the palm-tree—I meantime regarding them attentively, for I was still so weak that to speak was a painful effort. At last, after a long silence, the Indian with the feather, turning to me, said, solemnly—
‘I am called Buonahari, and my fathers were caciques.’
The other then said—
‘And I am called Behecheco. I am the brother of Buonahari, born but an hour after him. He is still a cacique, because our fathers were caciques, and he is the eldest of our race.’
The first Indian again interposed—
‘Our fathers were caciques of Guanhani, where first white men came. Now, there are none of our people there, and the island is called St. Salvador.’
The second Indian resumed—
‘When we die, the race of the caciques of Guanhani will be no more. We are the last; but still my brother Buonahari is a cacique, because the blood of our fathers is the blood of caciques.’
I here touched my head where Buonahari wore the feather. He seemed to understand the mute question, for he replied: ‘The feather of the toucan is the crown of a cacique. If I die first my brother Behecheco will take it from my head and wear it; when he dies no one will take it from his head; it will lie flat and rot, because the caciques of Guanhani are no more.’
At this point I became too far exhausted to listen to more, and the Indians bade me sleep again. When I wakened in the night they were still sitting beside the torch, singing, in their melodious language, a low, mournful chant, which presently sent me to the land of dreams again. The very next day, however, after a famous breakfast of fish and fowl, for now the Indians allowed me to eat as much as I would, and that the reader may conceive was not little, I managed to crawl out of the hut and sit in the shade of wavy bushes, stirred by the cool sea breeze. The abode was contrived, as I have said, deep in a ravine of rocks, half clothed with bushes and rustling grass, which were disposed partly, as I thought, by nature, and partly by art, so as artificially to hide the entrance to the cave—for it was rather that than anything else—from any except a very curious and a very keen investigator. But presently the Indians returning from fishing, they having left me still in the hammock, they led me slowly and tenderly out of the ravine, and forth upon an open, breezy space, a sort of terrace, amid the cluster of rocks in which was their dwelling, and from which I could look down upon the greater part of the island, which seemed to be some four or five miles in circumference, uneven and rocky, with abundance of bays and creeks on the leeward side, formed by smaller islets and natural indentations in the coast of the greater. It was curious to observe, the trade wind blowing strong, the space of smooth glancing water left in the lee of the island, and tapering away towards the south-west. On the windward side, the sea broke high upon the rocks, and Behecheco informed me, that in stormy weather the salt spray flew over and over the island from beach to beach. Among the bushes and trees there fluttered and coo’d countless flocks of pigeons and other small birds of brilliant plumage; and down by the shore, the fowls which wade and swim dotted all the grey rocks, and glancing shingle beds, and fair beaches of hard dry sand.