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“Young Pine stood on the deck and heard his father calling to him from the shore, and saw his friends shot as they jumped overboard, or were dragged below in chains, and did not know what to do at such treachery. The wine foamed in his head and he hung sick against the rail until Ayllon came sidling and fidgeting to find out where the pearls came from. He fingered the strand on Young Pine’s neck, making signs of friendship.

“The ship was making way fast, and the shore of Cofachique was dark against the sun. Ayllon had sent his men to the other side of the ship while he talked with Young Pine, for he did not care to have them learn about the pearls.

“Young Pine lifted the strand from his neck, for by Ayllon’s orders he was not yet in chains. While the Spaniard looked it over greedily, the boy saw his opportunity. He gave a shout to the sea-birds that wheeled and darted about the galleon, the shout the fishers give when they throw offal to the gulls, and as the wings gathered and thickened to hide him from the guns, he dived straight away over the ship’s side into the darkling water.

“All night he swam, steering by the death-fires which the pearlers had built along the beaches, and just as the dawn came up behind him to turn the white-topped breakers into green fire, the land swell caught him. Four days later a search party looking for those who had jumped overboard, found his body tumbled among the weeds along the outer shoals and carried it to his mother, the Cacica, at Talimeco.

NOTE:

THE PRINCESS’S STORY

Hernando de Soto landed first at Tampa Bay in Florida, and after a short excursion into the country, wintered at Ana-ica Apalache, an Indian town on Apalachee Bay, the same at which Panfilo de Narvaez had beaten his spurs into nails to make the boats in which he and most of his men perished. It was between Tampa and Anaica Apalache that Soto met and rescued Juan Ortiz, who had been all that time a prisoner and slave to the Indians.

When the Princess says that Talimeco was a White Town, she means that it was a Town of Refuge, a Peace Town, in which no killing could be done. Several Indian tribes had these sanctuaries.

In an account of Soto’s expedition, which was written sometime afterward from the stories of survivors, it is said by one that the Princess went with him of her own accord, and by another that she was a prisoner. The truth probably is that if she had not gone willingly, she would have been compelled. There is also mention of the man to whom she gave the pearls for assisting at her escape, six pounds of them, as large as hazel nuts, though the man himself would never tell where he got them.

The story of Soto’s death, together with many other interesting things, can be read in the translation of the original account made by Frederick Webb Hodge.

THE SNOWY EGRET’S STORY

The Great Admiral was, of course, Christopher Columbus. You will find all about him and the other Spanish gentlemen in the school history.

Something special deserves to be said about Panfilo de Narvaez, since it was he who set the Spanish exploration of the territory of the United States in motion. He landed on the west coast of Florida in 1548, and after penetrating only a little way into the interior was driven out by the Indians. But he left Juan Ortiz, one of his men, a prisoner among them, who was afterward discovered by Soto and became his interpreter and guide.

There is no good English equivalent for Soto’s title of Adelantado. It means the officer in charge of a newly discovered country. Cay is an old Spanish word for islet. “Key” is an English version of the same word. Cay Verde is “Green Islet.”

The pearls of Cofachique were fresh-water pearls, very good ones, too, such as are still found in many American rivers and creeks.

The Indians that Soto found were very likely descended from the earlier Mound-Builders of the Ohio Valley. They showed a more advanced civilization, which was natural, since it was four or five hundred years after the Lenni-Lenape drove them south. Later they were called “Creeks” by the English, on account of the great number of streams in their country.

Cacique and Cacica were titles brought up by the Spaniards from Mexico and applied to any sort of tribal rulers. They are used in all the old manuscripts and have been adopted generally by modern writers, since no one knows just what were the native words.

The reason the Egret gives for the bird dances–that it makes the world work together better–she must have learned from an Indian, since there is always some such reason back of every primitive dance. It makes the corn grow or the rain fall or the heart of the enemy to weaken. The Cofachiquans were not the only people who learned their dances from the water birds, as the ancient Greeks had a very beautiful one which they took from the cranes and another from goats leaping on the hills.