At last, on a calm and glorious morning, they saw the ship again—that ship and another. The two lowered sail, down rattled the anchors; they swung at ease in the still water beyond the fringing reef. Their flags were Spanish; they sent a shot from a culverin shrieking across to the land. It sheared the top of a palm tree; the green panache came tumbling to the ground. Birds rose with clamour and fled away; the shot echoed from a low hill back in the island. Forth from the ships’ sides put boats—boat after boat until there were a number—and all filled with armed men.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SPANIARDS
The slave-seekers, one hundred and fifty armed men, struck a flag into the earth before the village and demanded a parley. Their leader or captain was a tall, black-bearded person, fierce and fell of voice and aspect. He came to the front and shouted to the Indians in a mixture of Spanish and Indian words. Also he made friendly-seeming gestures. “No harm meant—no harm meant! Friends—friends! Your kindred send you messages—from a happy country—much happier than here where you live! Let us come into your village and talk.—We have beads and scarlet cloth—”
But the village kept silence. At Aderhold’s instigation, immediately after the ship’s first visit, it had digged around itself a shallow ditch and planted in part a stockade of sharpened stakes, in part a tall and thorny hedge. Within this manner of wall were gathered some four hundred souls, counting men, women, and children. Besides the infants and the small boys and girls there were the old and infirm and the sick. All were naked of other defence than this one barrier and the frail, booth-like walls of their huts. They were armed only with primitive weapons. The word “Spaniard” meant to them ogre and giant.
If they were not truly ogres and giants, the slave-seekers were yet active, hardened, picked men, trained in cruelty, practised in wiles, fired with lust of the golden price. When the village held silent, the leader tried again with blandishments; when there came no answer but the hot sunshine and the murmur of wood and sea, the company lifted its flag and advanced with deliberation. From behind the wall came a flight of spears and arrows. A Spaniard staggered and fell. Some savage arm, more sinewy than most, had sent a spear full through his neck. There arose a roar of anger. The men from the ships, the black-bearded one at their head, rushed forward, came tilt against the stockade and the thorn hedge.... They had not believed in the stoutness of any defence, nor of these Indians’ hearts. But driven back, they must believe. Carrying with them their wounded, they withdrew halfway to the sea and held council.
In the village they mended the gaps in the wall of stakes and thorny growth, and that done, watched and waited. The sun rode high, the children went to sleep.... The old chief—the fighting men, the women gathered around him—talked with high, ironic passion of days gone by in this island, in this island group. “They came, and our fathers’ fathers thought they were gods or men like gods! They had their wooden cross, and they planted it in the sand, side by side with their flag that says ‘Slay!’ They said that both were pleasing to the Great Spirit, and that they were his favoured children. They went away and our fathers’ fathers thought of them as gods and their country as the house of the Great Spirit.... They who had been children when they came grew to be men. There were men and men, then, in this land, men and men! Then the Spaniards came again. They told our fathers that they came from heavenly shores. They said that there, would our fathers only go with them in their many ships, they would find their dead again! Find them living and bright and always young. Find them they loved. Find their forefathers whom the Great Spirit loved and kept always about him. Find all they dreamed about. Find happiness.... They were weak of mind and they believed! They went into the Spaniards’ ships—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Next year the Spaniards came again and they brought what they said were messages from the red men who had gone last year to the heavenly shores. It was truly where the Great Spirit dwelt and where the dead lived again and all the red men who could should come.... And they whose islands these were were weak in judgment and listened and believed and went. The Spaniards carried them away in their ships—men and men and men and women and children. They loaded their ships with them as though they were nuts or fruit or fish they had caught, or the gold that they are always seeking. They carried them away, and next year they came for more. They took these too. And now this country was growing as it is to-day—trees where once there were people. But at last one escaped from the ‘heavenly shores,’ and after long toil and suffering reached these islands and told the truth. So at last when the Spaniards came the people fought them. But they were strong and the people were weak. And more and more trees grew where once there had been men! Now”—said the old chief—“I will tell you about those heavenly shores, for I, too, have been there. I will tell you of what we from this country do there, and what is done to us.” He told, circumstantially, a tale of fearful suffering.
Many of the Indians, men and women alike, determined to die rather than be taken. But many, and perhaps the most, were neither strong nor stoic, and there was a doubt, Aderhold and Joan felt, and the old chief felt.... Neither that day nor that night did there befall another attack. The Spaniards camped upon the shore, but the watching village saw boats go to and fro between the land and the ships. The night was dark and they saw moving lanterns. With the dawn one of the ships slowly felt her way farther into the crooked channel; when she anchored again she lay much nearer than before, and her row of culverins grinned against the village. Moreover, three lesser pieces had been dismounted and brought ashore. In the night-time they had made a platform and mounted these falcons or sakers.