The fact of the matter was this. Very few people care now-a-days, nor ever have cared, for uninvited guests; and the Cacique of Veragua and his people were no exceptions to the general rule. When Columbus and his four caravels appeared off their coasts, they were as pleased with the novel exhibition as we are with a sight of the Persian Shah, an elephant called Jumbo, or a king of the Cannibal Islands. And they treated the exhibitors very well, giving them much more than enough for one feast; and then, when they were satisfied with the sight, and had found that enough of that was certainly, so far as they were concerned, as good as a feast, they gave their visitors some very valuable little presents, and courteously hinted--"Now you may go." But, instead of taking the unacceptable hint, they didn't go. On the contrary, they coolly took possession of other people's land, built a considerable number of houses upon it, and showed plainly enough that they meant to take up their abode there without an invitation. These Spaniards would never have dreamt of trying to treat their home neighbours, the Portuguese or the French, with such scant ceremony. But these Veraguans were "only savages, heathen, miserable dark-skinned creatures, with no rights at all." No claims to halfpence, only to kicks. Unfortunately, these poor heathen savages thought differently. Quibian, with his bad leg laid up in his uncivilized palace, growled forth his orders to his painted warriors to expel the impudent intruders; and all his able-bodied subjects turned themselves into volunteers for the furtherance of the same purpose. Here, there, and everywhere around that bit of coast, and between the two rivers, lurked the Spaniards' foes, and half-a-dozen particularly malicious ones were concealed just within the borders of the forest, facing the Admiral's ship, when Montoro and Ferdinand forsook its safety for their ill-advised bathe. The spies grinned at each other with silent delight when they saw the boys swim straight for the bank, mount it, and actually place themselves in the full power of the enemy. The arrows would have left the bows at once, and both the lads might have suffered but for the dogs. The Veraguans, like their neighbours on the great new continent, had no domestic animals, and the gambols and tricks of Don and Señor were most fascinatingly wonderful to those hidden spectators, who almost forgot their desire to kill the dogs' companions in delighted attention to the dogs themselves. But suddenly Fernando, in that very unexpected way, rolled himself down the bank and disappeared,--he and one of the four-footed friends,--only to reappear to their eyes half-way back to the ship. The Indians were furious at his escape and their own stupidity, and, darting out of their hiding-place, shot off all six arrows simultaneously at the two hoped-for victims still remaining in their power.