That day we turned. “We will go back to Veragua and lade with gold, and then we’ll sail to Jamaica and to Hispaniola where this time we shall be welcome! Then to Spain where the Queen will give me a stronger fleet.”
Our ships hailed the turning. Even the Adelantado, even Diego Mendez and Juan Sanchez and Bartholomew Fiesco who were of the boldest drew long breath as of men respited from death.
Not so many have known and lived to tell of such weather as now we met and in it rolled from wave to wave through a long month.
Would we put to land we were beaten back. We had never seen such waves, and at times they glowed with cold fire. The sea with the wind twisted, danced and shouted. We were deaf with thunder and blind with lightning. When the rain descended, it was as though an upper ocean were coming down. A little surcease, then return of the tempest, like return of Polyphemus. Men died from drowning, and, I think, from pure fright. One day the clouds drove down, the sea whirled up. There was made a huge water column, a moving column that fast grew larger. Crying out, our sailors flung themselves upon their knees. It passed us with a mighty sound, and we were not engulfed.
The Admiral said, “God tries us, but he will not destroy us utterly!”
The boy Fernando, in a moment’s wild terror who was ordinarily courageous as any, clung to him. “O my son! I would that you were in La Rabida, safe beside Fray Juan Perez! My son and my brother Bartholomew!”
Now came to us all scarcity of food and a misery of sickness. Now two thirds would have mutinied had we not been going back—but we were going back—creeping, crawling back as the tempest would allow us.
Christmas! We remembered our first Christmas in this world, by Guarico in Hispaniola, when the Santa Maria sank. Again we found a harbor, and we lay there between dead and alive, until early January. We sailed and on Epiphany Day entered a river that we knew to be in golden Veragua. The Admiral called it the Bethlehem.
Gold again, gold! Not on the Bethlehem, but on the river of Veragua, not far away, to which the Admiral sent the Adelantado and two long boats filled with our stoutest men. They brought back gold, gold, gold!
The cacique of these parts was Quibian, a barbarian whom at the last, not the first, we concluded to be true brother of Caonabo.