to bring the evil tidings.

The Spaniards under Bartholomew's command broke into a panic, and taking
advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the
sand. They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy
cross sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped
inside this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives'
conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
birds. The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his
crew and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the
shore, where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the
caravel's boat. With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as
there was ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.


Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time. One supposes the entrance
to the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken
water extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral's
anchorage would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of
course entirely hidden from it. As day after day passed and Diego
Tristan did not return, the Admiral's anxiety increased. Among the three
caravels that now formed his little squadron there was only one boat
remaining, the others, not counting one taken by Tristan and one left
with Bartholomew, having all been smashed in the late hurricanes. In the