ojeda made a landfall at what is known now as cartagena. it was not a particularly good place for a settlement. there was no reason on earth why they should stay there at all. la cosa, who had been along the coast several times and knew it thoroughly, warned his youthful captain—to whom he was blindly and devotedly attached, by the way—that the place was extremely dangerous; that the inhabitants were fierce, brave and warlike, and that they had a weapon almost as effectual as the spanish guns. that was the poisoned arrow. ojeda thought he knew everything and he turned a deaf ear to all remonstrances. he hoped he might chance upon an opportunity of surprising an indian village and capturing a lot of inoffensive inhabitants for slaves, already a very profitable part of voyaging to the indies.
he landed without much difficulty, assembled the natives and read to them a perfectly absurd manifesto, which had been prepared in spain for use in similar contingencies, summoning them to change their religion and to acknowledge the supremacy of spain. not one word of this did the natives understand and to it they responded with a volley of poisoned arrows. the spanish considered this paper a most {11} valuable document, and always went through the formality of having the publication of it attested by a notary public.
ojeda seized some seventy-five captives, male and female, as slaves. they were sent on board the ships. the indian warriors, infuriated beyond measure, now attacked in earnest the shore party, comprising seventy men, among whom were ojeda and la cosa. the latter, unable to prevent him, had considered it proper to go ashore with the hot-headed governor to restrain him so far as was possible. ojeda impetuously attacked the indians and, with part of his men, pursued them several miles inland to their town, of which he took possession.
the savages, in constantly increasing numbers, clustered around the town and attacked the spaniards with terrible persistence. ojeda and his followers took refuge in huts and enclosures and fought valiantly. finally all were killed, or fatally wounded by the envenomed darts except ojeda himself and a few men, who retreated to a small palisaded enclosure. into this improvised fort the indians poured a rain of poisoned arrows which soon struck down every one but the governor himself. being small of stature and extremely agile, and being provided with a large target or shield, he was able successfully to fend off the deadly arrows from his person. it was only a question of time before the indians would get him and he would die in the frightful agony which his men experienced after being infected with the poison upon the arrow-points. in his extremity, he was rescued by la cosa who had kept in hand a moiety of the shore party.
the advent of la cosa saved ojeda. infuriated at the slaughter of his men, ojeda rashly and {12} intemperately threw himself upon the savages, at once disappearing from the view of la cosa and his men, who were soon surrounded and engaged in a desperate battle on their own account. they, too, took refuge in the building, from which they were forced to tear away the thatched roof that might have shielded them from the poisoned arrows, in fear lest the indians might set it on fire. and they in turn were also reduced to the direst of straits. one after another was killed, and finally la cosa himself, who had been desperately wounded before, received a mortal hurt; while but one man remained on his feet.
possibly thinking that they had killed the whole party, and withdrawing to turn their attention to ojeda, furiously ranging the forest alone, the indians left the two surviving spaniards unmolested, whereupon the dying la cosa bade his comrade leave him, and if possible get word to ojeda of the fate which had overtaken him. this man succeeded in getting back to the shore and apprised the men there of the frightful disaster.
the ships cruised along the shore, sending parties into the bay at different points looking for ojeda and any others who might have survived. a day or two after the battle they came across their unfortunate commander. he was lying on his back in a grove of mangroves, upheld from the water by the gnarled and twisted roots of one of the huge trees. he had his naked sword in his hand and his target on his arm, but he was completely prostrated and speechless. the men took him to a fire, revived him and finally brought him back to the ship.
marvelous to relate, he had not a single wound upon him!
{13}
great was the grief of the little squadron at this dolorous state of affairs. in the middle of it, the ships of nicuesa hove in sight. mindful of their previous quarrels, ojeda decided to stay ashore until he found out what were nicuesa's intentions toward him. cautiously his men broke the news to nicuesa. with magnanimity and courtesy delightful to contemplate, he at once declared that he had forgotten the quarrel and offered every assistance to ojeda to enable him to avenge himself. ojeda thereupon rejoined the squadron, and the two rivals embraced with many protestations of friendship amid the acclaim of their followers.
the next night, four hundred men were secretly assembled. they landed and marched to the indian town, surrounded it and put it to the flames. the defenders fought with their usual resolution, and many of the spaniards were killed by the poisonous arrows, but to no avail. the indians were doomed, and the whole village perished then and there.
nicuesa had landed some of his horses, and such was the terror inspired by those remarkable and unknown animals that several of the women who had escaped from the fire, when they caught sight of the frightful monsters, rushed back into the flames, preferring this horrible death rather than to meet the horses. the value of the plunder amounted to eighteen thousand dollars in modern money, the most of which nicuesa took.
the two adventurers separated, nicuesa bidding ojeda farewell and striking boldly across the caribbean for veragua, which was the name columbus had given to the isthmian coast below honduras; while ojeda crept along the shore seeking a convenient {14} spot to plant his colony. finally he established himself at a place which he named san sebastian. one of his ships was wrecked and many of his men were lost. another was sent back to santo domingo with what little treasure they had gathered and with an appeal to encisco to hurry up.
they made a rude fort on the shore, from which to prosecute their search for gold and slaves. the indians, who also belonged to the poisoned-arrow fraternity, kept the fort in constant anxiety. many were the conflicts between the spaniards and the savages, and terrible were the losses inflicted by the invaders; but there seemed to be no limit to the number of indians, while every spaniard killed was a serious drain upon the little party. man after man succumbed to the effects of the dreadful poison. ojeda, who never spared himself in any way, never received a wound.
from their constant fighting, the savages got to recognize him as the leader and they used all their skill to compass destruction. finally, they succeeded in decoying him into an ambush where four of their best men had been posted. recklessly exposing themselves, the indians at close range opened fire upon their prisoner with arrows. three of the arrows he caught on his buckler, but the fourth pierced his thigh. it is surmised that ojeda attended to the four indians before taking cognizance of his wound. the arrow, of course, was poisoned, and unless something could be done, it meant death.
he resorted to a truly heroic expedient. he caused two iron plates to be heated white-hot and then directed the surgeon to apply the plates to the wound, one at the entrance and the other at the exit of the arrow. {15} the surgeon, appalled by the idea of such torture, refused to do so, and it was not until ojeda threatened to hang him with his own hands that he consented. ojeda bore the frightful agony without a murmur or a quiver, such was his extraordinary endurance. it was the custom in that day to bind patients who were operated upon surgically, that their involuntary movements might not disconcert the doctors and cause them to wound where they hoped to cure. ojeda refused even to be bound. the remedy was efficacious, although the heat of the iron, in the language of the ancient chronicler, so entered his system that they used a barrel of vinegar to cool him off.
ojeda was very much dejected by the fact that he had been wounded. it seemed to him that the virgin, his patron, had deserted him. the little band, by this time reduced to less than one hundred people, was in desperate straits. starvation stared it in the face when fortunately assistance came. one bernardino de talavera, with seventy congenial cut-throats, absconding debtors and escaped criminals, from hispaniola, had seized a genoese trading-ship loaded with provisions and had luckily reached san sebastian in her. they sold these provisions to ojeda and his men at exorbitant prices, for some of the hard-earned treasure which they had amassed with their great expenditure of life and health.
there was no place else for talavera and his gang to go, so they stayed at san sebastian. the supply of provisions was soon exhausted, and finally it was evident that, as encisco had not appeared with any re?nforcements or supplies, some one must go back to hispaniola to bring rescue to the party. ojeda offered to do this himself. giving the charge of affairs at {16} san sebastian to francisco pizarro, who promised to remain there for fifty days for the expected help, he embarked with talavera.
naturally ojeda considered himself in charge of the ship; naturally talavera did not. ojeda, endeavoring to direct things, was seized and put in chains by the crew. he promptly challenged the whole crew to a duel, offering to fight them two at a time in succession until he had gone through the ship, of which he expected thereby to become the master; although what he would have done with seventy dead pirates on the ship is hard to see. the men refused this wager of battle, but fortune favored this doughty little cavalier, for presently a great storm arose. as neither talavera nor any of the men were navigators or seamen, they had to release ojeda. he took charge. once he was in charge, they never succeeded in ousting him.
in spite of his seamanship, the caravel was wrecked on the island of cuba. they were forced to make their way along the shore, which was then unsettled by spain. under the leadership of ojeda the party struggled eastward under conditions of extreme hardship. when they were most desperate, ojeda, who had appealed daily to his little picture of the virgin, which he always carried with him, and had not ceased to urge the others to do likewise, made a vow to establish a shrine and leave the picture at the first indian village they came to if they got succor there.
sure enough, they did reach a place called cueyabos, where they were hospitably received by the indians, and where ojeda, fulfilling his vow, erected a log hut, or shrine, in the recess of which he left, with much regret, the picture of the virgin which had accompanied {17} him on his wanderings and adventures. means were found to send word to jamaica, still under the governorship of esquivel, whose head ojeda had threatened to cut off when he met him. magnanimously forgetting the purpose of the broken adventurer, esquivel despatched a ship to bring him to jamaica. we may be perfectly sure that ojeda said nothing about the decapitation when the generous hearted esquivel received him with open arms. ojeda with talavera and his comrades were sent back to santo domingo. there talavera and the principal men of his crew were tried for piracy and executed.
ojeda found that encisco had gone. he was penniless, discredited and thoroughly downcast by his ill fortune. no one would advance him anything to send succor to san sebastian. his indomitable spirit was at last broken by his misfortunes. he lingered for a short time in constantly increasing ill health, being taken care of by the good franciscans, until he died in the monastery. some authorities say he became a monk; others deny it; it certainly is quite possible. at any rate, before he died he put on the habit of the order, and after his death, by his own direction, his body was buried before the gate, so that those who passed through it would have to step over his remains. such was the tardy humility with which he endeavoured to make up for the arrogance and pride of his exciting life.