"The Spaniards sat about the fires where the venison was roasting, and talked openly of pearls. They had a cask of wine out from the ship, and some of their men made great laughter trying to dance with the young men of Cofachique. But one of the tame Indians that Ayllon had brought from Hispaniola with him, went privately to his master. 'I know this dance,' he said; 'it is a dance of death.' But Ayllon dared do nothing except have a small cannon on the ship shot off, as he said, for the celebration, but really to scare the Indians."
"And they were scared?"
"When they have danced the dance of death and vengeance there is nothing can scare Indians," said the Brown Pelican, and the whole rookery agreed with her.
"At a signal," she went on, "when the Spaniards were lolling after dinner with their iron shirts half off, and the guns stacked on the sand, the Indians fell upon them with terrible slaughter. Ayllon got away to his ships with a few of his men, but there were not boats enough for all of them, and they could not swim in their armor. Some of them tried it, but the Indians swam after them, stabbing and pulling them under. That night Ayllon saw from his ships the great fires the Indians made to celebrate their victory, and the moment the day popped suddenly out of the sea, as it does at that latitude, he set sail and put the ships about for Hispaniola, without stopping to look for survivors.
"But even there, I think, the Cacica's thought followed him. A storm came up out of the Gulf, black with thunder and flashing green fire. The ships were undermanned, for the sailors, too, had been ashore feasting. One of the brigantines--but not the one which carried Ayllon--staggered awhile in the huge seas and went under."
"And the pearls, the young chief's necklace, what became of that?" asked Dorcas.
"It went back to Talimeco with the old chief's body and was buried with him. You see, that had been the signal. Ayllon had the necklace with him in the slack of his doublet. He thought it would be a good time after the feast to show it to the Cacique and inquire where pearls could be found. He had no idea that it had belonged to the Cacique's son; all Indians looked very much alike to him. But when the Cacique saw Young Pine's necklace in the Spaniard's hand, he raised the enemy shout that was the signal for his men, who lay in the scrub, to begin the battle. Ayllon struck down the Cacique with his own sword as the nearest at hand. But the Cacique had the pearls, and after the fighting began there was no time for the Spaniard to think of getting them back again. So the pearls went back to Talimeco, with axes and Spanish arms, to be laid up in the god-house for a trophy. It was there, ten years later, that Hernando de Soto found them. As for Ayllon, his pride and his heart were broken. He died of that and the fever he had brought back from Cofachique, but you may be sure he never told exactly what happened to him on that unlucky voyage. Nobody had any ear in those days for voyages that failed; they were all for gold and the high adventure."
"What I want to know," said Dorcas, "is what became of the Cacica, and whether she saw Mr. de Soto coming and why, if she could look people in the eye and make them do what she wanted, she didn't just see Mr. de Ayllon herself and tell him to go home again."
"It was only to her own people she could do that," said the Pelican. "She could send her dream to them too, if it pleased her, but she never dared to put her powers to the test with the strangers. If she had tried and failed, then the Indians would have been certain of the one thing they were never quite sure of, that the Spaniards were the Children of the Sun. As for the horses, they never did get it out of their minds that they might be eaten by them. I think the Cacica felt in her heart that the strangers were only men, but it was too important to her to be feared by her own people to take any chances of showing herself afraid of the Spaniards. That was why she never saw Ayllon, and when it was at last necessary that Soto should be met, she left that part of the business to the young Princess."
"That," said the Snowy Egret, "should be my story! The egrets were sacred at Cofachique," she explained to the children; "only the chief family wore our plumes. Our rookery was in the middle swamp a day inland from Talimeco, safe and secret. But we used to go past the town every day fishing in the river. That is how we knew the whole story of what happened there and at Tuscaloosa."