tanding without
the entrance--they had no doors; sometimes they had curtains of
cotton--looking upon that strange gathering in the little middle square
of the town. So many Spaniards in the palm shadows, and the women
feeding them, and Alonso de Ojeda's hand upon the arm of a slender brown
girl with a wreath of flowers around her head. Father Buil was within
with the Admiral, truculently and suspiciously regarding the idolater
who now had left the hammock and seemed as well of a wound as any there!
But here without were eight or ten friars, gathered together under a
palm tree, making refection and talking among themselves. One devout
brother, sitting apart and fasting, told his beads.

Said Guarin, "I have been watching him. He is talking to his
_zeme_. --They are all butios?"

"Yes. Most of them are good men."

"What is going to happen here to all my people? Something is over
against me and my people, I feel it! Even the cacique has fear."

"It is the dark Ignorance and the light Ignorance, the clothed Ignorance
and the naked Ignorance. I feel it too, what you feel. But I feel, O
Guarin, that the inner and true Man will not and cannot take hurt!"

He said, "Do they come for good?"

I answered, "There is much good in their coming. Seen from the mountain
brow, enormous good, I think. In the long run I am fain to think that
all have their market here, you no less than I, Guacanagari no less than
the Admiral."

"I do not know that," he said. "It seems to me the sunny day is dark."

I said, "In the main all things work together, and in the end is honey."

Out they came from palm-roofed house, the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and
Viceroy of what Indies he could find for Spain and Spain could take, and
the Indian king or grandee or princeling. Perceiving that what he did
was appreciated for what it was, Guacanagari had recovered his lameness.
The cotton was no longer about his thigh; he moved straight and
lightly,--a big, easy Indian.

It was now well on in the afternoon, but he would go with the Mighty
Stranger, the Great Cacique his friend, to see the ships and all the
wonders. His was a childlike craving for pure novelty and marvel.

So we went, all of us, back through vast woodland to cerulean water.
Water was deep, the _Marigalante_ rode close in, and about and beyond
her the _Santa Clara_, the _Cordera_, the _San Juan_, the _Juana_,
another _Nina_, the _Beatrix_ and many another fair name. They were
beautiful,