[Illustration: "HE PROPOSED THAT CAONABA SHOULD PUT ON THE GIFT THE SPANISH CAPTAIN HAD BROUGHT."--_Page_ 78]
Ojeda, who was a perfect horseman, made the horse leap, curvet and caracole, taking a wider circuit each time, until making a long sweep through the forest the two disappeared from the view of the Carib army altogether. Ojeda's own men closed in upon him, bound Caonaba hand and foot, behind their leader, and thus the chief was taken into the Spanish settlement. The conspiracy fell to pieces and the colony was saved.
Caonaba showed no respect to Colón or any one else in the camp while a prisoner there, except Ojeda. When Ojeda entered he promptly rose to his feet. They had many conversations together, and Caonaba, who evidently rather admired the stratagem by which he had been captured, agreed with his captor that Ojeda was The Man Who Could Not Die.
The career of Alonso de Ojeda is one of the most picturesque and adventurous in early Spanish-American history, and his character is typical of the young Spanish cavalier of the age just following the discovery of America. The episodes here used, with many others quite as dramatic, are described at length in Irving's "Life of Columbus."
Why do you come here, white men, white men? Why do you bend the knee When your priests before you, singing, singing, Lift the cross, the cross of tree?
Flashing in the sunlight, rainbows waking, Move your mighty oars keeping time. Sailors heave your anchors, chanting, chanting Some strange and mystic rime.
Pearls and gold we bring you, feathers of our wild birds, Glowing in the sunshine like flowers. Houses we will build you, food and clothing find you, You shall share in all that is ours.
Why do you frighten us, white men, white men? Can you not be friends for a day? Souls are like the sea-birds, flying, flying, Borne by the sea-wind away.
Why do you chain us in the mines of the mountains? Why do you hunt us with your hounds? We who were so free, are we evermore to be Prisoned in your narrow hateful bounds?
One escape is left us, white men, white men,-- You cannot forbid our souls to fly To the stars of freedom, far beyond the sunset,-- We whom you have captured can die!
"But of what use is a King's patent," said Hugh Thorne of Bristol, "if the harbors be locked?"