By manifold signs his followers equally betrayed their impatience to be rid of the new-comers, and strenuously declined to have anything to do with the boat, or its crew. Seating himself in the small barque with his face toward the Indian camp, and closely wrapped in his cloak, Diego Mendez calmly sat, hour after hour, and watched the dusky warriors.
The day waned; the short twilight drew on. One of the occupants of the boat began to feel his courage cooling under this tedious inaction, and he ventured to mutter somewhat anxiously—
"The night is coming, Señor Mendez. We shall be wholly at their mercy in the darkness."
"Even so, Juan," was the calm answer; "and yet we must remain. We set out with no thought of going in search of child's play. It is our lives or the expedition."
And so they sat on in that boat, watching and watched, and the night fell. Easily could the Indians have slain them all, but they were afraid. The spirits of a thousand warriors were quelled by one man's fearlessness. And as the blackness of night began to fade away into pale dawn, the chief and his army faded from the scene—stole back to Veragua stupefied and conquered. Moral power had won its strange, bloodless victory. Then the watchers in the boat roused up, took their oars again, and returned with their news to the ships.
"And thus the woman's truth is proved," said Montoro eagerly.
But his convictions were something lessened when the Admiral said slowly—
"You are more sure than I, my son. That you saw an army of the natives I fully believe. But that they had any purpose to attack us I strongly doubt. Quibian has given many proofs of his friendly feelings towards us. And even to-day he has sent us a plentiful supply of fish, and game, and cocoa-nuts, maize, bananas, and pine-apples."
"And even to-day," interrupted Mendez with unusual heat, "even to-day, Señor, the Cacique Quibian is meditating our massacre. Give me but this cool-headed boy to go with me, and we will penetrate to the very head-quarters of his people, to his very residence itself, and learn the truth so fully that you shall no longer be able to doubt our testimony."
There was a pause. The veteran navigator gazed with keen eyes at his two excited companions, and at length said slowly—