e the
sentence. The stern old tyrant refused to interfere, nor would he
entertain {49} Balboa's appeal to Spain. "He has sinned," he said
tersely; "death to him!" Four of his companions--three of them men who
had been imprisoned at Ada, and the notary who had endeavored to warn
him--were sentenced to death.

It was evening before the preparations for the execution were
completed. Balboa faced death as dauntlessly as he had faced life.
Pedrarias was hated in Ada and Darien; Balboa was loved. If the
veterans of Antigua had not been on the other side of the Isthmus,
Balboa would have been rescued. As it was, the troops of Pedrarias
awed the people of Ada and the judicial murder went forward.

Balboa was as composed when he mounted the scaffold as he had been when
he welcomed Pedrarias. A proclamation was made that he was a traitor,
and with his last breath he denied this and asserted his innocence.
When the axe fell that severed his head, the noblest Spaniard of the
time, and one who ranks with those of any time, was judicially
murdered. One after the other, the three companions, equally as
dauntless, suffered the unjust penalty. The fourth execution had taken
place in the swift twilight of the tropical latitude and the darkness
was already closing down upon the town when the last man mounted the
scaffold. This was the notary, Arguello, who had interfered to save
Balboa. He seems to have been beloved by the inhabitants of the town,
for they awakened from their horror, and some of consideration among
them appealed personally to Pedrarias, who had watched the execution
from a latticed window, to reprieve the last victim. "He shall die,"
said the governor sternly, "if I have to kill him with my own hand."

So, to the future sorrow of America, and to the {50} great diminution
of the glory and peace of Spain, and the world, passed to his death the
gallant, the dauntless, the noble-hearted Balboa. Pedrarias lived
until his eighty-ninth year, and died in his bed at Panama; which town
had been first visited by one of his captains, Tello de Guzman, founded
by Espinosa and upbuilt by himself.

There are times when a belief in an old-fashioned Calvinistic hell of
fire and brimstone is an extremely comforting doctrine, irrespective of
theological bias. Else how should we dispose of Nero, Tiberius,
Torquemada, and gentlemen of their stripe? Wherever such a company may
be congregated, Pedro Arias de Avila is entitled