But one of the canoes came first, and on the prow of it was a man of a figure so goodly that he seemed a god. He stood up towering like a giant. There was glory on his forehead—there was holiness on his forehead. His eyes flashed like the eyes of the chief of the Bohitos, when Zemi enters into him and fills him. He waved in the air a glittering sword. He stretched forth his arms, and his big voice spoke tremblingly, and as if he knew not what it said.
Nearer and nearer came the canoes. Then the man, who was as a god, waved his sword, and they paused, and he alone walked, with a glorious port, through the surf, which flashed beneath him, up upon the dry sand, and there he knelt down, and prayed and wept!
But in a moment more all the white men who followed him plunged into the water and struggled to the land. First they knelt, as the foremost of them all had knelt, and each kissed the sand; then they knelt round about the leader, and sought to get near him to kiss his hand or his foot, while he stood erect among them like a palm-tree above weeds!
This is a description of the cacique of the white strangers. He was past the middle age, but erect as a sapling, and sturdy as a tree. He had a thin, hard face, with a long hooked nose, and a mighty forehead, marked with deep lines like furrows. His hair was very short, and quite grey. He had shaggy eyebrows, and under them eyes which pierced, and of a grey or ash colour. He had a scanty beard, which hung in a peak from his chin, with very few hairs on the upper lip. He was not tall, but handsome and strong. On his head he wore a hat looped with golden chains and crowned with feathers, and his garments were all glittering and glorious, and in his right hand he ever held the naked sword! When the white strangers knelt to him, and when my forefathers saw the grandeur and majesty of his face, they felt he was a god, and they knelt likewise—the chief of the Bohitos and also the cacique. So the white cacique stood erect above them all.
Then the white men placed in the sand an upright stick with a shorter stick crossing it, and all baring their heads, sang a loud song very solemn and slow, looking up to heaven, and making a cross with their fingers on their foreheads and their breasts.
Meantime the cacique and the chief of the Bohitos advanced with fear and trembling, and prostrated themselves before the great white cacique. But he raised them with kind looks and gentle-sounding words, and put into their hands treasures—bright flat stones, in which whoso looked saw his own face looking back at him—and hollow vessels like shells, but bright and glittering, which made merry music when they were shaken in the hand. In exchange, the cacique and the chief of the Bohitos gave what they had, maize and the cloth of the cotton-tree. Presently, the white strangers touched the golden plates which hung from our forefathers’ ears, and asked by signs where the gold came from? and our forefathers pointed towards where Cuba and Hispaniola lay across the sea. At this the white strangers smiled to each other, and were pleased. The multitudes followed them whithersoever they went, and when the even was come, and the sun going down, the white men passed again in their great canoes to the floating houses with wings, in which they lived on the sea. Our forefathers accompanied them with songs and rejoicings in their small canoes, and the great white cacique, standing high above the ocean, waved them farewell, while the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled from the floating house beneath him.
And this is the story of the first coming of white men, as my forefather, the cacique, who saw them, told it to my forefather, the next cacique, who was carried by them a slave to dig for gold in Hispaniola.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
I MEET OLD FRIENDS.
Weeks passed slowly away. Twice a day, in the morning and the afternoon, I mounted to the summit of the highest rock in the island, looking anxiously round for sails, and there, by consent of the Indians, who felt secure in their hiding-place, I piled up a great mass of brushwood, ready for firing as a signal, in case of any English vessel approaching. During these long solitary watches I thought much of my life since I had been carried a prisoner to the West Indies. I thought how many great dangers I had undergone, how many narrow escapes I had made, and I began gradually to entertain the idea whether, upon an opportunity offering, I had better resume a buccaneering life, or set out across the Atlantic for home. I said to myself, ‘I will not return penniless as when I went forth.’ The pearls left to me by poor Rumbold were, as he said, worth fully one thousand pounds, and I doubted not but that my share in the booty captured in the Carthagena galleon, I owning one-third of the schooner which took her, as well as being second officer on board, would come to something very considerable. Here, then, were means upon which I could at once return and bring happiness and wealth to the firesides of Kirkleslie. I brooded over these things much. Lying in the shade of my brushwood pile, watching the buzzing sparkling insects which shot hither and thither in the air—the dragon-fly poising his lithe body, and the brightly painted butterflies flitting from flower to flower, I pondered and turned the question in my mind. My old habits of castle-building came back upon me, and I erected two splendid edifices upon the foundation of the subtle air.