from view. Encisco was walking the quarter deck when his attention was attracted by a noise in a large cask which was supposed to contain salt pork.

He paused for a moment, listening, and hardly able to credit his senses.

"Let me out!" he heard a voice calling.

At once suspecting that he had a stowaway on board, the enraged Bachelor called for a hammer and knocked in the head, when Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, to the great surprise of master and crew, emerged like an apparition from the cask. Encisco was highly indignant at being thus outwitted, although he had gained a valuable recruit by the deception; and in the first ebullition of his wrath, he gave the fugitive debtor a rough reception.

"This is Balboa, whom Ojeda refused to take with him!" he cried, seizing him by the shoulder. "Why have you come in this manner?"

At a glance, Balboa saw that the armed escort, which had piloted them some distance from land, had returned, and he felt little fear of the enraged Bachelor. He calmly surveyed the scene before answering.

"I took this means to come," he said, my creditors would allow me to come way."

66 because

no other

"You think to impose on me," the irate Bachelor returned. "But I will have nothing to do with you, and shall set you ashore on the first uninhabited island we reach."

"Surely not; that would be murder."

"It will be justifiable. I will have no worthless vagabonds to breed dissensions in my colony." Balboa possessed as haughty a spirit as any noble

in Castile, and those cruel words cut his pride. Gnashing his teeth he laid his hand on his sword. Encisco was also a spirited man, and a fatal encounter might have resulted, had not the pilot interfered. He persuaded the Bachelor to be reconciled, assuring him that Balboa, though poor and in debt, was a gentleman of good family, and, being in the prime and vigor of his days, tall and muscular, seasoned to hardships and of intrepid spirit, was an acquisition to their forces to be desired. Thus a truce was patched up between them, though the spirited Balboa never fully recovered from the cruel words of Encisco. At first he was morose and sullen, but after a few days he began to mingle among the men, with whom he became very popular. Having been to the coast on a former voyage, his knowledge was valuable to the commander of the expedition.

Arriving at mainland, they touched at the fatal harbor of Carthagena, the scene of the sanguinary conflicts of Ojeda and Nicuesa with the natives. They were alarmed, while working on a boat, by the appearance of a body of armed Indians, threatening to give battle. A few days later, two Spaniards while on shore were surrounded by savages, and threatened with death. One of the Spaniards, speaking the Indian language, communicated with them and terms of peace were made. From them

Encisco learned something of the terrible fate of the colonists who had preceded them, though he could learn little of Ojeda and Nicuesa.

One day a cry of, "Sail! sail!" rang out from the harbor, and Encisco was amazed to see a brigantine come to anchor in the bay. Ordering a boat he was rowed to the side of the strange vessel. Balboa, who was one of the crew to row the Bachelor to the vessel, was astonished to find the brigantine under command of Francisco Pizarro, who had left San Domingo a few months before as a common sailor.

"The brigantine is manned by men who sailed with Ojeda," cried Bachelor Encisco. "The villains have mutinied against their commander and deserted with the vessel. I will arrest them and inflict on them the severity of the law."

Hurriedly ascending to the deck, followed by Balboa and five or six men, he beheld a sight which might have shocked even the most desperate of Spanish conquerors. The men who, but a few months before, had sailed away full of vigor and buoyant with hope, had dwindled to a single ship's crew of ragged, miserable, half-starved wretches, who, wild-eyed and savage as the men and beasts with whom they battled for existence, glared at Encisco with a fury that might have made even his dauntless spirit quail.

"Who is your commander?" demanded the Bachelor.

"I am," Pizarro haughtily returned.

"By whose authority?"

"Governor Ojeda, whose lieutenant I am.” Pizarro's naked sword was in his hand, his eyes flashed, and his manner was so ferocious that Encisco became more civil.

"Where is your authority?" he asked.

Pizarro produced his letter patent signed by the unfortunate Ojeda, showing that he left Pizarro as his locum tenens at San Sebastian.

"Where is Ojeda?" asked the Bachelor.

"Some time ago he sailed for San Domingo for reinforcements and supplies, as we were starving." "What vessel did he sail in?"

"Ber

"With Bernardino de Talavera, who joined us with a crew of desperadoes and cutpurses." "I fear, then, he is lost," said Encisco. nardino de Talavera is a pirate and stole the ship in which he and his desperate crew sailed. Where are you going, and why have you deserted the colony ?"

"We were starving," replied Pizarro," dying by sickness, famine and poisoned arrows. If we received no news in fifty days, we were to embark in the ships left with us for Hispaniola. We waited fifty days, and, not hearing from Ojeda, were go