While one of the friars read this address the savages stood on the defensive, no doubt wondering what the delay meant. Ojeda knew not their language, and they took little notice of his signs of amity. As they still brandished their weapons, the intrepid adventurer led on an attack, calling the Virgin to his aid, and in a few minutes put them to flight, killing a few and taking others prisoners. Not content with this, he followed them through the forest to their village, and after a deadly fight, drove them out and burnt their dwellings. Still undaunted, he went on to another village, which he found deserted, but while his men were searching for plunder he was attacked by the enemy in overwhelming numbers. All his followers were killed, and he himself wounded with a poisoned arrow, yet he managed to escape into the forest to suffer hunger and thirst in addition to the pain of his wound. Meanwhile his men on board the ships were wondering what had become of their leader and his party. They were afraid to venture far into the woods on account of the yells and shouts of the Indians, who were celebrating their triumph. At last, however, they commenced a search, and found their captain in a mangrove swamp, lying on a tangle of roots, speechless and dying of hunger, yet still clutching his naked sword and bearing his buckler. Notwithstanding all this, he ultimately recovered, to go on as eagerly as ever in making fresh conquests. Later, the proclamation to the Indians was interpreted to them, sometimes eliciting replies very much to the point. When the Bachelor Enciso went in search of the country of Zenu, where gold was so plentiful that it could be collected in the rainy season in nets stretched across the river, he was opposed by two Caciques, to whom the paper was read. They listened courteously, and, when it had been expounded, said they were quite willing to admit that there was one God, the ruler of heaven and earth, whose creatures they were. But as to the Pope's regency and his donation of _their_ country to the king of Spain, that was another thing altogether. The Pope must have been drunk when he gave away what was not his, and the king could only have been mad to ask him for the territory of others. They, the Caciques, were the rulers of these territories, and needed no other sovereign: if their king came to take possession they would cut off his head and stick it on a pole, as they did the heads of their other enemies, at the same time pointing to a row of grisly skulls impaled close by. Their arguments, however, were useless, for Enciso attacked, routed them, and took one of the Caciques prisoner.