He gave authority in Isabella to Don Diego, and made him a council where sat Father Buil, Caravajal, Coronel and Juan de Luxan. Then out of five ships we took the Cordera, the Santa Clara and the San Juan, and we set sail on April the twenty-fourth.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE island, we learned, was named Jamaica. The Admiral called it Santiago, but it also rests Jamaica.
Of all these lands, outside of the low, small islands to which we came first, Cuba seemed to us the peaceable land. Jamaica gave us almost Carib welcome. Its folk had the largest canoes, the sharpest, toughest lances. Perhaps they had heard from some bold sea rover that we had come, but that we were not wholly gods!
Our crossbow men shot amongst them. The arrows failed to halt them, but when we sent a bloodhound the dog did our work. It was to them what griffon or fire-breathing dragon might be to a Seville throng. When the creature sprang among them they uttered a great cry and fled. Jamaica is most beautiful.
For not a few days we visited, sailing and anchoring, lifting again and stopping again. Once the people were pacified, they gave us kindly enough welcome, trading and wondering. We slipped by bold coasts and headlands which we must double, mountains above us. They ran by inland paths, saving distance, telling village after village. When we made harbor, here was the thronged beach. Some of these people wore a slight dress of woven grass and palm leaves, and they used crowns of bright feathers. We got from them in some quantity golden ornaments. But south for gold, south—south, they always pointed south!
The Cordera, the Santa Clara and the San Juan set sail out of the Harbor of Good Weather, in Santiago or Jamaica. A day and a night of pleasant sailing, then we saw the great Cuba coast rise blue in the distance. The weather wheeled.
There was first a marvelous green hush, while clouds formed out of nothing. We heard a moaning sound and we did not know its quarter. The sea turned dead man’s color. Then burst the wind. It was more than wind; it seemed the movement of a world upon us. Bare of all sails, we labored. We were driven, one from the other. The mariners fell to praying.
A strange light was around us, as though the tempest itself made a light. By it I marked the Admiral, upright where he could best command the whole. He had lashed himself there, for the ship tossed excessively. His great figure stood; his white, blowing hair, in that strange light, made for him a nimbus. It was strange, how the light seemed to seize that and his brow and his gray-blue eyes. Below the eyes his lips moved. He was shouting encouragement, but only the intention could be heard. The intention was heard. He looked what he was, something more than a bold man and a brave sea captain, and there streamed from him comfort. It touched his mariners; it came among them like tongues of flame.