Nine against the unknown

IIO NINE AGAINST THE UNKNOWN
the primitives of the northern islands, the Bahamas, were
neither Caribs nor cannibals mattered little to the Spaniard
in pursuit of gold or slaves. He could salve his conscience and
every murder by thinking of his victims as eaters of men.
The squadron coasted along Cuba and reached La Navidad.
The fort had disappeared : it had been razed to the ground.
The forty who had been left to man it had vanished—all but
a few poor skeletons and rusting fragments of armour. While
the dismayed Spaniards surveyed the ruins of the fort
messengers came to them from Guacanagari with the tale of
La Navidad’s end. The forty whom Columbus had left to
seal the friendship of Europe and America had from the
beginning displayed an amazing insolence and licentiousness.
They had wandered the island, taking what they would,
interfering with the Indians, loud, braggart and boastful.
Finally a neighbouring chief could bear with them no longer.
He had raised an army and marched it against the fort,
destroyed it, and killed the garrison. Guacanagari himself
had been wounded in defence of the white men.
Such was the story. Possibly Guacanagari himself had
played a less innocent part. Even so, it seemed even to the
Admiral, remembering the quality of those he had left behind,
that the chief might have been justified. It was plainly
impossible to think of rebuilding La Navidad. The native
Cubans had soured of the white men and their ways.
But a site and the building of a town were essential,
for the overloaded convoy already groaned with sick and
wearied men who cried for land, sight of the treasures which
had drawn them from their homes in Spain. Columbus
turned the squadron about and coasted down to Hayti.
Ar Cape Haytien he anchored and set about disembarking
stores and men on the jungly beach, there to rear the first
European city of the New World, Isabella.
Isabella progressed but slowly. The men were tired and
sick. But now the Admiral came out in less pleasing colours
than in those days in Spain when he had been the gracious
magnate receiving colleagues in a golden enterprise. He
drew up regulations for labour, and enforced them ruthlessly,
himself the while maintaining all the ceremonial state which
he considered a viceroy’s due. Isabella progressed amidst
quarrels and dissensions. Provisions ran short; medical supplies
gave out, and it was soon obvious to Columbus that the