encamped on the two decaying ships on the sands at Puerto Santa Gloria
descried with joyful excitement the sails of a Spanish caravel standing
in to the shore.




CHAPTER V

THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON

We must now return to the little settlement on the coast of Jamaica
--those two wornout caravels, lashed together with ropes and bridged by an
erection of wood and thatch, in which the forlorn little company was
established. In all communities of men so situated there are alternate
periods of action and reaction, and after the excitement incidental to
the departure of Mendez, and the return of Bartholomew with the news that
he had got safely away, there followed a time of reaction, in which the
Spaniards looked dismally out across the empty sea and wondered when, if
ever, their salvation would come. Columbus himself was now a confirmed
invalid, and could hardly ever leave his bed under the thatch; and in his
own condition of pain and depression his influence on the rest of the
crew must inevitably have been less inspiriting than it had formerly
been. The men themselves, moreover, began to grow sickly, chiefly on
account of the soft vegetable food, to which they were not accustomed,
and partly because of their cramped quarters and the moist, unhealthy
climate, which was the very opposite of what they needed after their long
period of suffering and hardship at sea.

As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business