Shaking their own living heads, Columbus and his party returned.

Suddenly they came on some suspicious-looking mounds of earth over which new grass was growing.

An examination of these showed them to be the graves of eleven of the Spaniards, the remains of the clothing being quite sufficient to identify them.

Doctor Chanca, who examined them, thought that they had not been dead two months.

Speculation came to an end in the face of this eloquent certainty; there were the dead bodies of some of the colonists; and the voyagers knelt round with bare heads while the bodies were replaced in the grave and the ceremony of Christian burial performed over them.
Little by little the dismal story was elicited from the natives, who became less timid when they saw that the Spaniards meant them no harm.
It seemed that Columbus had no sooner gone away than the colonists began to abandon themselves to every kind of excess.