CHAP. V I ]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
419
of his followers prisoners. Of his own party only two had been wounded ; himself in the hand, and the admiral's steward, who had received an apparently slight wound with a lance, equal to one of the most insignificant of those with which Ledesma was covered ; yet, in spite of careful treatment, he died. On the next day, the 20th of May, the fugitives sent a peti tion to the admiral, signed with all their names, in which, says Las Casas, they confessed all their misdeeds, and cruelties, and evil intentions, supplicating the admiral to have pity on them and pardon them for their rebellion, for which God had already pun ished them. They offered to return to their obedience and to serve him faithfully in future, making an oath to that effect upon a cross and a missal, accompanied by an imprecation worthy of being recorded : “ They hoped, should they break their oath, that no priest nor other Christian might ever confess them ; that re pentance might be of no avail ; that they might be deprived of the holy sacraments of the church ; that at their death they might receive no benefit from bulls nor indulgences ; that their bodies might be cast out into the fields like those of heretics and renegadoes, instead of being buried in holy ground ; and that they might not receive absolution from the pope, nor from cardinals, nor archbishops, nor bishops, nor any other Christian priests.”* Such were the awful imprecations by which these men endeavored to add validity to an oath. The worthlessness of a man's word may always be known by the extravagant means he uses to en force it. The admiral saw, by the abject nature of this petition, how completely the spirit of these misguided men was broken ; with his wonted magnanimity, he readily granted their prayer, and * Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. ii. cap. 32.