bought from a gang of pirates who had stolen it, kept the colony alive for a while. When this was gone, Ojeda sailed on the pirate craft to bring help from Santo Domingo. He left San Sebastian in charge of his lieutenant, Francisco Pizarro, of whom history had a great deal more to say. If Ojeda did not return at the end of fifty days, they were to take the two brigantines and go where they pleased.
When the fifty days were up, Ojeda and such of the pirates as were yet alive were struggling along, up to their armpits in mud, through mangrove swamps on the coast of Cuba, where they had been shipwrecked. When at last they were rescued by the Governor of Jamaica and brought to Santo Domingo (where the pirates were all hanged), Ojeda was a ruined and worn-out man. Like many another fighter of that brave, cruel age, he became a monk shortly before his death, "making," in the words of the historian Oviedo, "a more praiseworthy end than other captains in these parts have done."
Pizarro and his men waited the fifty days and a little longer, for the two brigantines would not hold them all. After enough had died of starvation and arrow-poison to make room for the rest, they sailed to Carthagena, losing one brigantine by the way. In the harbor they found reinforcements from Santo Domingo, commanded by a lawyer named Enciso, who held office under Governor Ojeda. He had with him one hundred and fifty men, with horses, arms, powder and provisions. But the most important part of his cargo was a barrel with a man in it.
This man was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who had made
