Provisions were running short.

The seamen had seen their commander thrust away from what might be called his own door; and the sight of his powerlessness had strengthened their independence until it amounted to insubordination.

Fortunately, however, before the discontent broke out into open mutiny, a breeze sprang up from the east, and the admiral easily persuaded his unruly crews that it was better to prosecute their voyage than to remain beating about the islets waiting to return home.
They were soon gladdened by the sight of the pine-clad slopes of the little island of Guanaja, lying about forty miles from Truxillo, on the coast of Honduras.

Here there appeared a canoe, much more like the ships of the old world than any they had seen before, manned by twenty-five Indians who had come from the continent on a trading voyage among the islands.

Their cargo consisted of cotton fabrics, iron-wood swords, flint knives, copper axe-heads, and a fruit called by the natives cacao, to which the Spaniards were now introduced for the first time, but the merits of which, as a beverage, they were not slow to appreciate.