He thereupon set sail for La Navidad, but the navigation off that part of the coast was necessarily slow because of the number of the shoals and banks, on one of which the Admiral's ship had been lost the year before; and the short voyage occupied three days.
They arrived at La Navidad late on the evening of the 27th--too late to make it advisable to land.

Some natives came out in a canoe, rowed round the Admiral's ship, stopped and looked at it, and then rowed away again.
When the fleet had anchored Columbus ordered two guns to be fired; but there was no response except from the echoes that went rattling among the islands, and from the frightened birds that rose screaming and circling from the shore.

No guns and no signal fires; no sign of human habitation whatever; and no sound out of the weird darkness except the lap of the water and the call of the birds.

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