superior, when Caonaba came down from his mountains with an immense
force of hostile tribes. The young lieutenant in his rude eyrie, perched
on a hill surrounded by the enemy, held off ten thousand savages under
the Carib chief for more than a month. Finally the chief, whose people
had never been trained in warfare after the European fashion, found them
deserting by hundreds, tired of the monotony of the siege. Ojeda did not
merely stand on the defensive. He was continually sallying forth at the
head of small but determined companies of Spaniards, whenever the enemy
came near his stronghold. He never went far enough from his base to be
captured, but killed off so many of the best warriors of Caonaba that
the chief himself grew tired of the unprofitable undertaking and
withdrew his army. During the siege provisions ran short, and when
things were looking very dark a friendly savage slipped in one night
with two pigeons for the table of the commander. When they were brought
to Ojeda, in the council chamber where he was seated consulting with his
officers, he glanced at the famine-pinched faces about him, took the
pigeons in his hands and stroked their feathers for an instant.

"It is a pity," he said, "that we have not enough to make a meal. I am
not going to feast while the rest of you starve," and he gave the birds
a toss into the air from the open window and turned again to his plans.
When some one reported the incident to the Admiral his eyes shone.

"I wish we had a few more such commanders," he said.

Caonaba's next move was to form a conspiracy among all the caciques of
Hispaniola, to join in a grand attack against the white men and wipe
them out, as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A friendly
cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the
first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by