1492
by
Mary Johnston
Part 1 out of 7

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1492

by MARY JOHNSON




1492

CHAPTER I

THE morning was gray and I sat by the sea near Palos
in a gray mood. I was Jayme de Marchena, and that
was a good, _old Christian_ name. But my grandmother
was Jewess, and in corners they said that she never
truly recanted, and I had been much with her as a child.
She was dead, but still they talked of her. Jayme de Marchena,
looking back from the hillside of forty-six, saw some
service done for the Queen and the folk. This thing and
that thing. Not demanding trumpets, but serviceable. It
would be neither counted nor weighed beside and against
that which Don Pedro and the Dominican found to say.
What they found to say they made, not found. They took
clay of misrepresentation, and in the field of falsehood sat
them down, and consulting the parchment of malice, proceeded
to create. But false as was all they set up, the time
would cry it true.

It was reasonable that I should find the day gray.

Study and study and study, year on year, and at last
image a great thing, just under the rim of the mind's ocean,
sending up for those who will look streamers above horizon,
streamers of colored and wonderful light! Study and reason
and with awe and delight take light from above. Dream
of good news for one and all, of life given depth and brought
into music, dream of giving the given, never holding it back,
which would be avarice and betraying! Write, and give
men and women to read what you have written, and believe
--poor Deluded!--that they also feel inner warmth and
light and rejoice.

Oh, gray the sea and gray the shore!

But some did feel it.

The Dominican, when it fell into his hands, called it
perdition. A Jewess for grandmother, and Don Pedro for
enemy. And now the Dominican--the Dominicans!

The Queen and the King made edict against the Jews, and
there sat the Inquisition.

I was--I am--Christian. It is a wide and deep and
high word. When you ask, "What is it--Christian?"
then must each of us answer as it is given to him to answer.
I and thou--and the True, the Universal Christ give us
light!

To-day all Andalusia, all Castile and all Spain to me
seemed gray, and gray the utter Ocean that stretched no
man knew where. The gray was the gray of fetters and of
ashes.

The tide made, and as the waves came nearer, eating the
sand before me, they uttered a low crying. _In danger--
danger--in danger, Jayme de Marchena!_

I had been in danger before. Who is not often and always
in danger, in life? But this was a danger to daunt.

Mine were no powerful friends. I had only that which
was within me. I was only son of only son, and my parents
and grandparents were dead, and my distant kindred cold,
seeing naught of good in so much study and thinking of
that old, dark, beautiful, questionable one, my grandmother.
I had indeed a remote kinsman, head of a convent in this
neighborhood, and he was a wise man and a kindly. But
not he either could do aught here!

All the Jews to be banished, and Don Pedro with a steady
forefinger, "That man--take him, too! Who does not
know that his grandmother was Jewess, and that he lived
with her and drank poison?" But the Dominican, "No!
The Holy Office will take him. You have but to read--only
you must not read--what he has written to see why!"

Gray Ocean, stretching endlessly and now coming close,
were it not well if I drowned myself this gray morning
while I can choose the death I shall die? Now the great
murmur sang _Well_, and now it sang Not well.

Low cliff and heaped sand and a solitary bird wide-winging
toward the mountains of Portugal, and the Ocean gray-
blue and salt! The salt savor entered me, and an inner zest
came forward and said No, to being craven. In banishment
certainly, in the House of the Inquisition more doubtfully,
the immortal man might yet find market from which to buy!
If the mind could surmount, the eternal quest need not be
interrupted--even there!

Blue Ocean sang to me.

A vision--it came to me at times, vision--set itself in
air. I saw A People who persecuted neither Jew nor thinker.
It rose one Figure, formed of an infinite number of small
figures, but all their edges met in one glow. The figure
stood upon the sea and held apart the clouds, and was free
and fair and mighty, and was man and woman melted together,
and it took all colors and made of them a sun for its
brow. I did not know when it would live, but I knew that
it should live. Perhaps it was the whole world.

It vanished, leaving sky and ocean and Andalusia. But
great visions leave great peace. After it, for this day, it
seemed not worth while to grieve and miserably to forebode.
Through the hours that I lay there by the sea, airs from that
land or that earth blew about me and faint songs visited
my ears, and the gray day was only gray like a dove's
breast.

Jayme de Marchena stayed by the lonely sea because that
seemed the safest place to stay. At hand was the small
port of Palos that might not know what was breeding in
Seville, and going thither at nightfall I found lodging and
supper in a still corner where all night I heard the Tinto
flowing by.

I had wandered to Palos because of the Franciscan convent
of Santa Maria de la Rabida and my very distant kins-
man, Fray Juan Perez. The day after the gray day by the
shore I walked half a league of sandy road and came to
convent gate. The porter let me in, and I waited in a little
court with doves about me and a swinging bell above until
the brother whom he had called returned and took me to
Prior's room. At first Fray Juan Perez was stiff and cold,
but by littles this changed and he became a good man, large-
minded and with a sense for kindred. Clearly he thought
that I should not have had a Jewish grandmother, nor have
lived with her from my third to my tenth birthday, and most
clearly that I should not have written that which I had
written. But his God was an energetic, enterprising, kindly
Prince, rather bold himself and tolerant of heathen. Fray
Juan Perez even intimated a doubt if God wanted
the Inquisition. "But that's going rather far!" he said
hastily and sat drumming the table and pursing his lips.
Presently he brought out, "But you know I can't do anything!"

I did know it. What could he do? I suppose I had
had a half-hope of something. I knew not what. Without
a hope I would not have come to La Rabida. But it was
maimed from the first, and now it died. I made a gesture
of relinquishment. "No, I suppose you cannot--"

He said after a moment that he was glad to see that I
had let my beard grow and was very plainly dressed, though
I had never been elaborate there, and especially was he glad
that I was come to Palos not as Jayme de Marchena, but
under a plain and simple name, Juan Lepe, to wit. His advice
was to flee from the wrath to come. He would not say
flee from the Holy Office--that would be heinous!--but
he would say absent myself, abscond, be banished, Jayme
de Marchena by Jayme de Marchena. There were barques
in Palos and rude seamen who asked no question when
gold just enough, and never more than enough, was shown.
He hesitated a moment and then asked if I had funds. If
not--

I thanked him and said that I had made provision.

"Then," said he, "go to Barbary, Don Jayme! An intelligent
and prudent man may prosper at Ercilla or at Fez.
If you must study, study there."

"You also study," I said.

"In fair trodden highways--never in thick forest and
mere fog!" he answered. "Now if you were like one who
has been here and is now before Granada, at Santa Fe, sent
for thither by the Queen! That one hath indeed studied to
benefit Spain--Spain, Christendom, and the world!"

I asked who was that great one, but before he could tell
me came interruption. A visitor entered, a strong-lipped,
bold-eyed man named Martin Pinzon. I was to meet him
again and often, but at this time I did not know that. Fray
Juan Perez evidently desiring that I should go, I thought
it right to oblige him who would have done me kindness
had he known how. I went without intimate word of parting
and after only a casual stare from Martin Pinzon.

But without, my kinsman came after me. "I want to
say, Don Jayme, that if I am asked for testimony I shall
hold to it that you are as good Christian as any--"

It was kinsman's part and all that truly I could have
hoped for, and I told him so. About us was quiet, vacant
cloister, and we parted more warmly than we had done
within.

The white convent of La Rabida is set on a headland
among vineyards and pine trees. It regards the ocean and,
afar, the mountains of Portugal, and below it runs a small
river, going out to sea through sands with the Tinto and the
Odiel. Again the day was gray and the pine trees sighing.
The porter let me out at gate.

I walked back toward Palos through the sandy ways. I
did not wish to go to Africa.

It is my belief that that larger Self whom they will call
protecting Saint or heavenly Guardian takes hand in affairs
oftener than we think! Leaving the Palos road, I went to
the sea as I had done yesterday and again sat under heaped
sand with about me a sere grass through which the wind
whined. At first it whined and then it sang in a thin, outlandish
voice. Sitting thus, I might have looked toward
Africa, but I knew now that I was not going to Africa.
Often, perhaps, in the unremembered past I had been in
Africa; often, doubtless, in ages to come its soil would be
under my foot, but now I was not going there! To-day I
looked westward over River-Ocean, unknown to our fathers
and unknown to ourselves. It was unknown as the future
of the world.

Ocean piled before me. From where I lay it seemed to
run uphill to one pale line, nor blue nor white, set beneath
the solid gray. Over that hilltop, what? Only other hills
and plains, water, endlessly water, until the waves, so much
mightier than waves of that blue sea we knew best, should
beat at last against Asia shore! So high, so deep, so vast,
so real, yet so empty-seeming save for strange dangers! No
sails over the hilltop; no sails in all that Vast save close at
hand where mariners held to the skirts of Mother. Europe.
Ocean vast, Ocean black, Ocean unknown. Yet there, too,
life and the knowing of life ran somehow continuous.

It wiled me from my smaller self. How had we all
suffered, we the whole earth! But we were moving, we the
world with none left out, moving toward That which held
worlds, which was conscious above worlds. Long the
journey, long the adventure, but it was not worth while fearing,
it was not worth while whining! I was not alone
Jayme de Marchena, nor Juan Lepe, nor this name nor that
nor the other.

There was now a great space of quiet in my mind. Suddenly
formed there the face and figure of Don Enrique de
Cerda whose life I had had the good hap to save. He was
far away with the Queen and King who beleaguered Granada.
I had not seen him for ten years. A moment before
he had rested among the host of figures in the unevenly
lighted land of memory. Now he stood forth plainly and
seemed to smile.

I took the leading. With the inner eye I have seen lines
of light like subtle shining cords running between persons.
Such a thread stretched now between me and Enrique de
Cerda. I determined to make my way, as Juan Lepe, through
the mountains and over the plain of Granada to Santa Fe.



CHAPTER II

SET will to an end and promptly eyes open to means!
I did not start for Granada from Palos but from
Huelva, and I quitted Andalusia as a porter in a small
merchant train carrying goods of sorts to Zarafa that was a
mountain town taken from the Moors five years back. I
was to these folk Juan Lepe, a strong, middle-aged man
used to ships but now for some reason tired of them. My
merchants had only eyes for the safety of their persons and
their bales, plunged the third day into mountainous wild
country echoing and ghastly with long-lasting war. Their
servants and muleteers walked and rode, lamented or were
gay, raised faction, swore, laughed, traveled grimly or in
a dull melancholy or mirthfully; quarreled and made peace,
turn by turn, day by day, much alike. One who was a
bully fixed a quarrel upon me and another took my part.
All leaped to sides. I was forgotten in the midst of them;
they could hardly have told now what was the cause of battle.
A young merchant rode back to chide and settle matters.
At last some one remembered that Diego had struck
Juan Lepe who had flung him off. Then Tomaso had
sprung in and struck Diego. Then Miguel--"Let Juan
Lepe alone!" said my merchant. "Fie! a poor Palos seafaring
child, and you great Huelva men!" They laughed at
that, and the storm vanished as it had come.

I liked the young man.

How wild and without law, save "Hold if you can!"
were these mountains!' "Hold if you can to life--hold if
you can to knowledge--hold if you can to joy!" Black
cliff overhung black glen and we knew there were dens of
robbers. Far and near violence falls like black snow. This
merchant band gathered to sleep under oaks with a great
rock at our back. We had journeyers' supper and fire, for
it was cold, cold in these heights. A little wine was given
and men fell to sleep by the heaped bales; horses, asses and
mules being fastened close under the crag. Three men
watched, to be relieved in middle night by other three who
now slept. A muleteer named Rodrigo and Juan Lepe and
the young merchant took the first turn. The first two sat on
one side of the fire and the young merchant on the other.

The muleteer remained sunken in a great cloak, his chin
on his arms folded upon his knees, and what he saw in the
land within I cannot tell. But the young merchant was of a
quick disposition and presently must talk. For some distance
around us spread bare earth set only with shrubs and stones.
Also the rising moon gave light, and with that and our own
strength we did not truly look for any attack. We sat and
talked at ease, though with lowered voices, Rodrigo somewhere
away and the rest of the picture sleeping. The merchant
asked what had been my last voyage.

I answered, after a moment, to England.

"You do not seem to me," he said, "a seaman. But I
suppose there are all kinds of seamen."

I said yes, the sea was wide.

"England now, at the present moment?" he said, and
questioned me as to Bristol, of which port he had trader's
knowledge. I answered out of a book I had read. It was
true that, living once by the sea, I knew how to handle a
boat. I could find in memory sailors' terms. But still he
said, "You are not a seaman such as we see at Palos and
San Lucar."

It is often best not to halt denial. Let it pass by and
wander among the wild grasses!

"I myself," he said presently, "have gone by sea to Vigo
and to Bordeaux." He warmed his hands at the fire, then
clasped them about his knees and gazed into the night.
"What, Juan Lepe, is that Ocean we look upon when we
look west? I mean, where does it go? What does it
strike?"

"India, belike. And Cathay. To-day all men believe
the earth to be round."

"A long way!" he said. "O Sancta Maria! All that
water!"

"We do not have to drink it."

He laughed. "No! Nor sail it. But after I had been on
that voyage I could see us always like mice running close to
a wall, forever and forever! Juan Lepe, we are little and
timid!"

I liked his spirit. "One day we shall be lions and eagles
and bold prophets! Then our tongue shall taste much beside
India and Cathay!"

"Well, I hope it," he said. "Mice running under the
headlands."

He fell silent, cherishing his knees and staring into the
fire. It was not Juan Lepe's place to talk when master merchant
talked not. I, too, regarded the fire, and the herded
mountains robed in night, and the half-moon like a sail rising
from an invisible boat.

The night went peacefully by. It was followed by a
hard day's travel and the incident of the road. At evening
we saw the walls of Zarafa in a sunset glory. The merchants
and their train passed through the gate and found
their customary inn. With others, Juan Lepe worked hard,
unlading and storing. All done, he and the bully slept almost
in each other's arms, under the arches of the court,
dreamlessly.

The next day and the next were still days of labor. It
was not until the third that Juan Lepe considered that he
might now absent himself and there be raised no hue and
cry after strong shoulders. He had earned his quittance,
and in the nighttime, upon his hands and knees, he crept
from the sleepers in the court. Just before dawn the inn
gate swung open. He had been waiting close to it, and he
passed out noiselessly.

In the two days, carrying goods through streets to market
square and up to citadel and pausing at varying levels
for breath and the prospect, I had learned this town well
enough. I knew where went the ascending and descending
ways. Now almost all lay asleep, antique, shaded, Moorish,
still, under the stars. The soldiery and the hidalgos, their
officers, slept; only the sentinels waked before the citadel
entry and on the town walls and by the three gates. The
town folk slept, all but the sick and the sorrowful and the
careful and those who had work at dawn. Listen, and you
might hear sound like the first moving of birds, or breath
of dawn wind coming up at sea. The greater part now of
the town folk were Christian, brought in since the five-year-
gone siege that still resounded. Moors were here, but they
had turned Christian, or were slaves, or both slave and
Christian. I had seen monks of all habits and heard ring
above the inn the bells of a nunnery. Now again they
rang. The mosque was now a church. It rose at hand,--
white, square, domed. I went by a ladder-like lane down
toward Zarafa wall and the Gate of the Lion. At sunrise
in would pour peasants from the vale below, bringing vegetables
and poultry, and mountaineers with quails and conies,
and others with divers affairs. Outgoing would be those
who tilled a few steep gardens beyond the wall, messengers
and errand folk, soldiers and traders for the army before
Granada.

It was full early when I came to the wall. I could make
out the heavy and tall archway of the gate, but as yet was
no throng before it. I waited; the folk began to gather, the
sun came up. Zarafa grew rosy. Now was clatter enough,
voices of men and brutes, both sides the gate. The gate
opened. Juan Lepe won out with a knot of brawny folk
going to the mountain pastures. Well forth, he looked back
and saw Zarafa gleaming rose and pearl in the blink of the
sun, and sent young merchantward a wish for good. Then
he took the eastward way down the mountain, toward lower
mountains and at last the Vega of Granada.



CHAPTER III

THE day passed. I had adventures of the road, but
none of consequence. I slept well among the rocks,
waked, ate the bit of bread I had with me, and fell
again to walking.

Mountains were now withdrawing to the distant horizon
where they stood around, a mighty and beautiful wall. I
was coming down into the plain of Granada, that once had
been a garden. Now, north, south, east, west, it lay war-
trampled. Old owners were dead, men and women, or were
_mudexares_, vassals, or were fled, men and women, all who
could flee, to their kindred in Africa. Or they yet cowered,
men and women, in the broken garden, awaiting individual
disaster. The Kingdom of Granada had sins, and the Kingdom
of Castile, and the Kingdom of Leon. The Moor was
stained, and the Spaniard, the Moslem and the Christian
and the Jew. Who had stains the least or the most God
knew--and it was a poor inquiry. Seek the virtues and
bind them with love, each in each!

If the mountain road had been largely solitary, it was not
so of this road. There were folk enough in the wide Vega
of Granada. Clearly, as though the one party had been
dressed in black and the other in red, they divided into
vanquished and victor. Bit by bit, now through years, all
these towns and villages, all these fertile fields and bosky
places, rich and singing, had left the hand of the Moor for
the hand of the Spaniard.

In all this part of his old kingdom the Moor lay low in
defeat. In had swarmed the Christian and with the Christian
the Jew, though now the Jew must leave. The city
of Granada was not yet surrendered, and the Queen and
King held all soldiery that they might at Santa Fe, built as
it were in a night before Granada walls. Yet there seemed
at large bands enough, licentious and loud, the scum of
soldiery. Ere I reached the village that I now saw before
me I had met two such bands, I wondered, and then wondered
at my own wonder.

The chief house of the village was become an inn. Two
long tables stood in the patio where no fountain now flowed
nor orange trees grew nor birds sang in corners nor fine
awning kept away the glare. Twenty of these wild and
base fighting men crowded one table, eating and drinking,
clamorous and spouting oaths. At the other table sat together
at an end three men whom by a number of tokens
might be robbers of the mountains. They sat quiet, indifferent
to the noise, talking low among themselves in a
tongue of their own, kin enough to the soldiery not to
fear them. The opposite end of the long table was given to
a group to which I now joined myself. Here sat two Franciscan
friars, and a man who seemed a lawyer; and one who
had the air of the sea and turned out to be master of a
Levantine; and a brisk, talkative, important person, a Catalan,
and as it presently appeared alcalde once of a so-so
village; and a young, unhealthy-looking man in black with
an open book beside him; and a strange fellow whose
Spanish was imperfect.

I sat down near the friars, crossed myself, and cut a piece
of bread from the loaf before me. The innkeeper and his
wife, a gaunt, extraordinarily tall woman, served, running
from table to table. The place was all heat and noise.
Presently the soldiers, ending their meal, got up with clamor
and surged from the court to their waiting horses. After
them ran the innkeeper, appealing for pay. Denials, expostulation,
anger and beseeching reached the ears of the patio,
then the sound of horses going down stony ways. "O God
of the poor!" cried the gaunt woman. "How are we
robbed!"

"Why are they not before Granada?" demanded the
lawyer and alertly provided the answer to his own question.
"Take locusts and give them leave to eat, being careful to
say, `This fellow's fields only!' But the locusts have wings
and their nature is to eat!"

The mountain robbers, if robbers they were, dined quietly,
the gaunt woman promptly and painstakingly serving them.
They were going to pay, I was sure, though it might not be
this noon.

The two friars seemed, quiet, simple men, dining as
dumbly as if they sat in Saint Francis's refectory. The
sometime alcalde and the shipmaster were the talkers, the
student sitting as though he were in the desert, eating bread
and cheese and onions and looking on his book. The lawyer
watched all, talked to make them talk, then came in and settled
matters. The alcalde was the politician, knowing the
affairs of the world and speaking familiarly of the King
and the Queen and the Marquis of Cadiz.

The shipmaster said, "This time last year I was in London,
and I saw their King. His name is Henry. King
Henry the Seventh, and a good carrier of his kingship!"

"That for him!" said the alcalde. "Let him stay in his
foggy island! But Spain is too small for King Ferdinand."
"All kings find their lands too small," said the lawyer.

The shipmaster spoke again. "The King of Portugal's
ship sails ahead of ours in that matter. He's stuck his banner
in the new islands, Maderia and the Hawk Islands and
where not! I was talking in Cadiz with one who was with
Bartholomew Diaz when he turned Africa and named it
Good Hope. Which is to say, King John has Good Hope of
seeing Portugal swell. Portugal! Well, I say, `Why not
Spain'?"

The student looked up from his book. "It is a great
Age!" he said and returned to his reading.

When we had finished dinner, we paid the tall, gaunt
woman and leaving the robbers, if robbers they were, still
at table, went out into the street. Here the friars, the alcalde
and the lawyer moved in the direction of the small, staring
white and ruined mosque that was to be transformed into
the church of San Jago the Deliverer. That was the one
thing of which the friars had spoken. A long bench ran by
inn wall and here the shipmaster took his seat and began to
discourse with those already there. Book under arm, the
student moved dreamily down the opposite lane. Juan
Lepe walked away alone.

Through the remainder of this day he had now company
and adventure without, now solitude and adventure within.
That night he spent in a ruined tower where young
trees grew and an owl was his comrade and he read the face
of a glorious moon. Dawn. He bathed in a stream that
ran by the mound of the tower and ate a piece of bread from
his wallet and took the road.

The sun mounted above the trees. A man upon a mule
came up behind me and was passing. "There is a stone
wedged in his shoe," I said. The rider drew rein and I
lifted the creature's foreleg and took out the pebble. The
rider made search for a bit of money. I said that the deed
was short and easy and needed no payment, whereupon he
put up the coin and regarded me out of his fine blue eyes.
He was quite fair, a young man still, and dressed after a
manner of his own in garments not at all new but with
a beauty of fashioning and putting on. He and his mule
looked a corner out of a great painting. And I had no
sooner thought that than he said, "I see in you, friend, a
face and figure for my `Draught of Fishes.' And by Saint
Christopher, there is water over yonder and just the landscape!"
He leaned from the saddle and spoke persuasively,
"Come from the road a bit down to the water and let me
draw you! You are not dressed like the kin of Midas! I
will give you the price of dinner." As he talked he drew out
of a richly worked bag a book of paper and pencils.
I thought, "This beard and the clothes of Juan Lepe. He
can hardly make it so that any may recognize." It was resting
time and the man attracted. I agreed, if he would take
no more than an hour.

"The drawing, no!--Bent far over, gathering the net
strongly--Andrew or Mark perhaps, since, traditionally,
John must have youth."

He had continued to study me all this time, and now we
left the road and moved over the plain to the stream that
here widened into a pool fringed with rushes and a few
twisted trees. An ancient, half-sunken boat drowsing under
the bank he hailed again in the name of Saint Christopher.
Dismounting, he fastened his mule to a willow and proceeded
to place me, then himself found a root of a tree,
and taking out his knife fell to sharpening pencil. This done,
he rested book against knee and began to draw.

Having made his figure in one posture he rose and showed
me another and drew his fisherman so. Then he demonstrated
a third way and drew again. Now he was silent,
working hard, and now he dropped his hand, threw back
his head and talked. He himself made a picture, paly gold
of locks, subtle and quick of face, plastered against a blue
shield with a willow wreath going around.

I stood so or so, drawing hard upon the net with the
fishes. Then at his command I approached more nearly, and
he drew full face and three-quarter and profile. It was between
these accomplishings that he talked more intimately.

"Seamen go to Italy," he said. "Were you ever in
Milan? But that is inland."

I answered that I had been from Genoa to Milan.

"It is not likely that you saw a great painter there
Messer Leonardo?"

It happened that I had done this, and moreover had seen
him at work and heard him put right thought into most right
words. I was so tired of lying that after a moment I said
that I had seen and heard Messer Leonardo.

"Did you see the statue?"

"The first time I saw him he was at work upon it. The
next time he was painting in the church of Santa Maria.
The third time he sat in a garden, sipped wine and talked."

"I hold you," he said, "to be a fortunate fisherman!
Just as this fisher I am painting, and whether it is Andrew
or Mark, I do not yet know, was a most fortunate fisherman!"
He ended meditatively, "Though whoever it is,
probably he was crucified or beheaded or burned."

I felt a certain shiver of premonition. The day that had
been warm and bright turned in a flash ashy and chill. Then
it swung back to its first fair seeming, or not to its first, but
to a deeper, brighter yet. The Fisherman by Galilee was
fortunate. Whoever perceived truth and beauty was fortunate,
fortunate now and forever!

We came back to Messer Leonardo. "I spent six months
at the court in Milan," said the fair man. "I painted the
Duke and the Duchess and two great courtiers. Messer
Leonardo was away. He returned, and I visited him and
found a master. Since that time I study light and shadow
and small things and seek out inner action."

He worked in silence, then again began to speak of painters,
Italian and Spanish. He asked me if I had seen such
and such pictures in Seville.

"Yes. They are good."

"Do you know Monsalvat?"

I said that I had climbed there one day. "I dream a painting!"
he said, "The Quest of the Grail. Now I see it running
over the four walls of a church, and now I see it all
packed into one man who rides. Then again it has seemed
to me truer to have it in a man and woman who walk, or
perhaps even are seated. What do you think?"

I was thinking of Isabel who died in my arms twenty
years ago. "I would have it man and woman," I said.
Unless, like Messer Leonardo, you can put both in one."

He sat still, his mind working, while in a fair inner land
Isabel and I moved together; then in a meditative quiet he
finished his drawing. He himself was admirable, fine gold
and bronze, sapphire-eyed, with a face where streams of
visions moved the muscles, and all against the blue and the
willow tree.

At last he put away pencil, and at his gesture I came from
the boat and the reeds. I looked at what he had drawn, and
then he shut book and, the mule following us, we moved
back to the road.

"My dear fisherman," he said, "you are trudging afoot
and your dress exhibits poverty. Painters may paint Jove
descending in showers of golden pesos and yet have few
pesos in purse. I have at present ten. I should like to
share them with you who have done me various good turns
to-day."

I said that he was generous but that he had done me
good turns. Moreover I was not utterly without coin, and
certainly the hour had paid for itself. So he mounted his
mule and wished me good fortune, and I wished him good
fortune.

"Are you going to Santa Fe?"

"Yes. I have a friend in the camp."

"I go there to paint her Highness the Queen for his
Highness the King. Perhaps we shall meet again. I am
Manuel Rodriguez."

"I guessed that," I answered, "an hour ago! Be so
good, great painter, as not to remember me. It will serve me
better."

The light played again over his face. "_The Disguised
Hidalgo_. Excellent pictures come to me like that, in a great
warm light, and excellent names for pictures.--Very good.
In a way, so to speak, I shall completely forget you!"

Two on horseback, a churchman and a knight, with servants
following, came around a bend of the dusty road and
recognizing Manuel Rodriguez, called to him by name.
Away he rode upon his mule, keeping company with them.
The dozen in their train followed, raising as they went by
such a dust cloud that presently all became like figures upon
worn arras. They rode toward Santa Fe, and I followed on
foot.



CHAPTER IV

SANTA Fe rose before me, a camp in wood, plaster and
stone, a camp with a palace, a camp with churches.
Built of a piece where no town had stood, built that
Majesty and its Court and its Army might have roofs and
walls, not tents, for so long a siege, it covered the plain, a
city raised in a night. The siege had been long as the war
had been long. Hidalgo Spain and simple Spain were gathered
here in great squares and ribbons of valor, ambition,
emulation, desire of excitement and of livelihood, and likewise,
I say it, in pieces not small, herded and brought here
without any "I say yes" of their own, and to their misery.
There held full flavor of crusade, as all along the war had
been preached as a crusade. Holy Church had here her
own grandees, cavaliers and footmen. They wore cope and
they wore cowl, and on occasion many endued themselves
with armor and hacked and hewed with an earthly sword.
At times there seemed as many friars and priests as soldiers.
Out and in went a great Queen and King. Their court was
here. The churchmen pressed around the Queen. Famous
leaders put on or took off armor in Santa Fe,--the
Marquis of Cadiz and many others only less than he in
estimation, and one Don Gonsalvo de Cordova, whose greater
fame was yet to come. Military and shining youth came to
train and fight under these. Old captains-at-arms, gaunt and
scarred, made their way thither from afar. All were not
Spaniard; many a soldier out at fortune or wishful of fame
came from France and Italy, even from England and Germany.
Women were in Santa Fe. The Queen had her
ladies. Wives, sisters and daughters of hidalgos came to
visit, and the common soldiery had their mates. Nor did
there lack courtesans.

Petty merchants thronged the place. All manner of rich
goods were bought by the flushed soldiers, the high and the
low. And there dwelled here a host of those who sold
entertainment,--mummers and jugglers and singers, dwarfs
and giants. Dice rattled, now there were castanets and
dancing, and now church bells seemed to rock the place.
Wine flowed.

Out of the plain a league and more away sprang the two
hills of Granada, and pricked against the sky, her walls
and thousand towers and noble gates. Between them and
Santa Fe stretched open and ruined ground, and here for
many a day had shocked together the Spaniard and the
Moor. But now there was no longer battle. Granada had
asked and been granted seventy days in which to envisage
and accept her fate. These were nearing the end. Lost
and beaten, haggard with woe and hunger and pestilence,
the city stood over against us, above the naked plain, all
her outer gardens stripped away, bare light striking the red
Alhambra and the Citadel. When the wind swept over her
and on to Santa Fe it seemed to bring a sound of wailing
and the faint and terrible odor of a long besieged place.

I came at eve into Santa Fe, found at last an inn of the
poorer sort, ate scant supper and went to bed. Dawn came
with a great ringing of church bells.

Out of the inn, in the throbbing street, I began my search
for Don Enrique de Cerda. One told me one thing and one
another, but at last I got true direction. At noon I found
him in a goodly room where he made recovery from wounds.
Now he walked and now he sat, his arm in a sling and a
bandage like a turban around his head. A page took him
the word I gave. "Juan Lepe. From the hermitage in the
oak wood." It sufficed. When I entered he gazed, then
coming to me, put his unbound hand over mine. "Why,"
he asked, " `Juan Lepe'?"

I glanced toward the page and he dismissed him, whereupon
I explained the circumstances.

We sat by the window, and again rose for us the hermitage
in the oak wood at foot of a mountain, and the small
tower that slew in ugly fashion. Again we were young
men, together in strange dangers, learning there each other's
mettle. He had not at all forgotten.

He offered to go to Seville, as soon as Granada should
fall, and find and fight Don Pedro. I shook my head. I
could have done that had I seen it as the way.

He agreed that Don Pedro was now the minor peril. It
is evil to chain thought! In our day we think boldly of a
number of things. But touch King or touch Church--the
cord is around your neck!

I said that I supposed I had been rash.

He nodded. "Yes. You were rash that day in the oak
wood. Less rash, and my bones would be lying there, under
tree." He rose and walked the room, then came to me and
put his unhurt arm about my shoulders. "Don Jayme, we
swore that day comrade love and service--and that day is
now; twilight has never come to it, the leaves of the oak
wood have never fallen! The Holy Office shall not have
thee!"

"Don Enrique--"

We sat down and drank each a little wine, and fell to
ways and means.

I rested Juan Lepe in the household of Don Enrique de
Cerda, one figure among many, involved in the swarm of
fighting and serving men. There was a squire who had
served him long. To this man, Diego Lopez, I was committed,
with enough told to enlist his intelligence. He managed
for me in the intricate life of the place with a skill to
make god Mercury applaud. Don Enrique and I were rarely
together, rarely were seen by men to speak one to the other.
But in the inner world we were together.

Days passed. We found nothing yet to do while all
listening and doing at Santa Fe were bound up in the crumbling of Granada into Spanish hands. It seemed
best to wait,
watching chances.

Meantime the show glittered, and man's strong stomach
cried "Life! More life!" It glittered at Santa Fe before
Granada, and it was a dying ember in Granada before Santa
Fe. The one glittered and triumphed because the other
glittered and triumphed not. And who above held the balances
even and neither sorrowed nor was feverishly elated
but went his own way could only be seen from the Vega
like a dream or a line from a poet.

For the most part the nobles and cavaliers in Santa Fe
spent as though hard gold were spiritual gold to be gathered
endlessly. One might say, "They go into a garden and
shake tree each morning, which tree puts forth again in the
night." None seemed to see as on a map laid down Spain
and the broken peasant and the digger of the gold. None
seemed to feel that toil which or soon or late they must
recognize for their own toil. Toil in Spain, toil in other
and far lands whence came their rich things, toil in Europe,
Arabia and India! Apparel at Santa Fe was a thing to
marvel at. The steed no less than his rider went gorgeous.
The King and Queen, it was said, did not like this peacocking,
but might not help it.

They themselves were pouring gold into the lap of the
Church. It was a capacious lap.

Wars were general enough, God knew! But not every
year could one find a camp where the friar was as common
as the archer or the pikeman, and the prelate as the plumed
chieftain.

Santa Fe was court no less than camp, court almost as
though it were Cordova. This Queen and King at least did
not live at ease in palaces while others fought their wars.
North, south, east and west, through the ten years, they
had been the moving springs. It was an able King and
Queen, a politic King and a sincere and godly Queen, even
a loving Queen. If only--if only--

I had been a week and more in Santa Fe when King Boabdil surrendered Granada. He left forever the
Alhambra.
Granada gates opened; he rode out with a few of his emirs
and servants to meet King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
The day shone bright. Spain towered, a figure dressed in
gold and red.

Santa Fe poured out to view the spectacle, and with the
rest went Diego Lopez and Juan Lepe. So great festival,
so vivid the color, so echoing the sound, so stately and various
the movement! Looking at the great strength massing there
on the plain I said aloud, as I thought, to Diego Lopez,
"Now they might do some worthy great thing!"

The squire not answering, I became aware that a swirl in
the throng had pushed him from me. Still there came an
answer in a deep and peculiarly thrilling voice. "That is
a true saying and a good augury!"

I learn much by voices and before I turned I knew that
this was an enthusiast's voice, but not an enthusiast without
knowledge. Whoever spoke was strong enough, real enough.
I liked the voice and felt a certain inner movement of friendship.
Some shift among the great actors, some parting of
banners, kept us suspended and staring for a moment, then
the view closed against us who could only behold by snatches.
Freed, I turned to see who had spoken and found a tall,
strongly made, white-haired man. The silver hair was too
soon; he could hardly have been ten years my elder. He
had a long, fair face that might once have been tanned and
hardened by great exposure. His skin had that look, but
now the bronze was faded, and you could see that he had
been born very fair in tint. Across the high nose and
cheek bones went a powdering of freckles. His eyes were
bluish-gray and I saw at once that he habitually looked at
things afar off.

He was rather poorly dressed and pushed about as I was.
When the surge again gave him footing, he spoke beside me.
"'Now that this is over, they might do some great, worthy
thing!' Very true, friend, they might! I take your words
for good omen." The throng shot out an arm and we were
parted. The same action brought back to me Diego Lopez.
Speaking to him later of the tall man, he said that he had
noticed him, and that it was the Italian who would go to
India by way of Ocean-Sea.

King Boabdil gave up his city to King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella. Over Granada, high against the bright sky,
rose and floated the banners. Cannon, the big lombards,
roared. Mars' music crashed out, then the trumpets ceased
their crying and instead spread a mighty chanting. _Te Deum
Laudamus!_

At last the massed brightness out in the plain quivered
and parted. The pageantry broke, wide curving and returning
with some freedom but with order too, into Santa Fe.
I saw the Queen and the King with their children, and the
Grand Cardinal, and prelates and prelates, and the Marquis
of Cadiz, and many a grandee and famous knight. Don
Enrique de Cerda and his troop came by.

Diego Lopez and I returned to the town. I saw again
the man who would find India by a way unpassed, as far as
one knew, since the world began! He was entering a house
with a friar beside him. Something came into my mind of
the convent of La Rabida.



CHAPTER V

SOME days went by. The King and the Queen with the
court and a great train of prelates and grandees and
knights rode in state through Granada. Don Enrique,
returning, told me of it in his room at night, of the Christian
service in the mosque and the throning in the Alhambra.

"Now," he said, "after great affairs, our affairs! I have
had speech with the Marchioness of Moya."

"That is the Queen's friend?"

"Yes. Dona Beatrix de Boabdilla. We stood together
by a fountain, and when she said, `What can I do for you?'
I answered, `There is something.' Then while all went in
pageantry before us, I told her of the hermitage in the oak
wood and of the unhappy small tower, and of you and me
and those others, and what was done that day. Don Jayme,
I told it like a minstrel who believes what he sings! And
then I spoke of to-day. She is no puny soul, nor is she
in priest's grip. She acts from her own vision, not from
that of another. The Queen is no weak soul either! She
also has vision, but too often she lets the churchmen take
her vision from her. But Dona Beatrix is stronger there.
Well, she promises help if we can show her how to help."

I said, "I have been thinking. It seems to me that it
was wrong to come here and put my weight upon you."

"No!" he answered. "Did we not swear then, when
we were young men? And we needed no oaths neither.
Let such thoughts be.--I am going to the palace to-morrow,
and you with me. The King and the Queen ride with a
great train into Granada. But Dona Beatrix will excuse
herself from going. The palace will be almost empty, and
we shall find her in the little gallery above the Queen's
garden."

The next morning we went there, Don Enrique de Cerda
and his squire, Juan Lepe. The palace rose great and goodly
enough, with the church at hand. All had been built as
by magic, silken pavilions flying away and stout houses
settling themselves down. Sunk among the walls had been
managed a small garden for the Queen and her ladies. A
narrow, latticed and roofed gallery built without the Queen's
rooms looked down upon orange and myrtle trees and a
fountain. Here we found the Marchioness de Moya, with
her two waiting damsels whom she set by the gallery door.
Don Enrique kissed her hand and then motioned to me.
Don Jayme de Marchena made his reverence.

She was a strong woman who would go directly to the
heart of things. Always she would learn from the man
himself. She asked me this and I answered; that and the
other and I answered. "Don Pedro--?" I told the
enmity there and the reason for it. "The Jewish rabbi,
my great-grand father?" I avowed it, but by three Castilian
and Christian great-grandfathers could not be counted as
Jew! Practise Judaism? No. My grandmother Judith
had been Christian.

She drove to the heart of it. "You yourself are Christian.
What do you mean by that? What the Queen means?
What the Grand Cardinal and the Archbishop of Granada
means? What the Holy Office means?"

I kept silence for a moment, then I told her as well as I
might, without fever and without melancholy, what I had
written and of the Dominican.

"You have been," she said, "an imprudent cavalier."

The fountain flashed below us, a gray dove flew over
garden. I said, "There is a text, `With all thy getting,
get understanding.' There is another, `For God so loved
the world'--that He wished to impart understanding."

She sat quiet, seeming to listen to the fountain. Then
she said, "Are you ready to avow when they ask you that
in every particular to which the Grand Inquisitor may point
you are wrong, and that all that Holy Church through mouth
of Holy Office says is right?"

I said, "No, Madam! Present Church is not as large as
Truth, nor as fair as Beauty."

"You may think that, but will you say the other?"

"Say that church or kingdom exactly matches Truth and
Beauty?"

"That is what I am sure you will have to say."

"Then, no!"

"I do not see," she said, "that I can do anything for
you."

There was a chair beside her. She sat down, her chin on
her hand and her eyes lowered. Silence held save for the
fountain plashing. Don Enrique stood by the railing, and
Jayme de Marchena felt his concern. But he himself walked
just then--Don Jayme or Juan Lepe--into long patience,
into greater steadfastness. Into the inner fields came translucence,
gold light; came and faded, but left strength.

Dona Beatrix raised her eyes and let them dwell upon
me. "Spain breeds bold knights," she said, "but not so
many after all who are bold within! Not so many, I think,
as are found in Italy or in France." She paused a moment,
looking at the sky above the roofs, then came back to me.
"It is hopeless, and you must see it, to talk in those terms
to the only powers that can lead the Holy Office to forget
that you live! It is hopeless to talk to the Queen, telling
her that. She would hold that she had entertained heresy,
and her imagination would not let her alone. I see naught
in this world for you to do but to go out of it into another!
There are other lands--"

A damsel hurried to her from the door. "There's a stir
below, Madam! Something has brought the Queen home
earlier than we thought--"

The Marchioness de Moya rose. Don Enrique kissed her
hand, and Jayme de Marchena kissed it and thanked her. "I
would help if I could!" she said. "But in Spain to-day
it is deadly dangerous to talk or write as though there were
freedom!"

She passed from the gallery, Don Enrique and I following.
We came upon a landing with a great stair before us.
Quick as had been her maidens, they were not quick enough.
Many folk were coming up the broad steps. Dona Beatrix
glanced, then opened a door giving into a great room,
apparently empty. She pointed to an opposite door. "The
little stair! Go that way!" Don Enrique nodded comprehension.
We were in the room; the door closed.

At first it seemed an empty great chamber. Then from
behind a square of stretched cloth came a man's head, followed
by the figure pertaining to it. The full man was clad
after a rich fancy and he held in his hand a brush and
looked at us at first dreamily and then with keenness.

He knew me, differently arrayed though I was, and looked
from me to Don Enrique. "Master Manuel Rodriguez,"
said the latter, "I would stop for good talk and to admire
the Queen's likeness, but duty calls me out of palace!
Adios!" He made toward the door across from that by
which we had entered. The painter spoke after us. "That
door is bolted, Don Enrique, on the other side. I do not
know why! It is not usually so."

Don Enrique, turning, hurried to the first door and very
slightly opened it. A humming entered the large, quiet room.
He closed the door. "The Queen is coming up the great
stair. The Archbishop of Granada is with her and a whole
train beside!" He spoke to the painter. "I have no
audience, and for reasons would not choose this moment as
one in which to encounter the least disfavor! I will stay here
before your picture and admire until landing and stairways
are bare."

"If to be invisible is your desire," answered Manuel
Rodriguez, "you have walked into trouble! The Queen is
coming here."

Don Enrique exclaimed. Juan Lepe turned eyes to the
painter. The blue eyes met mine--there rose the rushy
pool, there dozed the broken boat. Manuel Rodriguez spoke
in his voice that was at once cool and fine and dry and
warm. "It is best to dare thoroughly! Perhaps I may
help you--as thus! Wishing to speak with Don Enrique
of an altar painting for the Church of Saint Dominic, I
asked him here and he came. We talked, and he will give
the picture. Then, hearing the Queen's approach, he would
instantly have been gone, but alack, the small door is barred!
--As for fisherman yonder, few look at squire when knight
is in presence!"

No time to debate his offer, which indeed was both wise
and kind! Chamberlains flung open the door. In came the
Queen, with her the Princess Juana and several of her
ladies. Beside her walked Fernando de Talavera, Her Highness's
confessor, yesterday Bishop of Avila but now Archbishop
of Granada. Behind him moved two lesser ecclesiastics,
and with these Don Alonzo de Quintanella, Comptroller-
General of Castile. Others followed, nobles and
cavaliers, two soberly clad men who looked like secretaries,
a Franciscan friar, three or four pages. The room was
large and had a table covered with a rich cloth, two great
chairs and a few lesser ones.

The painter and Don Enrique bent low to the Majesty
of Castile. In the background Juan Lepe made squire's
obeisance. I was bearded and my face stained with a
Moorish stain, and I was in shadow; it was idle to fear
recognition that might never come. The Queen seated herself,
and her daughter beside her, and with her good smile
motioned the Archbishop to a chair. The two ecclesiastics,
both venerable men, were given seats. The rest of the company
stood. The Queen's blue eyes rested on Don Enrique.
She spoke in a clear, mild voice, threaded with dignity.
"Were you summoned thither, Don Enrique de Cerda?"

He answered, "No, Highness! I came to the palace to
seek Master Manuel Rodriguez who is to paint for me an
altarpiece for the Church of Saint Dominic. You and the
King, Madam, I thought were in Granada. Not finding him
in his own lodging, I made bold to come here. Then at
once, before I could hasten away, you returned!"

The true nature of this Queen was to think no evil. Her
countenance remained mild. He had done valiant service,
and she was sisterly-minded toward the greater part of the
world. Now she said with serenity, "There is no fault,
Don Enrique. Stay with us now that you are here."

Bowing deeply, he joined a brother-in-arms, Don Miguel
de Silva. His squire stood in the shadow behind him, but
found a chance-left lane of vision down which much might
be seen.

The Queen composed herself , in her chair. "This is the
position, Master Manuel?" The fair man, so fine and quick
that I loved to look at him, bowed and stepped back to his
canvas, where he took up his brush and fell to work. The
Queen and the Archbishop began to speak earnestly together.
Words and sentences floated to Juan Lepe standing by the
arras. The Queen made thoughtful pauses, looking before
her with steady blue eyes and a somewhat lifted face. I
noted that when she did this Manuel Rodriguez painted
fast.

There fell a pause in their talk. Something differing from
the subject of discourse, whatever in its fullness that might
be, seemed to come into her mind. She sent her glance across
the room.

"Don Enrique de Cerda--"

The tone summoned. When he was before her, "It was
in my mind," said the Queen, "to send for you within a
day or two. But now you are here, and this moment while
we await the King is as good as another. We have had
letters from the Bishop of Seville whom we reverence, and
from Don Pedro Enriquez to whom we owe much. They
have to do with Jayme de Marchena who has long been
suspect by the Holy Office. He has fled Seville, gone none
know where! Don Pedro informs us, Don Enrique, that
years ago this man stood among your friends. He does not
think it probable that this is yet so--nor do I, Don Enrique,
knowing that you must hold in abhorrence the heretic!"
She looked mildly upon him. "In youth we make chance
friendships thick as May, but manhood weeds the garden!
And yet we think it possible that this man may in his heart
trade on old things and make his way to you or send you
appeal." She paused, then said in a quiet voice, "Should
that happen, Don Enrique, on your allegiance, and as a
good Christian, you will do all that you can to put him in
the hands of the Holy Office."

She waited with her blue eyes upon him. He said, and
said quietly, "It was long ago, Madam, when I was a young
man and careless. I will do all that lies in me to do. But
Spain is wide and there are ships to Africa and other shores."

She said, "Yes, I do not see such an one daring to come
to Santa Fe! But they say that ten demons possess a
heretic, and that he crosses streams upon a hair or walks
edges of high walls."

With her ringed hand she made gesture of dismissal. He
bowed low and stepped back to his former place.

The sun flooded in at window. Manuel Rodriguez painted
steadily. The Queen sat still, with lifted face and eyes
strained into distance. She sighed and came back from
wastes where she would be Christian, oh, where she would
be Christian! and began with a tender, maternal look to talk
with her daughter.



CHAPTER VI

THE door giving upon the great corridor opened. One
said, "The King, Madam!" King Ferdinand entered
quietly, in the sober fashion of a sober and able man.
He was cool and balanced, true always to his own conception
of his own dues. The Queen rose and stepped to meet
him. They spoke, standing together, after which he handed
her to her chair and took beside her the other great chair
which the pages had swiftly placed. After greeting his
daughter and the Archbishop he looked across to the painter.
"Master Manuel Rodriguez, good day!"

There fell a moment of sun-drenched quiet in which they
all sat for their picture. Then said the King, "Madam, we
are together, and here are those who have been our chief
advisers in this affair of discoveries. Master Christopherus
is below. We noted him in the court. Let us have him
here and see this too-long-dragging matter finished! Once
for all abate his demands, or once for all let him go!"

They sent a page. Again there was sunny silence, then
in at the door came the tall, muscular, gray-eyed, silver-
haired man whom I had met the day King Boabdil surrendered

Granada.

He made reverence to the Queen and the King and to the
Archbishop. It was the Queen who spoke to him and that
gently.

"Master Christopherus, we have had a thousand businesses,
and so our matter here has waited and waited. Today comes unaware this quiet hour and we will give it to
you. Here with us are the Archbishop and others who
have been our counsellors, and here is Don Alonzo de Quintantella who hath always stood your friend. In
all the hurly-burly we yet took time, two days ago, to sit in council and
come to conclusion. And now we give you our determination.
In all reason it should give you joy!" She smiled
upon him. "How many years since first you laid your
plan before us?"

He answered her in a deep voice, thrilling and crowded
with feeling. "Seven years, Madam your Highness! Like
an infant laid at your feet. And winter has blown upon it,
and sunshine carrying hope has walked around it, and then
again the cold wind rises--"

The King spoke. "Master Christopherus, in war much
else has to cease! In much we have had to find patience,
and you have to find it."

"My lord King, yes!" replied the tall man. "It is
eighteen years since in Lisbon, looking upon the sea one day,
I said to myself, `Is there a question that is not to be
answered? This ocean is to be crossed. Then why do not I
cross it? There is Cipango, Cathay and India! Gold and
spices are there, and here lie ships, and between, when all
is said, is only sea! God made the sea to be sailed! Yonder
they worship idols, here we worship Christ. There are
idols, here is Christ. Once a Christopherus carried Christ
across water!' Eighteen years ago. I said, `I can do it!'
I say it to-day, my lord and my lady. I can do it!"

Of the seated great ones only the Queen's spirit appeared
to answer his. He seemed to enchant her, to take her with
him. But the King's cool face regarded him with something
like dislike. He spoke in an edged voice. "Saint Christopher
asked no great wage. That is the point, Master
Christopherus, so let us to it! At last the Queen and I
say `We agree' to this enterprise, which may bring forth
fruit or may not, or may mean mere empty loss of ships
and men and of our monies! Yet we say `yea.' But we
do not say `yea ', Master Christopherus, to the too great
ferry fee which you ask! I say `ask', but verily the tone
is of command!"

The man whom they called Master Christopherus made a
slow, wide gesture of deprecation. The Archbishop took
the word. "Too much! You ask a hundred times too
much! I must say to you that it is unchristianly arrogance.
You talk like a soldan!" An assenting murmur came from
the other ecclesiastics.

The Queen spoke. "Master Christopherus, if it be a great
thing to do, is not the doing it and thereby blessing yourself
no less than others--is not that reward? Not that
Castile shall deny you reward, no! Trust me that if you
bring us the key of India you shall not find us niggardly!
But we and they who advise us stumble at your prescribing
wealth, honors and gifts that they say truly are better fitting
a great prince! Trust us for enrichment and for honor do
you come back with the great thing done! Leave it all now
to Time that brings to pass. So you will be clearer to go
forth to the blessed carrying of Christ!"

She spoke earnestly, a Queen, but with much about her
of womanly, motherly sweetness. I saw that she greatly
liked the man and somewhere met his spirit. But the King
was gathering hardness. He spoke to a secretary standing
behind him. "Have you it there written down, the Italian's
demand?"

The man produced a paper. "Read!" But before it
could be unfolded, Master Christopherus spoke.

" `Italian!' Seven years in Spain and ten in Portugal,
and a good while in Porto Santo that belongs to Portugal,
a little in England and in Ultima Thule or Iceland, and long,
long years upon ships decked and undecked in all the seas
that are known--fourteen years, childhood and boyhood, in
Genoa and at Pavia where I went to school, and all my
years of hope in Christ's Kingdom, and in the uplands of
great doers-and your Highness says to me for a slighting
word, `Italian!' I was born in Italy, but to-day, for this
turn, King Ferdinand, you should call me `Spaniard'! As,
if King John sends me forth be will call me Portuguese!
Or King Henry will say, `Christopher the Englishman'
or King Charles, to whom verily I see that I may go, shall
say, `Frenchman, to whom all owe the marriage of East and
West, but France owes Empire!"'

The King said, "It may be so, or it may not be so,
Master Christopherus.--Read!"

The secretary read: The Genoese, Cristoforo Colombo,
called in Spain Cristobal Colon, and in the Latin Christopherus
Columbus, states and demands in substance as follows:
Sailing westward he will discover for the King and
Queen of the Spains the Indies and Cathay and Cipango,
to the great glory and enrichment of these Sovereigns and
the passing thereby of Spain ahead of Portugal, and likewise
and above all to the great glory of Christ and of Holy
Church. He will do this, having seen it clear for many
years that it is to be done, and he the instrument. And for
the finding by going westward of the said India and all
the gain of the world and the Kingdom of God and of our
Sovereigns the King Don Ferdinand and the Queen Dona
Isabella, he bargaineth thus:

"He shall be named Admiral of the Ocean-Sea, whereby
he means the whole water west of the line drawn by the
Holy Father for the King of Portugal. He shall be made
Viceroy and Governor of all continents and islands that he
may discover, claim and occupy for the Sovereigns. And
the said Christopherus Columbus's eldest son shall hold these
offices after him, and the heir of his son, and his heir, down
time. He shall be granted one tenth of all gold, pearls,
precious stones, spices, or other merchandise found or bought
or exchanged within his admiralty and viceroyship, and this
tithe is likewise to be taken by his heirs from generation to
generation. He or one that he shall name shall be judge in
all disputes that arise in these continents and islands, so be it
that the honor of the Sovereigns of Spain is not touched.
He shall have the salary that hath the High Admiral of
Castile. He and his family shall be ennobled and henceforth
be called Don and Dona. And for the immediate sailing
of ships he may, if he so desire, be at an eighth of the
expense of outfitting, for which he shall be returned an
eighth of all the profit of this the first voyage."

The secretary did not make the terms less sounding by
his reading. Wind in leaves, went a stir through the room.
I heard a page near me whispering, "O Sancta Maria!
The hanger-on, the needy one! Since the beginning of time
I've seen him at doors, sunny and cloudy days, the big,
droning bee!" Manuel Rodriguez painted on. I felt his
thought. "I should like to paint _you_, Admiral of the
Ocean-Sea!"

The room recomposed itself. Out of silence came the
King's voice, chill and dry. "We abate so vast a claim for
so vast reward! But we would be naught else but just,
and in our ability lavish. Read now what we will do!"

The secretary read. It had a certain largeness and goodliness,
as go rewards for adventure, even for great adventure,
what the sovereigns would do. The room thought it should
answer. The King spoke, "We can promise no more nor
other than this. It contents you, Master Christopherus?"

The long-faced, high-nosed, gray-eyed man answered,
"No, my lord King."

"Your own terms or none?"

"Mine or none, your Highness."

The King's voice grew a cutting wind. "To that the
Queen and I answer, `Ours or none!' " Pushing back
his chair, he glanced at sun out of window. "It is over. I
incline to think that it was at best but an empty vision. You
are dismissed, Master Christopherus!"

The Genoese, bowing, stepped backward from the table.
In his face and carriage was nothing broken. He kept
color. The Queen's glance went after him, "What will you
do now, Master Christopherus?"

He answered, "My lady, your Highness, I shall take
horse to-morrow for France."

The King said, "France?--King Charles buys ever low,
not high!"

The Sovereigns and the great churchmen and the less
great went away together. After them flowed the high attendance.
All went, Don Enrique among the last. Following
him, I turned head, for I wished to observe again two
persons, the painter Manuel Rodriguez and the Admiral of
the Ocean-Sea. The former painted on. The latter walked
forth quite alone, coming behind the grinning pages.

In the court below I saw him again. The archway to
street sent toward us a deep wedge of shadow. He had a
cloak which he wrapped around him and a large round hat
which he drew low over his gray-blue eyes. With a firm
step he crossed to the archway where the purple shadow
took him.

Juan Lepe must turn to his own part which now must be
decided. I walked behind Don Enrique de Cerda through
Santa Fe. With him kept Don Miguel de Silva, who loved
Don Enrique's sister and would still talk of _devoir_ and of
plans, now that the war was ended. When the house was
reached he would enter with us and still adhere to Don
Enrique. But at the stair foot the latter spoke to the squire.
"Find me in an hour, Juan Lepe. I have something to say
to thee!" His tone carried, "Do you think the place there
makes any difference? No, by the god of friends!"

I let him go thinking that I would come to him presently.
But I, too, had to act under the god of friends. In Diego
Lopez's room I found quill and ink and paper, and there I
wrote a letter to Don Enrique, and finding Diego gave it to
him to be given in two hours into Don Enrique's hand.
Then Juan Lepe the squire changed in his own room, narrow
and bare as a cell, to the clothing of Juan Lepe the sailor.



CHAPTER VII

DUSK was drawing down as I stole with little trouble
out of the house into the street and thence into the
maze of Santa Fe. That night I slept with minstrels
and jugglers, and at sunrise slipped out of Cordova gate
with muleteers. They were for Cordova and I meant to go to
Malaga. I meant to find there a ship, maybe for Africa,
maybe for Italy, though in Italy, too, sits the Inquisition.
But who knows what it is that turns a man, unless we call
it his Genius, unless we call it God? I let the muleteers
pass me on the road to Cordova, let them dwindle in the
distance. And still I walked and did not turn back and
find the Malaga road. It was as though I were on the sea,
and my bark was hanging in a calm, waiting for a wind to
blow. A man mounted on a horse was coming toward me
from Santa Fe. Watching the small figure grow larger, I
said, "When he is even with me and has passed and is a
little figure again in the distance, I will turn south."

He came nearer. Suddenly I knew him to be that Master
Christopherus who had entered the wedge of shadow yesterday
in the palace court. He was out of it now, in the broad
light, on the white road--on the way to France. He approached.
The ocean before Palos came and stood again
before me, salt and powerful. The keen, far, sky line of it
awoke and drew!

Christopherus Columbus came up with me. I said, "A
Palos sailor gives you good morning!"

Checking the horse, he sat looking at me out of blue-gray
eyes. I saw him recollecting. "Dress is different and
poorer, but you are the squire in the crowd! `Sailor
Palos sailor'--There's some meaning there too!"

He seemed to ponder it, then asked if I was for Cordova.

"No. I am going to Malaga where I take ship."

"This is not the Malaga road."

"No. But I am in no hurry! I should like to walk a mile
with you."

"Then do it," he answered. "Something tells me that
we shall not be ill travelers together."

I felt that also and no more than he could explain it.
But the reason, I know, stands in the forest behind the
seedling.

He walked his horse, and I strode beside. He asked my
name and I gave it. Juan Lepe. We traveled Cordova
road together. Presently he said, "I leave Spain for France,
and do you know why?"

Said Juan Lepe, "I have been told something, and I have
gathered something with my own eyes and ears. You would
reach Asia by going west."

He spoke in the measured tone of a recital often made
alike to himself and to others. "I hold that the voyage from
Palos, say, first south to the Canaries and then due west
would not exceed three months. Yet I began to go west
to India full eighteen years ago! I have voyaged eighteen
years, with dead calms and head winds, with storms and
back-puttings, with pirates and mutinies, with food and
water lacking, with only God and my purpose for friend! I
have touched at the court of Portugal and at the court of
Spain, and, roundabout way, at the court of England, and at
the houses of the Doges of Venice and of Genoa. They all
kept me swinging long at anchor, but they have never given
me a furthering wind. Eighteen years going to India! But
why do I say eighteen? The Lord put me forth from landside
the day I was born. Before I was fourteen, at the
school in Pavia, He said, `Go to sea. Sail under thy cousin
Colombo and learn through long years all the inches of salt
water.' Later He said, one day when we were swinging
off Alexandria, `Study! Teach thyself! Buy books, not
wine nor fine clothes nor favor of women. Study on land
and study at sea. Look at every map that comes before you.
Learn to make maps. When a world map comes before you,
look at the western side of it and think how to fill it out
knowingly. Listen to seamen's tales. Learn to view the
invisible and to feel under foot the roundness of my
earth!'

"And He said that same year off Aleppo, `Learn to
command ships. Learn in King Reinier's war and in what
other war Genoa makes. Learn to direct men and patiently
to hear them, winding in and out of their counsels, keeping
thyself always wiser than they.' Well, I studied, and learned,
and can command a ship or ships, and know navigation, and
can make maps and charts with the best, and can rule seamen,
loving them the while. Long ago, I went to that school
which He set, and came forth _magister!_ Long after His
first speaking, I was at Porto Santo, well named, and there
He said, `Seek India, going westward.' " He turned his
face to the sun. "I have been going to India fifty-six years."

Juan Lepe asked, "Why, on yesterday, were you not content
with the King and Queen's terms? They granted honor
and competence. It was the estate of a prince that you
asked."

Some moments passed before he answered. The sun was
shining, the road white and dusty, the mountains of Elvira
purple to the tops and there splashed with silver. When he
spoke, his voice was changed. Neither now nor hereafter
did he discourse of money-gold and nobility flowing from
earthly kings with that impersonal exaltation with which he
talked of his errand from God to link together east and west.
But he drew them somehow in train from the last, hiding
here I thought, an earthly weakness from himself, and the
weakness so intertwined with strength that it was hard to
divide parasite from oak.

"Did you see," he asked, "a boy with me? That was my
son Diego whom I have left with a friend in Santa Fe.
Fernando, his half-brother, is but a child. I shall see him in
Cordova. I have two brothers, dear to me both of them,
Diego and Bartholomew. My old father, Dominico Colombo,
still lives in Genoa. He lives in poverty, as I have
lived in poverty these many years. And there is Pedro
Correo, to whom I owe much, husband of my wife's sister.
My wife is dead. The mother of Fernando is not my wife,
but I love her, and she is poor though beautiful and good.
I would have her less poor; I would give her beautiful
things. I have love for my kindred,--love and yearning
and care and desire to do them good, alike those who trust
me and those who think that I had failed them. I do not
fail them!"

We padded on upon the dusty road. I felt his inner
warmth, divined his life. But at last I said, "What the
Queen and King promise would give rich care--"

"I have friends too, for all that I ride out of Spain and
seem so poor and desolate! I would repay--ay, ten times
over--their faith and their help."

"Still--"

"There are moreover the poor, and those who study and
need books and maps that they cannot purchase. There are
convents--one convent especially--that befriended me
when I was alone and nigh hopeless and furthered my
cause. I would give that convent great gifts." Turning in
the saddle he looked southwest. "Fray Juan Perez--"

Palos shore spread about me, and rose La Rabida, white
among vineyards and pines. Doves flew over cloister. But
I did not say all I knew.

"There are other things that I would do. I do not speak
of them to many! They would say that I was mad. But
great things that in this age none else seems inclined to do!"

"As what?" I asked. "I have been called mad myself.
I am not apt to think you so."

He began to speak of a mighty crusade to recover the
Holy Sepulchre.

The road to Cordova stretched sunny and dusty. Above
the mountains of Elvira the sky stood keen blue. Juan Lepe
said slowly, "Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and
Governor of continents and islands in perpetuity, sons
and sons' sons after you, and gilded deep with a tenth of all
the wealth that flows forever from Asia over Ocean-Sea to
Spain, and you and all after you made nobles, grandees and
wealthy from generation to generation! Kings almost of
the west, and donors to the east, arousers of crusades and
freers of the Sepulchre! You build a high tower!"

Carters and carts going by pushed us to the edge of road
and covered all with dust. He waited until the cloud sank,
then he said, "Do you know--but you cannot know what
it is to be sent from pillar to post and wait in antechambers
where the air stifles, and doff cap--who have
been captain of ships!--to chamberlain, page and lackey?
To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh
and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of
good and bad, high and low--to beg year in and year out,
cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon and
sunset, calm and storm, beg of galleon and beg of carrack,
yea, beg of cockboat! To see your family go needy, to be
doubted by wife and child and brethren and friends and
acquaintance! To have them say, `While you dream we
go hungry!' and `What good will it do us if there is India,
while we famish in Spain?' and `You love us not, or you
would become a prosperous sea captain!'--Not one year
but eighteen, eighteen, since I saw in vision the sun set not
behind water but behind vale and hill and mountain and
cities rich beyond counting, and smelled the spice draught
from the land!"

I saw that he must count upon huge indemnity. We all
dream indemnity. But still I thought and think that there
was here a weakness in him. Far inward he may have
known it himself, the outer self was so busy finding grounds!
After a moment he spoke again, "Little things bring little
reward. But to keep proportion and harmony, great thing
must bring great things! You do not know what it is to
cross where no man hath crossed and to find what no man
hath found!"

"Yes, it is a great thing!"

"Then," said he, "what is it, that which I ask, to the
grandeur of time!"

He spoke with a lifted face, eyes upon the mountain crests
and the blue they touched. They were nearer us than they
had been; the Pass of Elvira was at hand. Yet on I walked,
and before me still hung the far ocean west of Palos. I
said, "I know something of the guesses, the chances and
the dangers, but I have not spent there years of study--"

He kindled, having an auditor whom he chose to think
intelligent. He checked his horse, that fell to grazing the
bit of green by the way. "As though," he said, "I stood
in Cipango beneath a golden roof, I know that it can be
done! Twelve hundred leagues at the most. Look!" he
said. "You are not an ignoramus like some I have met;
nor if I read you right are you like others who not knowing
that True Religion is True Wonder up with hands and cry,
`Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!' Earth and water
make an orb. Place ant on apple and see that orbs may
be gone around! Travel far enough and east and west
change names! Straight through, beneath us, are other men."

"Feet against feet. Antipodes," I said. "All the life of
man is taking Wonder in and making Her at home!"

"So!" he answered. "Now look! The largeness of our
globe is at the equator. The great Ptolemy worked out
our reckoning. Twenty-four hours, fifteen degrees to each,
in all three hundred and sixty degrees. It is held that the
Greeks and the Romans knew fifteen of these hours. They
stretched their hand from Gibraltar and Tangier, calling
them Pillars of Hercules, to mid-India. Now in our time
we have the Canaries and the King of Portugal's new islands
--another hour, mark you! Sixteen from twenty-four
leaves eight hours empty. How much of that is water and
how much is earth? Where ends Ocean-Sea and where begins
India and Cathay, of which the ancients knew only a
part? The Arabian Alfraganus thinks that Ptolemy's degrees
should be less in size. If that be right, then the earth
is smaller than is thought, and India nearer! I myself
incline to hold with Alfraganus. It may be that less than
two months' sailing, calm and wind, would bring us to
Cipango. Give me the ships and I will do it!"

"You might have had them yesterday."

To a marked extent he could bring out and make visible
his inner exaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he
looked a figure of an older world. "The spheres and all
are set to harmony!" he said. "I would have fitness.
Great things throughout! Diamonds and rubies without
flaw in the crown.--We will talk no more about abating
just demand!"

I agreed with a nod, and indeed there was never any
shaking him here. Beneath his wide and lofty vision of a
world filled out to the eternal benefit of all rested always
this picture which I knew he savored like wine and warmth.
His family, his sons, his brothers and kindred, the aged
father in Genoa, all friends and backers--and he a warm
sun in the midst of them, all their doubts of him dispelled,
shining out upon them, making every field rich, repaying
a thousand, thousandfold every trust shown him.

The day sang cool and high and bright, the mountains
of Elvira had light snow atop. Master Christopherus began
again to speak.

"There came ashore at Porto Santo some years ago a
piece of wood long as a spar but thicker. Pedro Correo,
who is my brother-in-law, saw it. It was graved all over,
cut by something duller than our knives with beasts and
leaves and a figure that Pedro thought was meant for an
idol. He and another saw it and agree in their description.
They left it on the beach at twilight, well out of water
reach. But in the night came up a great storm that swept
it away. It came from the west, the wind having blown
for days from that quarter. I ask you will empty billows
fell a tree and trim it and carve it? It is said that a Portuguese pilot picked up one like it off Cape Bojador
when the
wind was southwest. I have heard a man of the Azores
tell of giant reeds pitched upon his shore _from the west_.
There is a story of the finding on the beach of Flores the
bodies of two men not like any that we know either in
color or in feature. For days a west wind had driven in
the seas. And I know of other findings. Whence do these
things come?

"May there not be unknown islands west of Azores?
They might come from there, and still to the west of them
stream all Ocean-Sea, violent and unknown! The learned
think the earth of such a size. Your Arabian holds it
smaller. What if it is larger than the largest calculation?"

He said with disdain, "All the wise men at Salamanca
before whom the King set me six years ago thought it had
no end! Large or small, they called it blasphemy for me,
a poor, plain seaman, son of a wool-comber and not even
a Spanish wool-comber, to try to stretch mind over it!
Ocean-Sea had never been overpassed, and by that token
could not be overpassed! None had met its dangers, so
dangers there must be of a most strange and fearful nature!
But if you were put to sea at fourteen and have lived
there long, water becomes water! A speck on the horizon
will turn out ship or land. Wave carries you on to wave,
day to night and night to day. At last there is port!"

All this time his horse had been cropping the scanty
herbage. Now he raised his head. In a moment we too
heard the horsemen and looking back toward Santa Fe saw
four approaching. As they came nearer we made out two
cavaliers talking together, followed by serving men. When
they were almost at hand one of the leaders said something,
whereat his fellow laughed. It floated up Cordova road, a
wide, deep, rich laugh. Master Christopherus started.
"That is the laugh of Don Luis de St. Angel!"

Don Luis de St. Angel was, I knew, Receiver of the
Ecclesiastical Revenues for Aragon, a man who stood well
with the King. The horsemen were close upon us. Suddenly
the laugher cried, "Saint Jago! Here he is!"

We were now five mounted men and a trudger afoot. The
cavalier who had laughed, a portly, genial person with a bold
and merry eye, laughed again. "Well met, Don Cristoval.
Well met, Admiral! I looked to find you presently! You
sailed out of port at sunrise and I two hours later with a
swifter ship and more canvas--"

" `Don' and `Admiral'!" answered Master Christopherus,
and he spoke with anger. "You jest in Spain!
But in France it shall be said soberly--"

"No, no! Don and Admiral here! Viceroy and Governor
here--as soon as you find the lands! Wealthy here--
as soon as you put hand on the gold!" Don Luis de St.
Angel's laughter ceased. He became with portentous swiftness
a downright, plain man of business. He talked, all of
us clustered together on the Cordova road.

"The Archbishop kept me from that audience yesterday,
leaving Don Alonso de Quintanella your only friend there!
The Queen was tired, the King fretted. They thought they
had come a long way, and there you stood, Master Christopherus,
shaking your head! Don Alonso told me about it,
and how hopeless it seemed! But I said, `If you conquer
a land don't you put in a viceroy? I don't see that Don
Cristoval isn't as good as Don This One, or Don That One!
I've a notion that the first might not oppress and flay the
new subjects as might the last two! That is a point to be
made to the Queen! As for perpetuity of office and privileges
down the ages, most things get to be hereditary. If
it grows to be a swollen serpent something in the future will
fall across and cut it in two. Let time take care of it! As
for wealth, in any land a man who will bear an eighth of the
cost may fairly expect an eighth of the gain. This setting
out is to cost little, after all. He says he can do it with
three small ships and less than a hundred and fifty men. If
the ships bring back no treasure, he will not be wealthy. If
there is a little gain, the Spains need not grudge him his
handful of doubloons. If there is huge gain, the King and
Queen but for him would not have their seven eighths. The
same reasoning applies to his tenth of all future gain from
continents and islands. You will say that some one else will
arise to do it for us on easier terms. Perhaps--and perhaps
not for a century, and another Crown may thrust in
to-morrow! France, probably. It is not impossible that
England might do it. As for what is named overweening
pride and presumption, at least it shows at once and for
altogether. We are not left painfully to find it out. It
goes with his character. Take it or leave it together with
his patience, courage and long head. Leave it, and presently
we may see France or England swallow him whole. He
will find India and Cathay and Cipango, and France or England
will be building ships, ships, ships! Blessed Virgin
above us!' said I, `If I could talk alone to the Sovereigns,
I think I could clench it!' "

" `Then let us go now to the palace,' says Don Alonso,
`and beg audience!'

"That did we, Don Cristoval, and so I hail you `Don'
and `Admiral', and beg you to turn that mule and reenter
Santa Fe! In a few days you and the King and Queen may
sign capitulations."

"Was it the Queen?"

"Just. The King said the treasury was drained. She answered,
`I will pawn my jewels but he shall sail!' Luis de
St. Angel says, `It does not need. There is some gold left
in the coffers of Aragon. After all, the man asks but three
little ships and a few score seamen and offers himself to
furnish one of the ships.' "

"With Martin Alonso Pinzon's help, I will!"

" `Never,' said I to their majesties, `was so huge a possible
gain matched against so small a sending forth! And as
for this Genoese who truly hath given and gives and will
give his life for his vision, saith not Scripture that a laborer
is worthy of his hire?' At which the Queen said with
decision, `We will do it, Don Luis! And now go and find
Master Christopherus and comfort him, whose heart must
be heavy, and indeed mine,' she saith, `was heavy when he
went forth to-day, and a voice seemed to say within me,
"What have you done, Isabella? How may you have
hindered!" ' "

The Gatherer of Ecclesiastical Revenues laughed again
with that compelling laughter. "So forth we go, and Don
Alonso sends for you to his house. But you could not be
found. Early this morning came one and informed us that
the ship had put out of harbor, whereupon my nephew and
I set sail after!"

The Admiral of the Ocean-Sea turned his face to the
west. Not knowing, I think, what he did, he raised his
arm, outstretched it, and the hand seemed to close in greeting.
His face was the face of a man who sees the Beloved
after long and sorrowful absence. So did thought and passion
and vision charge his frame and his countenance, that
for a moment truly there was effulgence. It startled. Don
Luis held his speech suspended, in his eyes wonder. Master
Christopherus let fall his arm. He sighed. The out-pushing
light faltered, vanished. One might say, if one chose,
"A Genoese sea captain, willing to do an adventurous thing
and make a purse thereby!"



CHAPTER VIII

JUAN LEPE, quitting the Vega of Granada, recrossed
the mountains. I was at wander. I did not go to
Malaga. I did not then go to Palos. I went to San
Lucar. I had adventures, but I will not draw them here.
The ocean by Palos continued with me in sight and sound
and movement. But I did not go to Palos. I went to the
strand of San Lucar, and there I found a small bark trading
not to Genoa but to Marseilles. Seamen lacked, and
the master took me gladly. I freshened knowledge upon this
voyage.

The master was a dour, quiet Catalan; his three sons
favored him and their six sailors more or less took the note.
The sea ran quiet and blue under a quiet blue heaven. At
night all the stars shone, or only light clouds went overhead.
It was a restful boat and Jayme de Marchena rested. Even
while his body labored he rested. The sense of Danger in
every room, walking on every road, took leave. Yet was
there throughout that insistent sight of Palos beach and the
gray and wild Atlantic. All the birds cried from the west;
the salt, stinging wind flung itself upon me from the west.
Once a voice, faint and silvery, made itself heard. "Were
it not well to know those other, those mightier waters, and
find the strange lands, the new lands?" I answered myself,
"They are the old lands taken a new way." But still
the voice said, "The new lands!"

We made Marseilles and unladed, and were held there
a fortnight. I might have left the bark and found work and
maybe safety in France, or I might have taken another ship
for Italy. I did neither. I clung to this bark and my Cata-
lans. We took our lading and quitted Marseilles, and came
after a tranquil voyage to San Lucar. Again we unladed
and laded, and again voyaged to Marseilles. Spring became
summer; young summer, summer in prime. We left Marseilles
and voyaged once more San Lucar-ward. There
rushed up a fearful storm and we were wrecked off Almeria.
One lad drowned. The rest of us somehow made
shore. A boat took us to Algeciras, and thence we trudged
it to San Lucar.

My Catalans were not wholly depressed. Behind their
wrecked ship stood merchants who would furnish another
bark. The master would have had me wait at San Lucar
until he went forth again. But I was bound for the strand
by Palos and the gray, piling Atlantic.

August was the month and the day warm. The first of
August in the year 1492. Two leagues east of Palos I
overtook three men trudging that way, and talking now
loudly and angrily and now in a sullen, dragging fashion.
I had seen between this road and ocean a fishing hamlet
and I made out that they were from this place. They
were men of small boats, men who fished, but who now
and again were gathered in by some shipmaster, when they
became sailors.

In me they saw only a poorly clad, sea-going person.
When I gave greeting they greeted me in return. "For
Palos?" I asked, and the one who talked the most and the
loudest gave groaning assent. "Aye, for Palos. You too,
brother, are flopping in the net?"

I did not understand and said as much. He gave an
angry laugh and explained his figure. "Why, the Queen
and the King and the law and Martin Pinzon, to whom we,
are bound for a year, are pressing us! Which is to say




1492
by
Mary Johnston
Part 2 out of 7

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they've cast a net and here we are, good fish, beating against
the meshes and finding none big enough to slip through!
Haven't you been pressed too, scooped in without a `By
your leave, Palos fish!' A hundred fish and more in this
net and one by one the giant will take us out and broil us!"

The second man spoke with a whine. "I had rather a
Barbary pirate were coming aboard! I had rather be took
slave and row a galley!"

The third, a young man, had a whimsical, dark, fearless
face. "But we be going to see strange things and serve
the Queen! That's something!"

"The Queen is just a lady. She don't know anything
about deep and fearful seas!"

"Where are you going," I asked, "and with whom?"

The angry man answered, "The last of that is the easiest,
mate! With an Italian sorcerer who has bewitched the
great! He ought to be burned, say I, with the Jews and
heretics! We are going with him, and we are going
with Captain Martin Pinzon, whom he hath bewitched with
the rest! And we are going with three ships, the _Santa
Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina."

The third said, "The Santa Maria's a good boat."

"There isn't any boat, good or bad," the first answered
him, "that can hold together when you come to heat that'll
melt pitch and set wood afire! There isn't any boat, good
or bad, that can stand it when a lodestone as big as Gibraltar
begins to draw iron!"

The second, whose element was melancholy, sighed, "I've
been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough!
The lookout saw a siren and the _Infanta Isabella_ was dashed
on the rocks and something laughed at us all night!"

"Ireland's nothing at all to it!" answered the angry man,
whose name was Pedro. "I've heard men that know talk!
The Portuguese going down Africa coast got to Cape Bojador,
but they've never truly gotten any further, though I
hear them say they have! They sent a little carrack further
down, and it had to come back because the water fell to
boiling! There wasn't any land and there wasn't any true
sea, but it was all melted up together in fervent heat! Like
hot mud, so to speak. It's hell, that's what I say; it's hell
down there! Moreover, there ain't any heaven stretched
over it."

"What does it mean by that?" asked the second.

"It means, Fernando, that there wouldn't be any sky,
blue nor gray nor black, nor clouds, nor air to breathe!
There wouldn't be any thunder and lightning nor rain nor
wind, and at night there wouldn't be stars, no north star,
nor any! It would just be--I don't know what! Fray
Ignatio told me, and he said the name was `chaos'."

"That was south. That wasn't west."

"West is just as bad!"

Fernando also addressed the young man, the third, calling
him Sancho. "If there were anything west for Christian
men, wouldn't the Holy Father at Rome have sent long
ago? We are all going to die!"

"But they didn't know it was round," said Sancho. "Now
we do, and that's the difference! If you started a little
manikin just here on an orange and told him to go straight
ahead, he'd come around home, wouldn't he?"

"You weary me, Sancho!" cried the first. "And what
if you did that and it took so long that you come back to
Fishertown old and bald and driveling, and your wife is
dead and all the neighbors! Much good you'd have from
knowing it was round!"

"When you got right underfoot wouldn't you fall; that's
what I want to know?"

"Fall! Fall where?"

"Into the sky! My God, it's deep! And there wouldn't
be any boat to pick you up nor any floating oar to catch
by--"

The vision seemed to appall them. Fernando drew back
of hand across eyes.

I came in. "You wouldn't do that any more than the
ant falls off the orange! Men have come back who have been
almost underfoot, so far to the east had they traveled. They
found there men and kingdoms and ways not so mightily
unlike ours."

"They went that way," answered Pedro, jerking his hand
eastward, "over good land! And maybe, whatever they
said, they were lying to us! I'm thinking most of the learned
do that all the time!"

"Well," said Sancho, "if we do come back, we'll have
some rare good tales to tell!"

There fell a pause at that, a pause of dissent and exasperation,
but also one of caught fancy. It would undoubtedly
be a glory to tell those tales to a listening, fascinated Fishertown!

Juan Lepe said, "For months I've been with a trader
running from San Lucar to Marseilles. I've had no news
this long while! What's doing at Palos?"

They were ready for an audience, any audience, and
forthwith I had the story of the Admiral fairly straight--
or I could make it straight--from that day when we parted
on the Cordova road. These men did not know what had
happened in March or in April, but they knew something
of May. In May he came to Palos and settled down with
Fray Juan Perez in La Rabida, and to see him went Captain
Martin Pinzon who knew him already, and the physician
Garcia Fernandez and others, and they all talked together
for a day and a night. After that the alcalde of Palos and
others in authority had letters and warrants from the Queen
and the King, and they overbore everything, calling him
Don and _El Almirante_ and saying that he must be furnished
forth. Then came a day when everybody was gathered in
the square before the church of Saint George, and the alcalde
that had a great voice read the letters.

"I was there!" said Fernando. "I brought in fish that
morning."

"I, too!" quoth Sancho. "I had to buy sailcloth."

It was Pedro chiefly who talked. "They were from the
King and Queen, and the moral was that Palos must furnish
Don Cristoval Colon, Admiral of the Ocean-Sea--
and we thought that was a curious thing to be admiral of!
--two ships and all seamen needed and all supplies. A third
ship could be enterprised, and any in and around Palos
was to be encouraged to put in fortune and help. Ships
and those who went in them were to obey the said Don
Cristoval Colon or Columbus as though he were the Queen
and the King, the Bishop of Seville and the Marquis of
Cadiz! It didn't say it just that way but that was what it
meant. We were to follow him and do as he told us, or it
would be much the worse for us! We weren't to put in at
St. George la Mina on the coast of Africa, nor touch at the
King of Portugal's islands, and that was the whole of it!"

"All seamen were to be given good pay," said Sancho.
"And if anybody going was in debt, or even if he had done
a crime--so that it wasn't treason or anything the Holy
Office handles--he couldn't be troubled or held back, seeing
it was royal errand. That is very convenient for some."

Pedro lost patience. "You'd make the best of Hell itself!"

"He'd deny," put in Fernando, "Holy Writ that says
there shall be sorrows!"

They embarked upon loud blame of Sancho, instance after
instance. At last I cut them across. "What further happened
at Palos?"

They put back to that port. "Oh, it didn't seem so bad
that day! One and another thought, `Perhaps I'll go!'
Him they call The Admiral is a big figure of a man, and of
course we that use the sea get to know how a good captain
looks. We knew that he had sailed and sailed, and had had
his own ship, maybe two or three of them! Then too the
Pinzons and the Prior of La Rabida answered for him. A
lot of us almost belong to the Pinzons, having signed to
fish and voyage for them, and the Prior is a well-liked man.
The alcalde folds up the letter as though he were in church,
and they all come down the steps and go away to the alcalde's
house which is around the corner. It wasn't until
they were gone that Palos began to ask, `Where were three
ships and maybe a hundred and fifty men _going_?' "

"We found out next day," said Fernando. "The tide
went out, but it came back bearing the sound of where we
were going!"

"Then what happened in Palos?"

"What happened was that they couldn't get the ships and
they couldn't get the men! Palos wouldn't listen. It was
too wild, what they wanted to do! It wouldn't listen to
the Prior and it wouldn't listen to Doctor Garcia Fernandez,
and it wouldn't even listen to Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon.
And when that happens--! So for a long time there
was a kind of angry calm. And then, lo you! we find that
they have written to the Queen and the King. There come
letters to Palos, and they are harsh ones!"

"I never heard harsher from any King and Queen!" said
Fernando.

"There weren't only the letters, but they'd sent also a great
man, Senor Juan de Penelosa, to see that they got obedience.
Upshot is we've got to go, ships and men, or else be laid by
the heels! As for Palos, her old sea privileges would be
taken from her, and she couldn't face that. Get those ships
ready and stock them and pipe sailors aboard, or there'd
be our kind Queen and King to deal with!"

"Wherever it is, we're going. Great folk are too tall
and broad for us!"

"So there comes another crowd in the square, before the
church. Out steps Captain Martin Pinzon, and he cries,
`Men of Palos, for all you doubt it, 'tis a glorious thing
that's doing! Here is the _Nina_ that my brothers and I own.
She's going with Don Cristoval the Admiral, and the men
who are bound to me for fishing and voyaging are going, and
more than that, there is going Martin Alonso Pinzon, for
I'll ask no man to go where I will not go!'

"Then up beside him starts his brothers Vicente and
Francisco, and they say they are going too. Fray Ignatio
stands on the church steps and cries that there are idolaters
there, and he will go to tell them about our Lord Jesus
Christ! Then the alcalde gets up and says that the Sovereigns
must be obeyed, and that the _Santa Maria_ and the
Pinta shall be made ready. Then the pilots Sancho Ruiz
and Pedro Nino and Bartolomeo Roldan push out together
and say they'll go, and others follow, seeing they'll have to
anyhow! So it went that day and the next and the next,
until now they've pressed all they need. So I say, we are
here, brother, flopping in the net!"

"When does he sail?"

"Day after to-morrow, 'tis said. But we who don't live
in Palos have our orders to be there to-night. Aren't you
going too, mate?"

I answered that I hadn't thought of it, and immediately,
out of the whole, there rose and faced me, "You have
thought of it all the time!"

Sancho spoke. "If you'll go with us to Captain Martin
Pinzon, he'll enter you. He'd like to get another strong
man."

I said, "I don't know. I'll have to think of it. Here is
Palos, and yonder the headland with La Rabida."

We entered the town. They would have had me go with
them wherever they must report themselves. But I said
that I could not then, and at the mouth of their street managed
to leave them. I passed through Palos and beyond its
western limit came again to that house of the poorest where
I had lodged six months before and waking all night had
heard the Tinto flowing by like the life of a man. Long ago
I had had some training in medicine, and in mind's medicine,
and three years past I had brought a young working man
living then in Marchena out of illness and melancholy. His
parents dwelled here in this house by the Tinto and they
gave me shelter.



CHAPTER IX

RISING at dawn, I walked to the sea and along it until
I came at last to those dunes beneath which I had
stretched myself that day of grayness. Now it was
deep summer, blue and gold, and the air all balm and caressing.
The evening before I had seen the three ships where
they rode in river mouth. They were caravels, and only the
_Santa Maria_, the largest, was fully decked. Small craft
with which to find India, over a road of a thousand leagues
--or no road, for road means that men have toiled there
and traveled there--no road, but a wilderness plain, a
water desert! The Arabians say that Jinn and Afrits live
in the desert away from the caravans. If you go that way
you meet fearful things and never come forth again. The
Santa Maria, the _Pinta_ and the Nina. The Santa Maria
could be Master Christopherus's ship. Bright point that
was his banner could be made out at the fore.

Palos waterside, in a red-filtered dusk, had been a noisy
place, but the noise did not ring genially. I gathered that
this small port was more largely in the mood of Pedro and
Fernando than in that of Sancho. It looked frightened and
it looked sullen and it looked angry.

The old woman by the Tinto talked garrulously. Thankful
was she that her son Miguel dwelled ten leagues away!
Else surely they would have taken him, as they were taking
this one's son and that one's son! To hear her you would
think of an ogre--of Polyphemus in the cave--reaching
out fatal hand for this or that fattened body. Nothing then,
she said, to do but to pinch and save so that one might
pay the priest for masses! She told me with great eyes
that a hundred leagues west of Canaries one came to a sea
forest where all the trees were made of water growing up
high and spreading out like branches and leaves, and that
this forest was filled with sea wolves and serpents and
strange beasts all made of sea water, but they could sting
and rend a man very ghastly. After that you came to
sirens that you could not help leaping to meet, but they
put lips to men's breasts and sucked out the life. Then if
the wind drove you south, you smelled smoke and at night
saw flames, and if you could not get the ship about--

In mid-afternoon I left the sands and took the road to
La Rabida. By the walled vineyard that climbs the hill
I was met by three mounted men coming from the monastery.
The first was Don Juan de Penelosa, the second was the
Prior of La Rabida, the third was the Admiral of the Ocean-
Sea.

Fray Juan Perez first saw me clearly, drawn up by wall.
He had been quoting Latin and he broke at _Dominus et
magister_. The Admiral turned gray eyes upon me. I saw
his mind working. He said, "The road to Cordova--Welcome,
Juan Lepe!"

"Welcome, Excellency!"

I gave him the name, seeing him for a moment somewhat
whimsically as Viceroy of conquered great India of the
elephants and the temples filled with bells. His face lighted.
He looked at me, and I knew again that he liked me. I
liked him.

My kinsman the Prior had started to speak to me, but
then had shot a look at Juan de Penelosa and refrained.
The Queen's officer spoke, "Why, here's another strong
fellow, not so tall as some but powerfully knit! Are you
used to the sea?"

I answered that I had been upon a Marseilles bark that
was wrecked off Almeria, and that I had walked from San
Lucar. He asked my name and I gave it. "Juan Lepe."
I attach you then, Juan Lepe, for the service of the
Queen! Behold your admiral, Don Cristoval Colon! His
ships are the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina, his destination
the glorious finding of the Indies and Cipango where
the poorest man drinks from a golden cup! Princes, I fancy,
drink from hollowed emeralds! You will sail to-morrow at
dawn. In which ship shall we put him, Senor?"

"In the Santa Maria," answered the Admiral.

So short as that was it done! And yet--and yet--it
had been doing for a long time, for how long a time I have
no way of measuring!

Juan de Penelosa continued to speak: "Follow us into
Palos where Sebastian Jaurez will give you wine and a piece
of money. Thence you will go to church where indeed we
are bound, all who sail being gathered there for general
confession and absolution. This voyage begins Christianly!"

Said Fray Juan Perez, "Not to do that, Juan Lepe, were
to cry aloud for another shipwreck!"

He used the tone of priest, thrusting in speech as priests
often do, where there is no especial need of speech. But I
understood that that was a mask, and could read kinsmanly
anxiety in a good man's heart. I said, "I will find Sebastian
Jaurez, and I will go to church, Senors. A ship is a ship,
and a voyage a voyage!"

"This, Juan Lepe," said the Admiral in that peculiarly
warm and thrilling voice of his, "is such a voyage as you
have never been!"

I made reply, "So be it! I would have every voyage
greater than the last." And as they put their steeds into
motion, walked behind them downhill and over sandy ways
into Palos. There I found Sebastian Jaurez who signed me
in. I put into my pocket the coin he gave me and drank
with him a stoup of wine, and then I went to church.

It was a great shadowy church and I found it full. Jaurez
piloted me to where just under pulpit were ranged my fellow
mariners, a hundred plain sailormen, no great number with
which to widen the world! A score or so of better station
were grouped at the head of these, and in front of all stood
Christopherus Columbus. I saw again Martin Alonso Pinzon
who had entered the Prior's room at La Rabida, and
with him his two brothers Francisco and Vicente. Martin
Pinzon would be captain of the _Pinta_ and Vicente of the
Nina. And there were Roderigo Sanchez of Segovia,
Inspector-General of Armament, and Diego de Arana, chief
alguazil of the expedition, and Roderigo de Escobedo, royal
notary, and with these three or four young men of birth,
adventuring for India now that the war with the Moor was
done. And there were two physicians, Garcia Fernandez
and Berardino Nunez. And there was the Franciscan, Fray
Ignatio, who would convert the heathen and preach before
the Great Khan.

The Admiral of Ocean-Sea stood a taller man than any
there, tall, muscular, a great figure. He was richly dressed,
for as soon as he could he dressed richly. A shaft of light
struck his brow and made his hair all glowing silver. His
face was lifted. The air about him to my eyes swam and
quivered and was faintly colored.

Fray Juan Perez preached the sermon and he used great
earnestness and now and again his voice broke. He talked
of God's gain that we went forth upon, reaping in a field
set us. One thing came forth here that I had not before
heard.

"And the unthinkable wealth that surely shall be found
and gained, for these countries to which you sail have eight-tenths of the world's riches, shall put Castile
and Leon where
of old stood Pagan Rome, and shall make, God willing, of
this very Palos a new Genoa or Venice! And this man,
your Admiral, how hath he proposed to the Sovereigns to
use first fruits? Why, friends, by taking finally and forever
from Mahound, and for Holy Church and her servant
the Spains, the Holy Sepulchre!"

In the end, we the going forth, kneeling, made general
confession and the priest's hands in the dusk above absolved
us. There was solemnity and there was tenderness. A
hundred and twenty, we came forth from church, and around
us flowed the hundreds of Palos, men and women and
children. All was red under a red sunset, the boats waiting
to take us out to the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the
Nina.

We marched to waterside. Priests and friars moved
with us, singing loudly the hymn to the Virgin, Lady of
all seamen. Great tears ran down Fray Juan Perez's checks.
It was a red sunset and the west into which we were going
looked indeed blood-flecked. Don Juan de Penelosa, harking
us on, had an inspiration. "You see the rubies of
Cipango!"

It is not alone "great" men who bring about things in
this world. All of us are in a measure great, as all are on
the way to greater greatness. Sailors are brave and hardy
men; that is said when it is said that they are sailors. In
many hearts hung dread of this voyage and rebellion against
being forced to it. But they had not to be lashed to the
boats; they went with sailors' careless air and dignity. By
far the most went thus. Even Fernando ceased his wailing
and embarked. The red light, or for danger or for rubies in
which still might be danger, washed us all, washed the town,
the folk and the sandy shore, and the boats that would take
us out to the ships, small in themselves, and small by distance,
riding there in the river-mouth like toys that have been
made for children.

The hundred and twenty entered the boats. It was like a
little fishing fleet going out together. The rowers bent to
the oars, a strip of water widened between us and Spain.
Loud chanted the friars, but over their voices rose the crying
of farewell, now deep, now shrill. "_Adios!_" The
sailors cried back, "Adios! Adios!" From the land it
must have had a thin sound like ghosts wailing from the
edge of the world. That, the sailors held and Palos held,
was where the ships were going, over the edge of the world.
It was the third day of August, in the year fourteen hundred
and ninety-two.



CHAPTER X

PALOS vanished, we lost the headland of La Rabida, a
haze hid Spain. By nightfall all was behind us. We
were set forth from native land, set forth from Europe,
set forth from Christendom, set forth from sea company
and sailors' cheer of other ships. That last would not be
wholly true until we were gone from the Canaries, toward
which islands, running south, we now were headed. We
might hail some Spanish ship going to, coming from, Grand
Canary. We might indeed, before we reached these islands,
see other sails, for a rumor ran that the King of Portugal
was sending ships to intercept us, sink us and none ever be
the wiser, it not being to his interest that Spain should
make discoveries! Pedro it was who put this into my ear
as we hauled at the same rope. I laughed. "Here beginneth
the marvelous tale of this voyage! If all happens that all
say may happen, not the Pope's library can hold the books!"

The _Santa Maria_ was a good enough ship, though fifty
men crowded it. It was new and clean, a fair sailer, though
not so swift as the Pinta. We mariners settled ourselves
in waist and forecastle. The Admiral, Juan de la Cosa, the
master, Roderigo Sanchez, Diego de Arana and Roderigo
de Escobedo, Pedro Gutierrez, a private adventurer, the physician
Bernardo Nunez and Fray Ignatio had great cabin
and certain small sleeping cabins and poop deck. In the
forecastle almost all knew one another; all ran into kinships
near or remote. But the turn of character made the
real grouping. Pedro had his cluster and Sancho had his, and
between swayed now to the one and now to the other a
large group. Fernando, I feel gladness in saying, had with
him but two or three. And aside stood variations, individuals.
Beltran the cook was such an one, a bold, mirthful,
likable man. We had several dry thinkers, and a braggart
and two or three who proved miserably villainous. We
had weathercocks and men who faced forward, no matter
what the wind that blew.

The Admiral knew well that he must have, if he could, a
ship patient, contented and hopeful. I bear him witness
that he spared no pains.

We had aboard trumpet and drum and viol, and he
would have frequent music. Each day toward evening each
man was given a cup of wine. And before sunset all were
gathered for vesper service, and we sang _Salve Regina_. At
night the great familiar stars shone out above us.

Second day passed much like first,--light fickle wind,
flapping sails, smooth sea, cloudless sky. To-day beheld
sea life after shore grown habitual. We might have sailed
from Marseilles or Genoa and been sailing for a month. If
this were all, then no more terror from the Sea of Darkness
than from our own so well-known sea! But Fernando
said, "It is after the Canaries! We know well enough it
is not so bad this side of them. Why do they call them Dog
Islands?"

"Perhaps they found dogs there."

"No, but that they give warning like watchdogs! `If
you go any further it shall be to your woe!' "

"Aye, aye! Have you heard tell of the spouting mountain?"

This night the wind came up and by morning was blowing
stiffly, urging us landward as though back to Spain.
The sky became leaden, with a great stormy aspect. The
waves mounted, the lookout cried that the _Pinta_ was showing
signals of distress. By now all had shortened sail, but
the Pinta was taking in everything and presently lay under
bare poles. The Santa Maria worked toward her until we
were close by. They shouted and we back to them. It was
her rudder that was unshipped and injured. Captain Martin
Pinzon shouted that he would overcome it, binding it
somehow in place, and would overtake us, the _Pinta_ being
faster sailer than the Santa Maria or the Nina. But the
Admiral would not agree, and we took in all sail and lay
tossed by a rough sea until afternoon when the Pinta
signaled that the rudder was hung. But by now the sky
stretched straight lead, and the water ran white-capped.
We made no way till morning, when without a drop of rain
all the cloud roof was driven landward and there sprang
out a sky so blue that the heart laughed for joy. The
violent wind sank, then veered and blowing moderately
carried us again southward. All the white sails, white and
new, were flung out, and we raced over a rich, green plain.
That lasted through most of the day, but an hour before
sunset the _Pinta_ again signaled trouble. The rudder was
once more worse than useless.

Again it was mended. But when the next morning it
happened the third time and a kind of wailing grumble
went through the Santa Maria, there came pronouncement
from the Admiral. "The Canaries lie straight ahead. In
two days we shall sight them. Very good! we shall rest
there and make a new rudder for the _Pinta_. The Nina will
do better with square sails and we can change these.
Fresh meat and water and some rambling ashore!"

Beltran the cook had been to the Canaries, driven there
by a perverse wind twenty years ago when he was boatswain
upon a big carrack. He said it was no great way and one
or two agreed with him, but others declined to believe the
Admiral when he said that in two days we should behold
the volcano. Some were found to clamor that the wind had
driven us out of all reckoning! We might never find the
Canaries and then what would the _Pinta_ do? Whereas, if
we all turned back to Palos--

"If--if!" answered Beltran the cook, who at first
seemed strangely and humorously there as cook until one
found that he had an injured leg and could not climb mast
nor manage sail. " `If' is a seaman without a ship!--
He's a famous navigator."

"Martin Pinzon?"

"Him too. But I meant our Admiral."

"He hasn't had a ship for years!"

"He was of the best when he had one! I've heard old
Captain Ruy tell--"

"Maybe he wasn't crazy in those days, but he's crazy
now!"

That was Fernando. I think it was from him that certain
of the crew took the word "crazy." They used it
until one would think that for pure variety's sake they
would find another!

The sixth day from Palos there lifted from sea the peak
of Teneriffe.

This day, passing on some errand the open door of the
great cabin, I saw the Admiral seated at the table. Looking
up, he saw me, gazed an instant, then lifted his voice.
Come in here!"

He sat with a great chart spread upon the table before
him. Beside it the log lay open, and he had under his hand
a book in which he was writing. Door framed blue sky
and sea, a pleasant wind was singing in a pleasant warmth,
the great cabin which, with the rest of the ship, he made
to be kept very clean, was awash with light and fineness of
air. "Would you like to look at the chart?" he asked, and I
came and looked over his shoulder.

"I made it," he said. "There is nothing in the world
more useful than knowing how to make maps and charts!
While I waited for Kings to make up their minds I earned
my living so." I glanced at the log and he pushed it to me
so that I might see. "Every day from Palos out." His
strong fingers touched the other book. "My journal that
I keep for myself and the Queen and King Ferdinand and
indeed for the world." He turned the leaves. The bulk of
them were blank, but in the front showed closely covered
pages, the writing not large but clear and strong. "This
voyage, you see, changeth our world! Once in Venice I heard
a scholar learned in the Greek tell of an old voyage of a
ship called _Argo_, whence its captain and crew were named
Argonauts, and he said that it was of all voyages most
famous with the ancients. This is like that, but probably
greater." He turned the pages. "I shall do it in the manner
of Caesar his Commentaries."

He knew himself, I thought, for as great a man as Caesar.
All said, his book might be as prized in some unentered
future. He did not move where time is as a film, but where
time is deep, a thousand years as a day. He could not see
there in detail any more than we could see tree and house
in those Canaries upon which we were bearing down.

I said, "Now that printing is general, it may go into far
lands and into multitude of hands and heads. Many a voyager
to come may study it."

He drew deep breath. "It is the very truth! Prince
Henry the Navigator. Christopherus Columbus the Navigator,
and greater than the first--"

Sun shone, wind sang, blue sea danced beyond the door.
Came from deck Roderigo Sanchez and Diego de Arana.
The Admiral made me a gesture of dismissal.

The Canaries and we drew together. Great bands of
cloud hid much of the higher land, but the volcano top came
clear above cloud, standing bare and solemn against blue
heaven. Leaving upon our right Grand Canary we stood for
the island of Gomera. Here we found deep, clear water
close to shore, a narrow strand, a small Spanish fort and
beginnings of a village, and inland, up ravines clad with a
strange, leafless bush, plentiful huts of the conquered
Guanches. Our three ships came to anchor, and the Admiral
went ashore, the captains of the _Pinta_ and the Nina following.
Juan Lepe was among the rowers.

The Spanish commandant came down to beach with an
armed escort. The Admiral, walking alone, met him between
sea and bright green trees, and here stood the two
and conversed while we watched. The Admiral showed him
letters of credence. The commandant took and read, handed
them back with a bow, and coming to water edge had presented
to him the two captains, Martin and Vicente Pinzon.
He proved a cheery old veteran of old wars, relieved that
we were not Portuguese nor pirates and happy to have late
news from Spain. It seemed that he had learned from a
supply ship in June that the expedition was afoot.

The _Santa Maria_ and the Nina rode close in shore. Captain
Martin Pinzon beached the Pinta and unshipped the
hurt and useless rudder. Work upon a new one began at
once. The Admiral, the two captains and those of rank upon
the ships supped with the commandant at his quite goodly
house, and the next day he and his officers dined aboard the
Santa Maria. The Admiral liked him much for he was more
than respectful toward this voyage. A year before, bathing
one day in the surf, there had come floating to his hand a
great gourd. None such grew anywhere in these islands,
and the wind for days had come steadily from the west. The
gourd had a kind of pattern cut around it. He showed it to
the Admiral and afterwards gave it to him. The latter
caused it to pass from hand to hand among the seamen. I
had it in my hands and truly saw no reason why it might
not have been cut by some native of the West, and, carried
away by the tide or dropped perchance from a boat, have at
last, after long time, come into hands not Indian. Asia tossing
unthinkingly a ball which Europe caught.

The _Pinta_ proved in worse plight than was at first thought.
The Nina also found this or that to do besides squaring her
Levant sails. We stayed in Gomera almost three weeks.
The place was novel, the day's task not hard, the Admiral
and his captains complaisant. We had leisure and island
company. To many it was happiness enough. While we
stopped at Gornera we were at least not drifting upon lodestone,
equator fire and chaos!

Here on Gomera might be studied the three Pinzon brothers.
Vicente was a good, courageous captain, Francisco a
good pilot, and a courageous, seldom-speaking man. But
Martin Alonso, the eldest, was the prime mover in all their
affairs. He was skillful navigator like his brothers and
courageous like them, but not silent like Francisco, and
ambitious far above either. He would have said perhaps that
had he not been so, been both ambitious and shrewd, the
Pinzons would never have become principal ship-owning,
trading and maritime family of Palos and three leagues
around. He, too, had family fortunes and aggrandizement
at heart, though hardly on the grand, imperial scale of the
Admiral. He had much manly beauty, daring and strength.
His two brothers worshipped him, and in most places and
moments his crew would follow him with a cheer. The
Admiral was bound to him, not only in that he had volunteered
and made others to go willingly, but that he had
put in his ship, the _Nina_, and had furnished Master Christopherus
with monies. That eighth of the cost of the expedition,
whence else could it come? If it tied Martin Pinzon to
the Admiral, seeing that only through success could those
monies be repaid, it likewise made him feel that he, too, had
authority, was at liberty to advise, and at need to become
critical.

But the Admiral had the great man's mark. He could acknowledge
service and be quite simply and deeply grateful
for it. He was grateful to Martin Pinzon who had aided him
from his first coming to Palos, and also I think he loved
the younger man's great blond strength and beauty. He
had all of Italy's quickness to beauty, be it of land or sea,
forest, flower, animal or man. But now and again, even
so early as this, he must put out hand to check Pinzon's
impetuous advice. His brows drew together above gray eyes
and eagle nose. But for the most part, on Gomera, they
were very friendly, and it was a sight to see Admiral and
captains and all the privileged of the expedition sit at wine
with the commandant.

Juan Lepe had no quarrel with any of them. Jayme de
Marchena swept this voyage into the Great Voyage.

The _Pinta_ was nearly ready when there arrived
a small ship from Ferro bringing news that three
large Portuguese ships had sailed by that island. Said
the commandant, "Spain and Portugal are at peace. They
would not dare to try to oust us!" He came to waterside
to talk to the Admiral. "Not to fight you," said the Admiral,
"but me! King John wishes to keep India, Cipango
and Cathay still veiled. So he will get time in which to have
from the Holy Father another bull that will place the Portuguese
line west and west until he hath the whole!" He
raised his hand and let it fall. "I cannot sail to-morrow,
but I will sail the day after!"

We were put to hard labor for the rest of that day, and
through much of the moonlit night. By early morning again
we labored. At mid-afternoon all was done. The _Pinta_,
right from stem to stern, rode the blue water; the Nina had
her great square sails. The Guanches stored for us fresh
provisions and rolled down and into ship our water casks.
There was a great moon, and we would stand off in the night.
Nothing more had been seen of the Portuguese ships, but
we were ready to go and go we should. All being done,
and the sun two hours high, we mariners had leave to rest
ashore under trees who might not for very long again see
land or trees.

There was a grove that led to a stream and the waterfall
where we had filled the casks. I walked through this alone.
The place lay utterly still save for the murmuring of the
water and the singing of a small yellowish bird that abounds
in these islands. At the end of an aisle of trees shone the
sea, blue and calm as a sapphire of heaven. I lay down
upon the earth by the water.

Finding of India and rounding the earth! We seemed
poor, weak men, but the thing was great, and I suppose the
doers of a great thing are great. East--west! Going west
and yet east.--The Jew in me had come from Palestine,
and to Palestine perhaps from Arabia, and to Arabia--who
knew?--perhaps from that India! And much of the Spaniard
had come from Carthage and from Phoenicia, old Tyre
and Sidon, and Tyre and Sidon again from the east. From
the east and to the east again. All our Age that with all
lacks was yet a stirring one with a sense of dawn and sunrise
and distant trumpets, now was going east, was going
Home, going east by the west road. West is home and East
is home, and North and South. Knowledge extendeth and
the world above is fed.

The sun made a lane of scarlet and gold across Ocean-
Sea. I wondered what temples, what towns, what spice ships
at strange wharfs might lie under it afar. I wondered if
there did dwell Prester John and if he would step down to
give us welcome. The torrent of event strikes us day and
night, all the hours, all the moments. Who can tell with
distinctness color and shape in that descending stream?



CHAPTER XI

AN hour after moonrise we were gone from Gomera.
At first a light wind filled the sails, but when the
round moon went down in the west and the sun rose,
there was Teneriffe still at hand, and the sea glassy. It
rested like a mirror all that day, and the sails hung empty
and the banner at maintop but a moveless wisp of cloth.
In the night arose a contrary wind, and another red dawn
showed us Teneriffe still. The wind dropping like a shot,
we hung off Ferro, fixed in blue glass. Watch was kept
for the Portuguese, but they also would be rooted to sea
bottom. The third morning up whistled the wind, blowing
from Africa and filling every sail.

Palos to the Canaries, we had sailed south. Now for long,
long days the sun rose right aft, and when it set dyed with
red brow and eyes and cheek and breast of the carved
woman at our prow. She wore a great crown, and she
looked ever with wide eyes upon the west that we chased.
Straight west over Ocean-Sea, the first men, the first ships!
If ever there had been others, our world knew it not. The
Canaries sank into the east. Turn on heel around one's self,
and mark never a start of land to break the rim of the vast
sea bowl! Never a sail save those above us of the _Santa
Maria_, or starboard or larboard, the Pinta and the Nina.
The loneliness was vast and utter. We might fail here, sink
here, die here, and indeed fail and sink and die alone!

Two seamen lay sick in their beds, and the third day
from Gomera the Santa Maria's physician, Bernardo Nunez,
was seized with the same malady. At first Fray Ignatio
tried to take his place, but here the monk lacked knowledge.
One of the sailors died, a ship boy sickened, and the
physician's fever increased upon him. Diego de Arana began
to fail. The ship's master came at supper time and looked
us over. "Is there any here who has any leechcraft?"

Beltran the cook said, "I can set a bone and wash a
wound; but it ends there!"

Cried Fernando from his corner. "Is the plague among
us!" The master turned on him. "Here and now, I say
five lashes for the man who says that word again! Has any
man here sense about a plain fever?"

None else speaking, I said that long ago I had studied
for a time with a leech, and that I was somewhat used to
care of the sick. "Then you are my man!" quoth the
master, and forthwith took me to the Admiral. I became
Juan Lepe, the physician.

It was, I held, a fever received while wandering through
the ravines and woods of Gomera. Master Bernardo had
in his cabin drugs and tinctures, and we breathed now all
the salt of Ocean-Sea, and the ship was clean. I talked
to Beltran the cook about diet, and I chose Sancho and a
man that I liked, one Luis Torres, for nurses. Two others
sickened this night, and one the next day, but none afterward.
None died; in ten days all were recovered. Other
ailments aboard I doctored also. Don Diego de Arana was
subject to fits of melancholy with twitchings of the body. I
had watched Isaac the Physician cure such things as this,
and now I followed instruction. I put my hands upon the
patient and I strengthened his will with mine, sending into
him desire for health and perception of health. His inner
man caught tune. The melancholy left him and did not
return. Master Bernardo threw off the fever, sat up and
moved about. But he was still weak, and still I tended the
others for him.

The _Pinta_ had signaled four men ill. But Garcia Fernandez,
the Palos physician, was there with Martin Pinzon,
and the sick recovered. The Nina had no doctor and now
she came near to the Santa Maria and sent a boat. She had
five sick men and would borrow Bernardo Nunez.

The Admiral spoke with Nunez, now nearly well. Then
the physician made a bundle of drugs and medicaments, said
farewell to all and kindly enough to me, and rowed away to
the _Nina_. He was a friend of the Pinzons, and above the
vanity of the greater ship. The sick upon the Nina prospered
under him.

But Juan Lepe was taken from the forecastle, and slept
where Nunez had slept, and had his place at the table in the
great cabin. He turned from the sailor Juan Lepe to the
physician Juan Lepe, becoming "Doctor" and "Senor."
The wheel turns and a man's past makes his present.

A few days from Gomera, an hour after sunset, the night
was torn by the hugest, flaming, falling star that any of us
had ever seen. The mass drove down the lower skirt of the
sky, leaving behind it a wake of fire. It plunged into the
sea. There is no sailor but knows shooting stars. But this
was a hugely great one, and Ocean-Sea very lonely, and to
most there our errand a spectral and frightening one. It
needed both the Admiral and Fray Ignatio to quell the panic.

The next day a great bird like a crane passed over the
_Santa Maria_. It came from Africa, behind us. But it spoke
of land, and the sailors gazed wistfully.

This day I entered the great cabin when none was there
but the Admiral, and again he sat at table with his charts
and his books. He asked of the sick and I answered.
Again he sat looking through open door and window at blue
water, a great figure of a man with a great head and face
and early-silvered hair. "Do you know aught," he asked,
"of astrology?"

I answered that I knew a little of the surface of it.

"I have a sense," he said, "that our stars are akin, yours
and mine. I felt it the day Granada fell, and I felt it on
Cordova road, and again that day below La Rabida when
we turned the corner and the bells rang and you stood beside
the vineyard wall. Should I not have learned in more
than fifty years to know a man? The stars are akin that
will endure for vision's sake."

I said, "I believe that, my Admiral."

He sat in silence for a moment, then drew the log between
us and turned several pages so that I might see
the reckoning. "We have come well," I said. "Yet with
so fair a wind, I should have thought--"

He turned the leaves till he rested at one covered with
other figures. "Here it is as it truly is, and where we
truly are! We have oversailed all that the first show, and
so many leagues besides."

"Two records, true and untrue! Why do you do it so?"

"I have told them that after seven hundred leagues we
should find land. Add fifty more for our general imperfection.
But it may be wider than I think. We may not
come even to some fringing island in eight hundred leagues,
no, nor in more than that! If it be a thousand, if it be two
thousand, on I go! But after the seven hundred is passed,
it will be hard to keep them in hand. So, though we are
covering more, I let them think we are covering only this."

I could but laugh. Two reckonings! After all, he was
not Italian for nothing!

"The master knows," he said, "and also Diego de Arana.
But at least one other should know. Two might drown or
perish from sickness. I myself might fall sick and die,
though I will not believe it!" He paused a moment, then
said, looking directly at me, "I need one in whom I can
utterly confide. I should have had with me my brother
Bartholomew. But he is in England. A man going to seek
a Crown jewel for all men should have with him son or
brother. Diego de Arana is a kinsman of one whom I
love, and he partly believes. But Roderigo Sanchez and the
others believe hardly at all. There is Fray Ignatio. He
believes, and I confess my sins to him. But he thinks only
of penitents, and this matter needs mind, not heart alone.
Because of that sense of the stars, I tell you these things."

The next day it came to me that in that Journal which
he meant to make like Caesar's Commentaries, he might put
down the change in the _Santa Maria's_ physicians and set my
name there too often. I watched my chance and finding it,
asked that he name me not in that book. His gray eyes
rested upon me; he demanded the reason for that. I said that
in Spain I was in danger, and that Juan Lepe was not my
name. More than that I did not wish to say, and perchance
it were wiser for him not to know. But I would not that the
powerful should mark me in his Journal or elsewhere!

Usually his eyes were wide and filled with light as
though it were sent into them from the vast lands that he
continuously saw. But he could be immediate captain and
commander of things and of men, and when that was so,
the light drew into a point, and he became eagle that sees
through the wave the fish. Had he been the seer alone,
truly he might have been the seer of what was to be discovered
and might have set others upon the path. But he
would not have sailed on the _Santa Maria_!

In his many years at sea he must many times have met
men who had put to sea out of fear of land. He would
have sailed with many whose names, he knew, were not
those given them at birth. He must have learned to take reasons
for granted and to go on--where he wished to go on.
So we gazed at each other.

"I had written down," he said, "that you greatly helped
the sick, and upon Bernardo Nunez's going to the _Nina_, became
our physician. But I will write no more of you, and
that written will pass in the flood of things to come." After
a moment, he ended with deliberation, "I know my star to
be a great star, burning long and now with a mounting
flame. If yours is in any wise its kin, then there needs must
be histories."



CHAPTER XII

IT was a strange thing how utterly favoring now was the
wind! It blew with a great steady push always from
the east, and always we ran before it into the west.
Day after day we experienced this warm and steadfast driving;
day after day we never shifted sail. The rigging sang
a steady song, day and night. The crowned woman, our
figurehead, ran, light-footed, over a green and blue plain,
and where the plain ended no man might know! "Perhaps
it does not end!" said the mariners.

Of the hidalgos aboard I like best Diego de Arana who
had cast off his melancholy. He was a man of sense, candid
and brave. Roderigo Sanchez sat and moved a dull, good
man. Roderigo de Escobedo had courage, but he was factious,
would take sides against his shadow if none other
were there. Pedro Gutierrez had been a courtier, and had
the vices of that life, together with a daredevil recklessness
and a kind of wild wit. I had liking and admiration for
Fray Ignatio, but careful indeed was I when I spoke with
him!

The wind blew unchanging, the stark blue shield of sea, a
water-world, must be taken in the whole, for there was no
contrasting point in it to catch the eye. Sancho, forward,
in a high sweet voice like a jongleur's voice, was singing to
the men an endless ballad. Upon the poop deck Escobedo
and Gutierrez, having diced themselves to an even wealth
or poverty, turned to further examination of the Admiral's
ways. Endlessly they made him and his views subject of
talk. Roderigo Sanchez listened with a face like an owl,
Diego de Arana with some irony about his lips. I came and
stood beside the latter.

They were upon the beggary of Christopherus Columbus.
"How did the Prior of La Rabida--?"

"I'll tell you, for I heard it. One evening at vesper
bell comes our Admiral--no less a man!--to Priory gate
with a young boy in his hand. Not Fernando his love-child,
but Diego the elder, who was born in Lisbon. All dusty
with the road, like any beggar you see, and not much better
clad, foot-sore and begging bread for himself and the boy.
And because of his white hair, and because he carried himself
in that absurd way that makes the undiscerning cry,
`Ah, my lord king in disguise!' the porter must have him
in, and by and by comes the prior and stands to talk with
him, `From where?' `From Cordova.' `Whither?' `To
Portugal.' `For why?' `To speak again with King John!'
`Are you in the habit of speaking with kings?' `Aye, I
am!' `About what, may I ask?' `About the finding of
India by way of Ocean-Sea, the possession of idolatrous
countries and the great wealth thereof, and the taking of
Christ to the heathen who else are lost!' "

"Ha, ha! Ha, ha!" This was Escobedo.

"The prior thinks, `This is an interesting madman.' And
being a charitable good man and lacking entertainment that
evening, he brings the beggar in to supper and sits by him."

Roderigo Sanchez opened his mouth. "All Andalusia
knows Fray Juan Perez is a kind of visionary!"

"Aye, like to like! `Have you been to our Queen and
the King? ' `Aye, I have!' saith the beggar, `but they are
warring with the Moors and will pull Granada down and
do not see the greater glory!' "

All laughed at that, and indeed Gutierrez could mimic to
perfection. We got, full measure, the beggar's loftiness.

"So the siren sings and the prior leaps to meet her, or
tarantula stings him and be dances! `I am growing mad
too,' thinks Fray Juan Perez, and begins presently to tell
that last week he dreamed of Prester John. The end is
that he and the beggar talk till midnight and the next morning
they talk again, and the prior sends for his friends
Captain Martin Alonzo Pinzon and the physician Garcia
Fernandez. The beggar gains them all!"

"Do you think a beggar can do that?" I said. "Only a
giver can do that."

Pedro Gutierrez turned black eyes upon Juan Lepe, whom
he resented there on the poop deck. "How could you have
learned so much, Doctor, while you were making sail and
washing ship?" He was my younger in every way, and I
answered equably, "I learned in the same way that the Admiral
learned while he begged."

"Touched!" said Diego de Arana. "So that is the way
the prior came into the business?"

"He enters with such vigor," said Gutierrez, "that what
does he do but write an impassioned letter to the Queen,
having long ago, for a time, been her confessor? What he
tells her, God knows, but it seems that it changes the world!
She answers that for herself she hath grieved for Master
Columbus's departure from the court and the realm, and
that if he will turn and come to Santa Fe, his propositions
shall at last be thoroughly weighed. Letter finds the beggar
with his boy honored guest of La Rabida, touching heads
with Martin Pinzon over maps and charts and the `Book
of Travels' of Messer Marco Polo. There is great joy!
The beggar hath the prior's own mule and his son a jennet,
and here we go to Santa Fe! That was last year. Now the
boy that whimpered for bread at convent gate is Don Diego
Colon, page to Prince Juan, and the Viceroy sails on the
_Santa Maria_ for the countries he will administer!"

Gutierrez shook the dice in the box. "Oh, Queen Luck,
that I have served for so long! Why do you not make me
viceroy?"

Said Escobedo, "Viceroy of the continent of water and
Admiral of seaweed and fishes!"

Diego de Arana took that up. "We are obliged to find
something! No sensible man can think like some of those
forward that this goes on forever and we shall sail till the
wood rots and sails grow ragged and wind carries away their
shreds or they fall into dust!"

"Who knows anything of River-Ocean? We may not
find the western shore, if there be such a thing, for a year!
By that time storm will sink us ten times over, or plague
will take us--"

"There's not needed plague nor storm. Just say, food
won't last, and water is already half gone!"

"That's the undeniable truth," quoth Roderigo Sanchez,
and looked with a perturbed face at the too-smooth sea.

Smooth blue sea continued, wind continued, pushing like
a great, warm hand, east to west. The Admiral spent hours
alone in his sleeping cabin. There were men who said that
he studied there a great book of magic. He had often a
book in his hand, it is true, but Juan Lepe the physician
knew what he strove to keep from others, that the gout that
at times threatened crippling was upon him and was easier
to bear lying down.

Sunset, vesper prayer and _Salve Regina_. As the strains
died, there became evident a lingering on the part of the
seamen. The master spoke to the Admiral. "They've found
out about the needle, sir! Perhaps you'd better hear them
and answer them."

Almost every day he heard them and answered them.
To make his seamen, however they groaned and grumbled
and plotted, yet abide him and his purpose was a day-after-day arising task! Now he said equably, in the
tone almost
of a father, "What is it to-day, men?"

The throng worked and put forward a spokesman, who
looked from the Admiral to the clear north. "It is the star,
sir! The needle no longer points to it! We thought you
might explain to us unlearned--What we think is that distance
is going to widen and widen! What's to keep needle
from swinging right south? Then will we never get home
to Palos and our wives and children--never and never and
never!"

Said the Admiral, "It will not change further, or if it
does a very little further!" In his most decisive, most convincing
voice he explained why the needle no longer pointed
precisely to the star. The deviation marked and allowed
for, it was near enough for practical purposes, and the
reasons for the wandering--

I do not know if the wisdom of our descendants will confirm
his explanation. It is so often to explain the explanation!
But one as well as another might do here. What
the _Santa Maria_ wanted was reassurance, general and large,
stretching from the Canaries to India and Cathay and back
again. He knew that, and after no great time spent with
compass needle and circularly traveling polar star, he began
to talk gold and estate, and the pearls and silk and spices
they would surely take for gifts to their family and neighbors,
Palos or Huelva or Fishertown!

It was truly the hope that upheld many on a voyage that
they chose to think a witches' one. He talked now out of
Marco Polo and he clad what that traveler had said in more
gorgeous attire. He meant nothing false; his exalted imagination
saw it so. He was painter of great pageants, heightening
and remodeling, deepening and purifying colors, making
humdrum and workaday over to his heart's desire. The
Venetian in his book, and other travelers in their books, had
related wonders enough. These grew with him, it might be
said--and indeed in his lifetime was often said--into
wonders without a foot upon earth. But if one took as
figures and symbols his gold roofs and platters, temples and
gardens, every man a merchant in silks and spices, strange
fruit-dropping trees and pearls in carcanets, the Grand Khan
and Prester John--who could say that in the long, patient
life of Time the Admiral was over-esteeming? The pity
of it was that most here could not live in great lengths of
time. They wanted riches now, now! And they wanted
only one kind of riches; here and now, or at the most in
another month, in the hands and laps of Pedro and Fernando
and Diego.



CHAPTER XIII

THERE grew at times an excited feeling that he was a
prophet, and that there were fabulously great things
before us. As I doctored some small ill one day in
the forecastle, a great fellow named Francisco from Huelva
would tell me his dream of the night before. He had already
told it, it seemed, to all who would listen, and now again he
had considerable audience, crowding at the door. He said
that he dreamed he was in Cipango. At first he thought it
was heaven, but when he saw golden roofs he knew it must
be Cipango, for in heaven where it never rained and there
were no nights, we shouldn't need roofs. One interrupted,
"We'd need them to keep the flying angels from looking
in!"

"It was Cipango," persisted Francisco, "for the Emperor
himself came and gave me a rope of pearls. There were
five thousand of them, and each would buy a house or a
fine horse or a suit of velvet. And the Emperor took me by
the hand, and he said, `Dear Brother--' You might have
thought I was a king--and by the mass, I was a king!
I felt it right away! And then he took me into a garden,
and there were three beautiful women, and one of them
would push me to the other, and that one to the third, and
that to the first again, as though they were playing ball,
and they all laughed, and I laughed. Then there came a
great person with five crowns on his head, and all the light
blazed up gold and blue, and somebody said, `It's Prester
John'!"

His dream kept a two-days' serenity upon the ship. It
came to the ear of the Admiral, who said, " `In dreams will
I instruct thee.'--I have had dreams far statelier than
his."

Pedro Gutierrez too began to dream,--fantastic things
which he told with an idle gusto. They were of wine and gold
and women, though often these were to be guessed through
strange, jumbled masks and phantasies. "Those are ill
dreams," said the Admiral. "Dream straight and high!"
Fray Ignatio, too, said wisely, "It is not always God who
cometh in dreams!"

But the images of Gutierrez's dreams seemed to him to
be seated in Cathay and India. They bred in him belief
that he was coming to happiness by that sea road that
glistered before us. He and Roderigo de Escobedo began
to talk with assurance of what they should find. Having
small knowledge of travelers' tales they made application
to the Admiral who, nothing loth, answered them out of
Marco Polo, Mandeville and Pedro de Aliaco.

But the ardor of his mind was such that he outwent his
authors. Where the Venetian said "gold" the Genoese
said "Much gold." Where the one saw powerful peoples
with their own customs, courts, armies, temples, ships and
trade, the other gave to these an unearthly tinge of splendor.
Often as he sat in cabin or on deck, or rising paced to and
fro, we who listened to his account, listened to poet and
enthusiast speaking of earths to come. Besides books like
those of Marco Polo and John Mandeville and the Bishop
of Cambrai he had studied philosophers and the ancients and
Scripture and the Fathers. He spoke unwaveringly of
prophecies, explicit and many, of his voyage, and the rounding
out of earth by him, Christopherus Columbus. More
than once or twice, in the great cabin, beneath the swinging
lantern, he repeated to us such passages, his voice making
great poetry of old words. "Averroes saith--Albertus
Magnus saith--Aristotle saith--Seneca saith--Saint Augustine
saith--Esdras in his fourth book saith--" Salt air
sweeping through seemed to fall into a deep, musical beat
and rhythm. "After the council at Salamanca when great
churchmen cried Irreligion and even Heresy upon me, I
searched all Scripture and drew testimony together. In
fifty, yea, in a hundred places it is plain! King David saith
--job saith--Moses saith--Thus it reads in Genesis--"

Diego de Arana smote the table with his hand. "I am
yours, senor, to find for the Lord!" Fray Ignatio lifted
dark eyes. "I well believe that nothing happens but what is
chosen! I will tell you that in my cell at La Rabida I heard
a cry, `Come over, Ignatio the Franciscan!' "

And I, listening, thought, "Not perhaps that ancient
spiritual singing of spiritual things! But in truth, yes, it
is chosen. Did not the Whole of Me that I can so dimly
feel set my foot upon this ship?" And going out on deck
before I slept, I looked at the stars and thought that we
were like the infant in the womb that knows not how nor
where it is carried.

We might be four hundred leagues from Spain. Still
the wind drove us, still we hardly shifted canvas, still the
sky spread clear, of a vast blue depth, and the blue glass
plain of the sea lay beneath. It was too smooth, the wind
in our rigging too changeless of tune. At last, all would
have had variety spring. There began a veritable hunger
for some change, and it was possible to feel a faint horror.
_What if this is the horror--to go on forever and ever like
this_?

Then one morning when the sun rose, it lit a novel thing.
Seaweed or grass or herbage of some sort was afloat about
us. Far as the eye might reach it was like a drowned
meadow, vari-colored, awash. All that day we watched it.
It came toward us from the west; we ran through it from
the east. Now it thinned away; now it thickened until it
seemed that the sea was strewn with rushes like a castle
floor. With oars we caught and brought into ship wreaths
of it. All night we sailed in this strange plain. A yellow
dawn showed it still on either side the _Santa Maria_, and
thicker, with fewer blue sea straits and passes than on yesterday.
The Pinta and the Nina stood out with a strange,
enchanted look, as ships crossing a plain more vast than the
plain of Andalusia. Still that floating weed thickened. The
crowned woman at our prow pushed swathes of it to either
side. Our mariners hung over rail, talking, talking. "What
is it--and where will it end? Mayhap presently we can
not plough it!"

I was again and again to admire how for forty years
he had stored sea-knowledge. It was not only what those
gray eyes had seen, or those rather large, well molded ears
had heard, or that powerful and nervous hand had touched.
But he knew how to take, right and left, knowledge that
others gathered, as he knew that others took and would
take what he gathered. He knew that knowledge flows.
Now he stood and told that no less a man than Aristotle
had recorded such a happening as this. Certain ships of
Gades--that is our Cadiz--driven by a great wind far
into River-Ocean, met these weeds or others like them,
distant parents of these. They were like floating islands
forever changing shape, and those old ships sailed among
them for a while. They thought they must have broken
from sea floor and risen to surface, and currents brought
other masses from land. Tunny fish were caught among
them.

And that very moment, as the endless possibilities of
things would have it, one, leaning on the rail, cried out
that there were tunnies. We all looked and saw them in a
clear canal between two floating masses. It brought the
Admiral credence. "Look you all!" he said, "how most
things have been seen before!"

"But Father Aristotle's ship--Was he `Saint' or
`Father'?"

"He was a heathen--he believed in Mahound."

"No, he lived before Mahound. He was a wise man--"

"But his ships turned back to Cadiz. They were afraid
of this stuff--that's the point!"

"They turned back," said the Admiral. "And the splendor
and the gold were kept for us."

A thicker carpet of the stuff brushed ship side. One of
the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a
criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us
solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land
to the west?"

"But it is caught here! What if we are caught here too?
These weeds may stem us--turn great crab pincers and
hold us till we rot!"

"If--and if--and if" cried the Admiral. "For
Christ, His sake, laugh at yourselves!"

On, on, we went before that warm and potent wind, so
steadfast that there must be controlling it some natural law.
Ocean-Sea spread around, with that weed like a marsh at
springtide. Then, suddenly, just as the murmuring faction
was murmuring again, we cleared all that. Open sea, blue
running ocean, endlessly endless!

The too-steady sunshine vanished. There broke a cloudy
dawn followed by light rain. It ceased and the sky cleared.
But in the north held a mist and a kind of semblance of far-
off mountains. Startled, a man cried "Land!" but the next
moment showed that it was cloud. Yet all day the mist hung
in this quarter. The _Pinta_ approached and signaled, and
presently over to us put her boat, in it Martin Pinzon. The
Admiral met him as he came up over side and would have
taken him into great cabin. But, no! Martin Pinzon always
spoke out, before everybody! "Senor, there is land yonder,
under the north! Should not we change course and see
what is there?"

"It is cloud," answered the Admiral. "Though I do not
deny that such a haze may be crying, `Land behind!' "

"Let us sail then north, and see!"

But the Admiral shook his head. "No, Captain! West
--west--arrow straight!"

Pinzon appeared about to say, "You are very wrong,
and we should see what's behind that arras!" But he
checked himself, standing before Admiral and Don and Viceroy,
and all those listening faces around. "I still think," he
began.

The other took him up, but kept considerate, almost deferring
manner. "Yes, if we had time or ships to spare!
But now it is, do not stray from the path. Sail straight
west!"

"We are five hundred leagues from Palos."

"Less than that, by our reckoning. The further from
Palos, the nearer India!"

"We may be passing by our salvation!"

"Our salvation lies in going as we set forth to go." He
made his gesture of dismissal of that, and asked after the
health of the _Pinta_. The health held, but the stores were
growing low. Biscuit enough, but bacon almost out, and
not so many measures of beans left. Oil, too, approached
bottom of jars. The Nina was in the same case.

"Food and water will last," said the Admiral. "We have
not come so far without safely going farther."

Martin Alonso Pinzon was the younger man and but
captain of the Pinta_, while the other stood Don and Admiral,
appointed by Majesty, responsible only to the Crown.
But he had been Master Christopherus the dreamer, who
was shabbily dressed, owed money, almost begged. He
owed large money now to Martin Pinzon. But for the Pinzons,
he could hardly have sailed. He should listen now,
take good advice, that was clearly what the captain of the
_Pinta thought! Undoubtedly Master Christopherus dreamed
true to a certain point, but after that was not so followable!
As for Cristoforo Colombo, Italian shipmaster, he had, it
was true, old sea wisdom. But Martin Pinzon thought
Martin Pinzon was as good there!--Captain Martin Alonso
said good-by with some haughtiness and went stiffly back
over blue sea to the Pinta.

The sun descended, the sea grew violet, all we on the
_Santa Maria_ gathered for vesper prayer and song. Fray
Ignatio's robe and back-thrown cowl burned brown against
the sea and the sail. One last broad gold shaft lighted the
tall Admiral, his thick white hair, his eagle nose, his strong
mouth. Diego de Arana was big, alert and soldierly; Roderigo
Sanchez had the look of alcalde through half a lifetime.
I had seen Roderigo de Escobedo's like in dark streets
in France and Italy and Castile, and Pedro Gutierrez wherever
was a court. Juan de la Cosa, the master, stood a
keen man, thin as a string. Out of the crowd of mariners
I pick Sancho and Beltran the cook, Ruiz the pilot, William
the Irishman and Arthur the Englishman, and two or three
others. And Luis Torres. The latter was a thinker, and
a Jew in blood. He carried it in his face, considerably
more markedly than I carried my grandmother Judith. But
his family had been Christian for a hundred years. Before
I left forecastle for poop I had discovered that he was
learned. Why he had turned sailor I did not then know,
but afterwards found that it was for disappointed love. He
knew Arabic and Hebrew, Aristotle and Averroes, and he
had a dry curiosity and zest for life that made for him the
wonder of this voyage far outweigh the danger.

There was a hymn that Fray Ignatio taught us and that
we sang at times, beside the Latin chant. He said that a
brother of his convent had written it and set it to music.

Thou that art above us,
Around us, beneath us,
Thou who art within us,
Save us on this sea!
Out of danger,
Teach us how we may
Serve thee acceptably!
Teach us how we may
Crown ourselves, crowning Thee!


Beltran the cook's voice was the best, and after him
Sancho, and then a sailor with a great bass, William the
Irishman. Fray Ignatio sang like a good monk, and Pedro
Gutierrez like a troubadour of no great weight. The Admiral
sang with a powerful and what had once been a sweet
voice. Currents and eddies of sweetness marked it still.
All sang and it made together a great and pleasurable
sound, rolling over the sea to the _Pinta_ and the Nina, and
so their singing, somewhat less in volume, came to us. All
grew dusk, the ships were bat wings sailing low; out sprang
the star to which the needle no longer pointed. The great
star Venus hung in the west like the lantern of some ghostly
air ship, very vast.

Thou that art above us,
Around us, beneath us,
Thou that art within us,
Save us on this sea!



CHAPTER XIV

WE were a long, long way from Spain. A flight of
birds went over us. They were flying too high for
distinguishing, but we did not hold them to be sea
birds. We sounded, but the lead touched no bottom. West
and west and west, pushed by that wind! Late September,
and we had left Palos the third of August.

The wind shifted and became contrary. The sea that
for so long had been glassy smooth took on a roughness.
A bird that was surely a forest bird beaten to us perched
upon a stretched rope and uttered three quick cries. A
boy climbed and softly took it from behind. It fluttered in
the Admiral's two hands. All came to look. Its plumage
was blue, its breast reddish. We wondered, but before we
could make it a cage, it strongly strove and was gone. One
flash and all the azure took it to itself.

In the night the waves flattened. Rose-dawn showed
smooth sea and every sail filled again with that westward
journeying wind. Yesterday's roughness and the bird tossed
aboard were as a dream.

A day and a day and a day. As much Ocean-Sea as ever,
and Asia a lie, and alike at this end and that of the
vessel a dull despondency, and Pedro Gutierrez's wit grown
ugly. So naked, so lonely, so indifferent spread the Sea
of Darkness!

Another day and another and another. When half the
ship was at the point of mutiny signs reappeared and thickened.
Birds flew over the ships; one perched beside the
Admiral's banner and sang. More than that, a wood dove
came upon the deck and ate corn that was strewed for it.
"Colombo--Colombo!" quoth the Admiral. "I, too, am
`dove.' " And he opened a window and sent forth a "dove"
to find if there were land!' "

Almost the whole ship from Jason down took these two
birds for portents. Fray Ignatio lifted hands. "The
Blessed Francis who knew that birds have souls to save
hath sent them!" We passed the drifting branch of a
tree. It had green leaves. The sea ran extremely blue and
clear, and half the ship thought they smelled frankincense,
brought on the winds which now were changeable. At evening
rose a great cry of "Land!" and indeed to one side the
sinking sun seemed veritable cliffs with a single mountain
peak. The Admiral, who knew more of sea and air than
any two men upon those ships, cried "Cloud--cloud!"
but for a time none believed him. There sprang great commotion,
the _Pinta_ too signaling. Then before our eyes
came a rift in the mountain and the cliffs slipped into the sea.

But now all believed in land ahead. It was as though
some one had with laughter tossed them that assurance over
the horizon straight before us. Every mariner now was
emulous to be the lookout, every man kept eyes on the west.
Now sprang clear and real to them the royal promise of
ten thousand maravedies pension to him who first sighted
Cipango, Cathay or India. The Admiral added a prize of a
green velvet doublet.

We had come nigh eight hundred leagues.

In the cabin, upon the table he spread Toscanelli's map,
and beside it a great one like it, of his own making, signed
in the corner _Columbus de Terra Rubra_. The depiction was
of a circle, and in the right or eastern side showed the coasts
of Ireland and England, France, Spain and Portugal, and
of Africa that portion of which anything was known. Out
in Ocean appeared the islands gained in and since Prince
Henry's day. Their names were written,--Madeira, Canaria,
Cape de Verde and Azores. West of these and filling
the middle map came Ocean-Sea, an open parchment field
save for here a picture of a great fish, and here a siren and
here Triton, and here the Island of the Seven Cities and here
Saint Brandon's Isle, and these none knew if they be real
or magical! Wide middle map and River-Ocean! The eye
quitting that great void approached the left or western side
of the circle. And now again began islands great and small
with legends written across and around them. The great
island was Cipango, and across the extent of it ran in fine
lettering. "Marco Polo was here. It is the richest of the
eastern lands. The houses are roofed with gold. The people
are idolaters. There are spices and pearls, nutmegs, pepper
and precious stones. Very much gold so that the common
people use it as they wish."

We read, the Admiral seated, we, the great cabin group,
standing, bending over the table. After the islands came
mainland. "Cathay" ran the writing. "Mangi. Here
is the seat of the Great Khan. His city is Cambalu." South
of all this ran other drawings and other legends. "Here,
opposite Africa, near the equator, are islands called Manillas.
They have lodestone, so that no ship with iron can sail to
them. Here is Java of all the spices. Here is great India
that the ancients knew."

"We are bearing toward Cipango," said the Admiral. "I
look first for small outward islands, where perhaps the folk
are uncouth and simple, and there is little gold."

And again days passed. When many times upon the
_Santa Maria_ and as often on the _Pinta_ and the _Nina_ some
one had cried "Land!" and the ships been put in commotion
and the land melted into air before our eyes, and another
as plausible island or coast formed before us only to
vanish, despair seized us again. Witchcraft and sorcery and
monstrous ignorance, and fooled to our deaths! "West--
west--west!" till the west was hated. The Pinzons thought
we should change course. If there were lands we were
leaving them in the north where hung the haze. But the
Madman or the Black Magician, our Italian Admiral, would
not hear good advice! It was Gutierrez's word, under his
breath when the Admiral was in earshot, and aloud when
he was not. "Our Italian--our Italian! Why did not
Italy keep him? And Portugal neither would have him!
Castile, the jade, takes him up!"

Then after absence began again the signs. Flocks of birds
went by us. I saw him watching, and truly these flights
did seem to come from south of west. On the seventh of
October he altered course. We sailed southwest. This day
there floated by a branch with purple berries, and we saw
flying fish. Dolphins played about the ship. The very sea
felt warm to the hand, and yet was no oppression, but light
and easily breathed air, fragrant and lifting the spirits.

And now we saw floating something like a narrow board
or a wide staff. The master ordered the boat lowered; we
brought it in and it was given dripping into the Admiral's
hand. "It is carved by man," he said. "Look!" Truly
it was so, rudely done with bone or flint, but carved by man
with something meant for a picture of a beast and a tree.

We sailed west by south this day and the next. No more
man-wrought driftage came our way, but other signs multiplied.
We saw many birds, the water was strangely warm
and clear, when the wind blew toward us it had a scent,
a tone, that cried land breeze! Then came by a branch
with yellow flowers, and upon one a butterfly. After this
none doubted, not Fernando nor any. "Gold flowers--
gold flowers--gold, gold!"

This night we lay by so that we should not slip past land
in the darkness. When day came there showed haze south
and west. A gentle wind sang in our rigging. On board
the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina all watched for
land. Excitement and restlessness took us all. The Admiral's
eyes burned like deep gray seas. I could read in
them the images behind. _Prester John and the Release of
the Sepulchre. The Grand Khan a tributary Prince. Argosies
of gold, silk and spices, sailing steady, sailing fast over
a waterway unblocked by Mahound and his soldans. All Europe
burning bright, rising a rich Queen. Holy Church with_
_another cubit to her stature. Christopherus Columbus, the
Discoverer, the Enricher, the Deliverer! Queen Isabella, and
on her cheeks a flush of gratitude; all the Spanish court bowing
low. All the friends, the kindred, all so blessed! Sons,
brothers; Genoa, and Domenico Colombo clad in velvet, dining
with the Doge_.

Dolphins were all about us; once there rose a cry from
the mariners that they heard singing over the waves. We
held breath and listened, but if they were sirens they ceased
their song. But at eve, the sky pale gold, the water a
sapphire field, we ourselves sang mightily our "_Salve Regina_."

The Admiral would speak to us. Now all loved him,
with golden India rising to-morrow from the sea, with his
wisdom proving itself! He had this eve a thrilling voice.
God had been good to us; who could say other? This very
eve, at Palos, they thought of us. At Santa Maria de la
Rabida, chanting vesper hymn, they prayed for us also.
In Cordova the Queen prayed. In Rome, the Holy Father
had us in mind. Would we lessen ourselves, disappointing
so many, and very God, grieving very Christ? "No! But
out of this ship we shall step on this land to come, good
men, true men, servants and sons of Christ in His kingdom.
This night, in India before us, men sigh, `We weary of our
idols! Why tarrieth true God?' There the learned think,
bending over their maps, `Why doth not some one put forth,
bringing all the lands into one garland?' They look to
their east whence we come, and they may see in dream tonight these three ships!" His voice rang. "I tell
you
these Three Ships shall be known forever! Your grandchildren's
grandchildren shall say, `The _Santa Maria_, the
Pinta and the Nina--and one that was our ancestor sailed
in this one or in that one, to the glory and gain of the
world, wherefore we still make festival of his birthday!' "

At this they stirred, whether from Palos or Huelva or
Fishertown. They looked at him now as though indeed he
were great mage, or even apostle.

That evening I heard Roderigo de Escobedo at an enumeration.
He seemed to have committed to memory some
Venice list. "Mastic, aloes, pepper, cloves, mace and cinnamon
and nutmeg. Ivory and silk and most fine cloth, diamonds,
balasses, rubies, pearls, sapphires, jacinth and emeralds.
Silver in bulk and gold common as iron with us.
Gold--gold!"

Pedro Gutierrez was speaking. "Gold to carry to Spain
and pay my debts, with enough left to go again to court--"

Said Escobedo, "The Admiral saith, `No fraud nor
violence, quarreling nor oppression'!"

Gutierrez answered: "The Admiral also thinks to pay
his debts! He may think he will be strict as the Saints, but
he will not!"

The Admiral was walking the deck. He stopped beside
Juan Lepe who leaned upon the rail and watched a strange,
glistering sea. It was that shining stuff we see at times
at night in certain weather. But to-night Luis Torres, passing,
had said, "Strewn ducats!"

The Admiral and Juan Lepe watched. "Never a sail!"
said I. "How strange a thing is that! Great populous
countries that trade among themselves, and never a sail on
this sea rim!"

He drummed upon the rail. "Do not think I have not
thought of that! I looked to meet first a ship or ships.
But now I think that truly there may be many outlying
islands without ships. Or there may be a war between
princes, and all ships drawn in a fleet to north or south.
One beats one's brains--and time brings the solution, and
we say, `How simple!' "

Turning his great figure, he mounted to our castle built
up from deck, whence he could see great distances. The
wind had freshened; we were standing to the west; it was
behind us again and it pushed us like a shuttle in a giant's
hand. The night was violet dark and warm; then at ten
the moon rose. Men would not sleep while the ship sailed.
A great event was marching, marching toward us. We
thought we caught the music of it; any moment heralds,
banners, might flame at end of road. We were watching
for the Marriage Procession; we were watching for Kings,
for the Pope, for I know not what! But there was certain
to be largesse.

I went among the mariners. Sancho met me, a young
man whom then and afterwards I greatly liked. "Well,
we've had luck, senor! Saint Noah himself, say I, wasn't
any luckier!"

"Yes, we've done well!"

Beltran the cook's great easy voice rolled in. "Fear's
your only barnacle, say I!"

Luis Torres said, "When I studied Arabic and the Hebrew,
I thought it was for the pleasure of it. They said
around me, `How you waste your time!' But now some
about the Grand Khan should know Arabic. I will be of
use."

Pedro said, "Well, it has turned out better than any reasonable
man could have expected!" and Fernando, "Yes,
it has! Of course there may be witches. I've heard it said
there are great necromancers in India!"

"Necromancers! That's them that show you a thing
and then blow it away--"

I said, "Do you not know that all of us are the only
necromancers?"

"Did you see," asked Sancho, "the glistering in the
water? Are we going to lie to after midnight? Saint
George! I would like to plunge in and swim!"

On poop deck, Diego de Arana called me to him. "Well,
Doctor, how goes it?" He and I rested good friends. I
said, "Why, it goes well."

"I was thinking, watching the moon, how little I ever
dreamed, being no sea-going man, of such a thing as this.
Who knows his fate? A man's a strange matter!"

"He is a ballad," I answered., "One stave leads to another
and the story mounts."

"I cannot think what to-morrow may show us!"

"Nor can I! But it will be important. We enter by a
narrow strait great widths of the future."

"There will be great changes, doubtless. Our world is
growing little. Everybody feels that we must push out!
It isn't only Spain, but all kingdoms."

Pedro Gutierrez joined us. "You are a learned man,
Doctor! What like are the women of Cipango?"

The moon, past the full yet strong enough to silver
this vast shield, rose higher. The sails of the _Pinta_ and the
Nina were curves of pearl, our sails above us pale mountains.
The light dimmed our lanterns. Crowned woman
at our prow would be bathed in it as she ran across Ocean-
Sea. It washed our decks, pricked out our moving men.
They cast shadows. The master had served out an extra
draught of wine. It was hardly needed. We were all lifted,
with visions drumming in our heads. Fray Ignatio stood
against the mast, and I knew that he felt a pulpit and was
making his sermon. After a time, Diego de Arana and
Pedro Gutierrez moving away, I was alone. Mind and
heart tranquilized, and into them stepped Isabel, and she
and I, hand in hand, walked fields of the west.

The moon shone. The Admiral's voice came from above
us where he watched from the castle. "Come up here, one
or two of you!" Gutierrez was nearest the ladder. He
mounted and I after him, and we stood one on either hand
the Admiral. He pointed south of west. "A light!" His
voice was an ocean. "It is as it should be. I, Christopherus
Columbus, have first seen the Shore of Asia!"

We followed his extended hand. Clear under sail we saw
it, dimmed by the moon, but evident, a light as it were of
a fire on a beach. Diego de Arana came up also and
saw it. It was, we thought, more than a league away, a
light that must be on land and made by man. It dwindled,
out it went into night and there ran only plain silver. We
waited while a man might have swam from us to the _Pinta_,
then forth it started again, red star that was no star. Some
one below us cried, "Ho, look!" The Admiral raised his
voice, it rang over ship. "Aye! I saw it a time ago, have
seen it thrice! I, the Admiral, saw first." Men were
crowding to the side to look, then it went out as though
a wave had crept up and drenched it. We gazed and gazed,
but it did not come again.

It might have been not land, but a small boat afire. But
that is not probable, and we upon the _Santa Maria_ held
that to see burning wood on shore, though naught showed
of that shore itself, was truly first to view, first of all of
us, that land we sought. He did not care for the ten
thousand maravedies, but he cared that it should be said
that God showed it first to him.

The wind pushed us on with the flat of a great hand.
Midnight and after midnight. At the sight of that flame
we should have fired our cannon, but for some reason this
was not done. Now the silver silence beyond the ship was
torn across by the _Pinta's_ gun. She fired, then came near
us. "Land! Land!" Now we saw it under the moon,
just lifting above the sea,--lonely, peaceful, dark.

It was middle night. The Santa Maria, the Pinta and the
Nina went another league, then took in sail and came to
anchor.



CHAPTER XV

THE Admiral set a watch and commanded all beside
to sleep. To-morrow might be work and wakefulness
enough! The ship grew silent. With the _Pinta_
and the Nina it lay under the moon, and all around was
silver water.

He did not sleep this night, I am sure. At all times he
was a provident and wakeful sea king who knew his ship
through and through. His habit was light sleep and not
many hours of that. He studied his books at night while
others slept. Lying in his bed, with eyes open or eyes shut,
he watched form in the darkness lands across sea.

This night so far from Europe passed. The sense of day
at hand wrapped us. In the east arose a cool, a stern and
indifferent pallor. It changed, it flushed. We carried in
the _Santa Maria_ a cock and hens. Cock crew.

Christopherus Columbus had Italian love for fit, harmonious
noting of vast events. This morning the trumpeter
also of the Santa Maria waked those who slept. The
clear and joyful notes were heard by the Pinta and the
Pinta, too, answered with music. The Nina took it from
her. Beltran the cook and his helpers gave us a stately
breakfast. The Admiral came forth from his cabin in a
dress that a prince might have worn, crimson and tawny,
and around his throat a golden chain. Far and near rushed
into light, for in these lands and seas the dawn makes no
tarrying. It is almost night, then with a great clap of
light it is day.

We had voyaged, all thought, to Asia over an untrodden
way. Every eye turned to land. Not haze, not dissolving
cloud, not a magic nothing in the thought, but land, land,
solid, palpable, like Palos strand! Had we seen a great port
city, had we seen ships crowding harbor, had we seen a
citadel on some height, armed and frowning, had we marked
temples and palaces and banners afloat in this divine cool
wind of morning, many aboard us would have had now no
surprise, would have cried, "Of course, I really knew it,
though for the fun of it I pretended otherwise!"

But others among us could not expect such as this after
the quiet night; no light before us save that one so soon
quenched, no stir of boat at all or large or small; an unearthly
quiet, a low land still as a sleeping marsh under
moon.

The light brightened. The water about us turned a blue
that none there had ever seen, so turquoise, so cerulean, so
penetrable by the eye! Before us gentle surf broke on a
beach bone-white. The beach with little rise met woodland;
thick it seemed and of a vivid greenness and fairly covering
the island. It was island, masthead told us, who saw
blue ribbon going around. Moreover, there were two others,
no greater, upon the horizon. Nor, though the woodland
seemed thick as pile of velvet, was it desolate isle. We
made out in three places light plumes of smoke. Now some
one uttered a cry, "Men!"

They were running out of the wood, down upon the white
beach. There might be a hundred.

"Naked men! They are dark--They are negroes!"--
"Or magicians!"

The Admiral lifted his great voice. "Mariners all! India
and Cathay are fringed with islands, as are many parts
of Europe. A dozen of you have sailed among the Greek
islands. There may be as many here as those. This is a
small island and its folk simple. They are not Negroes,
but the skin of the Indian is darker than ours, and that
of Cipango and Cathay is yellow. As for clothing, in all
warm lands the simpler folk wear little. But as for ma-
gicians, there may be magicians among them as there are
among all peoples, but it is falseness and absurdity to speak
of all as magicians! Nonsense and cowardice! The man
who cried that goes not ashore to-day!"

Not Great India before us nor Golden Cipango! But
it was land--land--it was solid, there were folk! How
long had flowed the sea around us, for this was the twelfth
of October, five weeks since Gomera and above two months
since Palos had sunk away and we had heard the last faint
bell of La Rabida! And there had been strong doubt if
ever we should see again a white beach, or a tree, or a
kindly fire ashore, or any men but those of our three ships,
or ever another woman or a child. But land--land! Here
was land and green woods and crowds of strange folk.
The mariners laughed, and the tears stood in their eyes
and friends embraced. And they grew mightily respectful
to the Admiral.

So many were to go ashore in the first boat, and so many
in the second. The _Pinta_ and the Nina were lowering their
boats. Our hidalgos aboard, Diego de Arana, Roderigo
Sanchez and the rest, had also fine apparel with them--
seeing that the Grand Khan would have a court and our
Sovereigns must be rightly represented--and this morning
they suited themselves only less splendidly than did the
Admiral. The great banner of Castile and Leon was ready
for carrying. Trumpet, drum and fife should land. Fray
Ignatio was ready--oh, ready! His liquid dark eyes had
an unearthly look. Gifts were being sorted out. There
were aboard rich things, valued in any land of ours, for
gifts to the Grand Khan and his ministers, or the Emperor
of Cipango and his. For Queens and Empresses and Ladies
also. And there was a wondrous missal for Prester John
did we find him! But this was evidently a little island afar,
and these were naked, savage men. The expedition was
provident. It had for all. The Portuguese, our great navigators,
had taught what the naked African liked. A basket
stood at hand filled with pieces of colored cloth, beads, caps,


 



1492
by
Mary Johnston
Part 3 out of 7

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hawk bells, fishhooks, toys of sorts. For that we might
have trouble, four harquebus men and four crossbows were
going. The _Santa Maria_ carried two cannon. Now at the
Admiral's signal, one of these was discharged. It was a
voice not heard before in this world. If he wished to produce
awe that should accompany him like the ancient pillars
of cloud and fire, he had success. When the smoke cleared
we saw the wild men prostrate upon the ivory beach as
though a scythe had cut them down. They lay like fallen
grain, then rose and made haste for the wood. We could
thinly hear their shouting.

Christopherus Columbus descended into the boat of the
_Santa Maria_, Fray Ignatio after him. Diego de Arana,
Roderigo Sanchez, Escobedo, Gutierrez and Juan Lepe the
physician followed. Juan de la Cosa stayed with the ship, it
not being wise to take away all authority. Our armed men
came after and the rowers. We drew off and the small boat
filled. Boats of the Pinta and the Nina joined us. The
great banner over us, the Admiral's hand upon its standard,
we rowed for Asia.

Nearer and nearer. The water hung about us, plain marvel,
not dark blue, but turquoise and clear as air. We could
see the strange, bright-hued fish and the white bottom. The
air breathed Maytime, and now we thought we could tell
the spices. And so ivory-white it was, the long curved
beach, and so gayly bright the emerald of the wood! There
were many palms with other trees we knew not. It was
low, the island, and it shone before us silver and green, and
the trees moved gently in a wind more sweet, we thought,
than any Andalusian zephyr. Pedro Gutierrez stared.
"Paradise--Paradise!"

It was not what we had looked for, but it was good
enough. It seemed divine, that morning!

Nearer we drew, nearer. The beach was now bare. We
made out the dark, naked folk at edge of the wood, in tree
shadows, watching us. Were they strange to us, be sure
we were stranger to them!

The azure water, so marvelous, met that sand white like
crushed bone, strewn with delicate shells. Never was wind
so sweet as that which blew this morning! Green plumes,
the palms brushed the sky; there seemed to us fruit trees
also, with satin stems and wide-laden boughs. When we
looked over shoulder the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the
Nina each rode double, mast and hull in sky, mast and hull
in mirror sea. Something strange and divine was about
us, over us. We wished to laugh, we wished to weep.

Boat head touched clean sand. The oars rested. Christopherus
Columbus the Admiral stepped from boat first and
alone, all waiting as was right. He took with him the banner
of Spain. He walked a few yards, then struck the
standard into the sand. There was air enough to open the
folds, to make them float and fly. Kneeling, he bowed himself
and kissed the earth. We heard his strong voice praying.
"_Domine Deus, aeterne et omnipotens, sacro tuo verbo
coelum, et terra, et mare, creasti_--"

We also bowed our heads. He rose and cried to Fray
Ignatio. The Franciscan was the next to enter this new
world. After him sprang out Diego de Arana and the others.
The Pinzons, too, were now leaving their boats. All were
at last gathered about the Admiral, between blue water and
green wood. Fifty Spaniards, we gathered there, and we
heard our fellows left upon the ships cheering us. We
kneeled and Fray Ignatio thanked God for us.

We rose, drew long breath and looked about us, then
turned to the Admiral with loud praise and gratulation. He
was girded with a sword, cross-hilted. Drawing it, he set
its point in the sand. Then with one hand upon the cross,
and one lifted and wrapped in the banner folds, he, with a
great voice, proclaimed Spain's ownership. To the King
and Queen of the Spains all lands unchristian and idolatrous
that we might find and use and hold, all that were clearly
away from the line of the King of Portugal, drawn for him
by the Holy Father! In the name of God, in the name of
Holy Church, in the name of Isabella, Queen of Castile,
and Ferdinand, King of Aragon and their united Power,
amen and amen! He motioned to the trumpeter who put
trumpet to his lips and blew a blast to the north and the
south and the east and the west. At the sound there seemed
to come a cry from the fringing wood, a cry of terror.

The island was ours,--if all this could make it ours.

A piece of scarlet cloth spread upon the sand had heaped
upon it necklaces of glass and three or four hawk bells
with other toys. We placed it there, then stood back. At
the Admiral's command the harquebus and crossbow men
laid their weapons down, though watchful eye was kept.
But no arrow flights had come from the wood, and as far
as could be seen some kind of lance, not formidable looking,
was their only weapon. Next the Admiral made our fifer to
play a merry and peaceful air.

We had noted a clump of trees advanced into the sand
and we thought that the bolder men were occupying this.
Now a man started out alone, a young man by the looks of
him, drawn as he was against the white sand, and a paladin,
for he marched to meet alone he knew not what or whom.
"Blackamoor!" exclaimed De Arana beside me, but as he
came nearer we saw that the dead blackness was paint, laid
in a fantastic pattern upon his face and body. Native hue
of skin, as we came presently to find in the unpainted, was
a pleasing red-brown. He advanced walking daintily and
proudly, knowing that his people were watching him. Single
Castilian, single Moor, had advanced so, many a time, between
camps, or between camp and fortress.

Halting beside the red cloth he stooped and turned over
the trinkets. When he straightened himself he had in hand
a string of great beads, rose and blue and green. He fingered
these, seemed about to put the necklet on, then refrained
as too daring. Laying it gently back upon the scarlet he
next took up a hawk bell. These bells, as is known, ring
very clear and sweet. I was afterwards told that the Portuguese
had noted their welcome among the African people.
There was no nail's breadth of information that this man
Columbus could not use! He had used this, and in a list
for just possibly found savage Indians had put down, "good
number of hawk bells."

The red man painted black, took up the hawk bell. It
chimed as he moved it. He dropped it on the sand and gave
back a step, then picked it up and set it tinkling. His face,
the way in which he moved, said "Music from heaven!"

The Admiral motioned to Fray Ignatio to move toward
him. That good man went gently forward. The youth
gave back, but then braced himself, under the eyes of his
nation. He stood. The Franciscan put out a gowned arm
and a long, lean kindly hand. The youth, naked as the
bronze of a god, hesitated, raised his own arm, let it drop
upon the other's. Fray Ignatio, speaking mild words,
brought him across and to the Admiral. The latter, tallest
of us all and greatly framed, lofty of port, dressed with
magnificence, silver-haired, standing forth from his officers
and men, the banner over him, would be taken by any for
Great Captain, chief god of these gods, and certes, at the
first they thought that we were gods! The Indian put his
hands to his face, shrank like a girl and came slowly to his
knees and lower yet until his forehead rested upon the earth.
The Admiral lifted him, calling him "son."

Those of his kind watching from the wood now sent forth
a considerable deputation. There came to us a dozen naked
men, fairly tall, well-shaped, skin of red copper, smeared
often with paint in bars and disks and crescents. Their
hair was not like the Negro's, the only other naked man our
time knew, but was straight, black, somewhat coarse, not
bushy but abundant, cut short with the men below the ear.
They are a beardless people. Our beards are an amazement
to them, as are our clothes. A fiercely quarrelsome folk, a
peace-keeping, gentle folk will sound their note very soon.
These belonged to the latter kind. Their lances were not our
huge knightly ones, nor the light, hard ones of the Moors.
They were hardly more than stout canes, the head not iron
--they had no iron--but flint or bone shaped by a flint
knife. Where the paint was not splashed or patterned over
them, their faces could be liked very well. Lips were not over
full, the nose slightly beaked, the forehead fairly high, the
eyes good. They did not jabber nor move idly but kept
measure and a pleasant dignity. They seemed gentle and
happy. So were they when we found them.

Their speech sounded of no tongue that we knew. Luis
Torres and I alike had knowledge of Arabic. We had no
Persian that might be nearer yet, but Arabia being immemorially
caravan-knit with India, it was thought that it
might be understood. But these bare folk had no notion
of it, nor of the Hebrew which Luis tried next. The Latin
did not do, the Greek of which I had a little did not do.
But there is an old, old language called Gesture. If,
wherever there is a common language there is one people,
then in end and beginning surely we are one folk around
the earth!

We were to be friends with these islanders. "Friends
first and last!" believed the Admiral. Indeed, all felt it
so, this bright day. If they were not all we had imaged,
sailing to them, yet were they men, and unthreatening, novel,
very interesting to us with their island and their marvelous
blue water. All was heightened by sheer joy of landing,
and of finding--finding something! And what we found
was not horrible nor deathful, but bright, promising, scented
like first fruits.

To them we found we were gods! They moved about us
with a kind of ceremony of propitiation. Two youths came
with a piece of bark carried like a salver, piled with fruits
and with thin cakes of some scraped root. Another brought
a parrot, a great green and rose bird that at once talked,
though we could not understand his words. Two older
men had balls, as large as melons, of some wound stuff that
we presently found to be cotton loosely twisted into yarn.
The Admiral's eyes glowed. "Now if any bring spices or
pepper--" But they did not, nor did they bring gold.

All these things they put down before us, in silence or
with words that we thought were petitions, moving not
confusedly but with a manner of ritual. The Admiral took a
necklace and placed it round the throat of the young man
who first had dared, and in his hand put a hawk bell. That
was enough for himself to do, who was Viceroy. Three of
us finished the distribution. They who had brought presents
were given presents. All would have us go with them
to their village, just behind the trees. A handful of men
we left with the boats and the rest of us crossed sand.
Harquebuses and crossbows went with us, but we had no need
of them. The island apparently followed peace, and its
folk greatly feared to give offense to gods from the sky.
Above the ships held a range of pearly clouds, out of which
indeed one might make strange lands and forms. The Indians
--Christopherus Columbus called them "Indians"--
pointed from ships to cloud. They spoke with movements
of reverence. "You have come down--you have come
down!" We understood them, though their words were not
ours.

Now the greenwood rose close at hand. The trees differed,
the woven thickness of it, the color and blossom, from any
wood at home. A space opened before us, and here was
the village of these folk,--round huts thatched with palm
leaves, set on no streets, but at choice under trees. Earth
around was trodden hard, but the green woods pressed close.
Here and there showed garden patches with plants whose
names and uses we knew not. Now we came upon women
and children. Like the men the women were naked. Well-
shaped and comely, with long, black, braided hair, they
seemed to us gentle, pleasing and fearless. The children
were a crew that any might love.

Time lacks to say all that we did and heard and guessed
this day upon this island! It was first love after long weeks
at sea, and our cramped ships and all our great uncertainty!
If it was not what we had expected, still here it was, tangible
land that never had been known, wonderful to us, giving
us already rich narrative for Palos and Huelva and Fishertown, for Cordova and the Queen and King. We
were sure
now that other land was to be met, so soon as we sailed a
reasonable distance to meet it. Under the horizon would
be land surely, and surely of an import that this small island
lacked, like Paradise though it seemed to us this day! Any
who looked at the Admiral saw that he would make no long
tarrying here. He named this island San Salvador, but we
would not wait in San Salvador.

This day in shifts, all our men were brought ashore, each
division having three hours of blessed land. So good was
earth under foot, so good were trees, so delectable the fruit,
so lovely to move and run and watch every moving, running,
walking thing! And these good, red-brown folk, naked it
was true, but mannerly after their own fashion, who thought
every seaman a god, and the ship boys sons of gods! And
we also were good and mannerly, the _Santa Maria_, the
Pinta and the Nina. I look back and I see a strange, a
boyish and a happy day.

The sun was westering. We felt the exhaustion of a
long holiday with novelties so many that at last the senses
did not answer. Perhaps the Indians felt it too. Often and
often have I seen great wisdom guide the Admiral. An
hour before approaching night might have said "Go!" he
took us one and all back to the ships. "_Salve Regina_" was
a sound that evening to hear, and afterwards it was to
sleep, sleep,--tired as from the Fair at Seville!



CHAPTER XVI

AT first, the day before, we had not made out that the
Indians had boats. Later, straying here and there,
we had seen them drawn upon the shore and covered
with boughs of trees. They called them "canoes", made
them, large and small, out of trunks of trees, hollowed by
fire, and with their stone knives. We had seen one copper
knife. Asked about that, they pointed to the south and
seemed to say that yonder dwelled men who had all they
wished of most things.

From dark the east grew pale, from pallor put on roses.
This day no mariner grumbled at the call to awake. Here
still lay our Fortunate Isle, our San Salvador; here our
ivory beach, our green wood. Up went the little curls of
smoke.

We had breakfast. So great was now the deference to
him who three days ago had been "madman" and "black
magician", "dreaming fool" and "spinner without thread!"
Now it was "Admiral", "Excellency", and "What shall
we do next?" and "What is your opinion, sir?"

The immediate thing to do proved to be to come forth
from cabin and mark the beach thronging with thrice the
number of yesterday, and the canoes putting off to us. We
counted eight. Only one was a long craft, holding twenty
men; the others came in cockle boats, with one or two or
three. Not only canoes, but they came swimming, men and
boys, all a dark grace in the cerulean, lucid sea. They were
so fearless--for we came from heaven and would not harm
them. We were going to make them rich; we were going
to "save" them.

A score perhaps were helped aboard the _Santa Maria_.
The Pinta, the Nina, had others. They were like children,
touching, staring, excitedly talking and gesturing among
themselves, or gazing in a kind of fixed awe, asking of the
least sailor with all reverence, bowing themselves before the
Admiral, the over-god. The Admiral moved richly dressed,
rapt and benignant, yet sparing a part of himself to keep
all order, measure, rightness on the ship, and another part
to find out with keen pains, "What of other lands? What
of folk who must be your superiors?"

They had brought offerings. Half a dozen parrots perched
around, very gorgeously colored, loquacious in a speech we
did not know. We had stacks of the large round thin
cakes baked on stones which afterwards we called cassava,
and great gourds, "calabashes" filled with fruit, and balls
of cotton in a rude thread. We gave beads, bits of cloth,
little purses, and the small bells that caused extravagant
delight. But ever the Admiral looked for signs of gold,
for he must find for princes and nobles and merchants gold
or silver, or precious stones or spice, or all together. If he
found them not, half his fortunes fell; a half-wind only
would henceforth fill his sails.

And at last came in a canoe with three a young Indian
who wore in his ear a knob of gold. Roderigo Sanchez
saw this first and brought him to the Admiral. The latter,
taking up an armlet of green glass and a hawk bell, touched
the gold in the ear. "Do you trade?" Glad enough was
the Indian to trade. It lay in the Admiral's palm, a piece
of gold as great as a filbert.

Juan Lepe watched him make inquisition, Diego de
Arana, Sanchez and Escobedo at his elbow. He did it
to admiration, with look, gesture and tone ably translating
his words. "Gold--gold?" The Indian said, or we put
down in this wise what he said, "Harac."

Was there more harac on the island? We would give
heavenly things for harac. The Indian was doubtful; he
thought proudly that he had the only harac. "Where did
he get it?" He indicated the south.

"Little island like this one?"

"No. Great land. Harac there in many ears. Much
harac."

So we understood him. "Cipango!" breathed the Admiral.
"Or neighbor to Cipango, increasingly rich and civilized
as we go."

He took a case of small boxes, each box filled with merchandise
of spice which he desired. Cinnamon, nutmeg,
pepper, saffron, cloves and others. He made the islander
smell and taste. "Had they aught like these?"

The Indian seemed to say they had not, but would like
to have. He looked about for something with which to
trade, a parrot, or heap of cakes, or ball of cotton. I
thought that it was the box of boxes that he extremely
wished, but the Admiral thought it was the spicery, and
that he must have known them wherever he got the gold.
"Were they found yonder?"

The Admiral stretched arm out over blue sea and the
Indian followed his gesture. He shot out his own arm,
"South--southwest--west," nodded the Admiral. "Many
islands, or the mainland. Gates open before us!"

"Had the Indian been to these lands?" No, it seemed,
but one had come in a boat, wearing this knob of gold,
and he had told them. Was he living? No, he was not
living. What kind of a person was he? Such as us?
Emphatically no. Not such as us! Much, we gathered, as
was the Indian himself. "Pearls have come from Queen's
neck to Queen's neck," quoth the Admiral, "by a thousand
rude hands and twisting ways!"

There was one woman among the visitors to the _Santa
Maria_, a young woman, naked, freely moving and smiling.
Eyes dwelled on her, eyes followed her. She was with an
Indian who might be brother or husband. The Admiral
gave her a worked, Moorish scarf. She tied it about her
head, and the bright ends fell down beside her long, black,
braided hair. None touched her, but they were woman-
starved, and they looked at her hungrily. She had beauty
in her way, and a kind of innocence both frank and shy.
She was like a doe in the green forest, come silently upon
at dawn.

Fed full of marvel at last, these Indians left us. But
no sooner had they reached land and told of great kindness
on the part of the inhabitants of heaven than other canoes
and other swimmers put forth. This might go on all day,
so we checked it by ourselves going ashore.

This day we filled our water casks and took aboard much
fruit and all the cakes that they brought us. Moreover
we explored the island, finding two villages of a piece with
the first, and in the middle land a fair pool of water. This
day like yesterday was blissful wine.

All blessed Christopherus Columbus. No man now but,
for a while, did his bidding with an open heart.

In the morning we sailed away, not without plentiful
promises of return. When we put up our white sails they
cried out and pointed to the cloud sierra. No! We would
not go back to heaven--or if we did so we would come
again, loving so our gentle friends upon earth! We sailed,
and in all our after wanderings we never came back to this
island. And never again, I think, while Columbus voyaged,
did there come to us just the bright, exquisite thrill of that
first land after long doubt and no land. San Salvador--
Holy Saviour Island!



CHAPTER XVII

WE were in a throng of islands. We might drop all
for a little while, then from masthead "Land ho!"
None were great islands, many far smaller than
San Salvador. At night we lay to, not knowing currents
and shoals; then broke the day and we flung out sail.

We had with us upon the _Santa Maria_ three San Salvador
men. They had come willingly, two young, fearless
men, and one old man with a wrinkled, wise, interested
face. Assiduous to gain their tongue and impart our own,
the Admiral, beside his own effort, told off for especial
teachers and scholars Luis Torres and Juan Lepe. We
did gain knowledge, but as yet everything was imperfect,
without fine shading, and subject to all miscomprehension.
But like the rest of us, the Admiral guessed in
accordance with his wishes and his previous belief.

All these islands lay flat or almost flat upon the sea. All
showed ivory beach, vivid wood, surrounding water, transparent
and heavenly blue, inhabited by magically colored
fish. When we dropped anchor, took boat and landed, it
was to find the same astonished folk, naked, harmless, holding
us for gods, bringing all they had, eager for our toys
which were to them king's treasures and holy relics. Every
island the Admiral named; he gave them goodly names!
Over and over the Indians pointed south and west. We
understood great lands, clothed men, much gold. But when
we next came to anchor, like small island, like men, women
and children. We traded for a few more knobs of gold,
but they were few.

Toscanelli's map and the Admiral's map lay on cabin
table. "Islands in the Sea of Chin--Polo and Mandeville
alike say thousands--all grades then of advance. Beyond
any manner of doubt, persevering west or west by south,
we shall come to main Asia." So long as he ruled, there
would be perseverance!

At Santa Maria de la Concepcion a solitary large canoe
crowded with Indians was rowing toward us. One of the
San Salvador young men aboard us fancied some slight,
experienced some fear, or may even,--who knows?--have
wearied of the gods. Springing upon the rail he threw
himself into sea and made off with great strokes toward the
canoe. Pedro behind him shouted "Escape!" There was
a rush to the side to observe. Fernando bawled, "Come
back! or we'll let fly an arrow."

He swam, the dark, naked fellow, like a fish. Reaching
the canoe, the Indians there took him in; he seemed to have
a tale to tell, they all broke into talk, the canoe went round,
they rowed fast back to land. The _Nina_, lying near us, had
her boat filling to go ashore. Her men had seen the leap
overboard and the swimmer. Now they put after, rowing
hard for the canoe, that having the start came first to beach.
The Indians sprang out, the San Salvador man with them.
Leaving canoe, they ran across sand into wood. The _Nina's_
men took the canoe and brought it to the _Santa Maria_. In
it were balls of cotton and calabashes filled with fruit and a
chattering parrot. It was the first thing of this kind that
had happened, and the Admiral's face was wrathful. He
had a simple, kindly heart, and though he could be vexed
or irritated, he rarely broke into furious anger. But first
and last he desired peaceful absorption, if by any means
that were possible, of these countries. We absorbing them,
they absorbing us; both the gainers! And he had warm
feeling of romance-love for all this that he was finding.
He saw all his enterprise milk-white, rose-bright. And his
pride was touched that the Indian who had seemed contented
had not truly been so, and that the _Nina_'s men had disobeyed strict commands for friendliness. He would
restore
that content if possible, and he would have no more unordered
chasing of canoes. The Nina's men got anger and
rebuke, Captain Cristoforo Colombo mounting up in the
Admiral.

He would let nothing in the canoe be touched. Instead
he had placed aboard a pot of honey and a flask of wine
and three pieces of cloth, then with a strong shove it was
sent landward, and the tide making in, it came to shore.
We saw two venture from the wood and draw it up on
beach.

In a little while came around a point of shore a canoe
with one Indian who made toward us, using his oar very
dexterously, and when he entered our shadow holding up
cotton and fruit. It was to be seen that he had had no
communication with the men of the large canoe.

The Admiral himself called out encouragingly and snatching
the first small thing at hand held it up. The Indian
scrambled on board. He stood, as fine a piece of bronze
as any might see, before the Genoese, as great a figure as
might be found in all Italy--all Spain--all Europe.

The elder touched the younger, the white man the red
man, as a king, a father, might have touched a prince, a
son. He himself took the youth over our ship, showing
him this, showing him that, had the music play for him,
brought him to Fray Ignatio who talked of Christ, pointing
oft to heaven. (To my thinking this action, often repeated,
was one of the things that for so long made them
certain we had come from the skies.) In the cabin he
gave the Indian a cup of wine and a biscuit dipped in honey.
He gave him a silken cap with a tassel and himself put
round his throat one of our best strings of beads, and into
his hand not one but three of the much-coveted hawk bells.
He was kinder than rain after drought. First and last, he
could well lend himself to the policy of kindness, for it was
not lending. Kindness was his nature.

In an hour this Indian, returned to his canoe, was rowing toward shore with a swelling heart and a
determined
loyalty. He touched the island, and we could trust him to
be missionary, preaching with all fervor of heaven and the
gods.

Ay, me!

Whatever the other's defection, he more than covered it,
the return of the canoe aiding. Santa Maria de la Concepcion
became again friendly. But the Admiral that evening
gave emphatic instruction to Martin and Vicente Pinzon
and all the gathered Spaniards. Just here, I think, began
the rift between him and many. Many would have by prompt
taking, as they take in war. Were not all these heathen
and given? But he would have another way round, though
often he compromised with war; never wanting war but
forced by his time and his companions. Sometimes, in the
future, forced by the people we came among, but far
oftener forced by greed and lust and violence of our own.
Alas, again! Alas, again and again!

After Santa Maria de la Concepcion, Fernandina, and
after Fernandina the most beautiful of islands, Isabella,
where we lay three days. People upon this island seemed
to us more civilized than the Salvador folk. The cotton
was woven, loin cloths were worn, they had greater variety
of calabashes, the huts were larger, the villages more regular.
They slept in "hamacs" which are stout and wide
cotton nets slung between posts, two or three feet above
earth. Light, space-giving, easy of removal, these beds
greatly took our fancy.

Here we sought determinedly for spice-giving trees and
medicinal herbs and roots. It was not a spicery such as
Europe depended upon, but still certain things seemed valuable!
We gathered here and gathered there what might
be taken to Spain. There grew an emulation to find. The
Admiral offered prizes for such and such a commodity
come upon.

We sailed from Isabella and after three days came to
Cuba.



CHAPTER XVIII

CUBA! At first he called it Juana, but we came afterwards
still to use the Indian name. Cuba! We saw
it after three days, and it was little enough like
Isabella, Fernandina, Concepcion, San Salvador and the
islets the Admiral called Isles de Arena. It covered all our
south, no level, shining thing that masthead could see around,
but a mighty coast line, mountainous, with headlands and
bays and river mouths. Now after long years, I who outlive
the Admiral, know it for an island, but how could he
or I or any know that in November fourteen hundred and
ninety-two? He never believed it an island.

He stood on deck watching. "Cuba--Cuba! Have you
not read of Cublai Khan? The sounds chime!"

"Cublai Khan. He lives in Quinsai."

"Ay. His splendid, capital city. Buildings all wonderful,
and gardens like Mahound's paradise!"

"But if it is Cipango?"

"Ay. It may be Cipango. We have no angel here to tell
us which. I would one would fly down and take us by the
hand! Being men, we must make guesses."

Beautiful to us, splendid to us, was this coast of Cuba!
We sailed by headlands and deep, narrow-necked bays, river
mouths and hanging forests and bold cliffs. We sailed west
and still headland followed headland, and still the lookout
cried, "It stretched forever like the main!"

We came to a river where ships might ride. Sounding,
we found deep water, entered river mouth and dropped
anchor, then went ashore in the boats. Palms and their
water doubles, and in the grove a small abandoned village.
We had seen the people flee before us, and they were no
more nor other kind of people than had showed in Concepcion
or Fernandina. Yet were they a little wealthier. We
found parrots on their perches, and two dogs, small and
wolf-like that never barked. In one hut lay a harpoon
tipped with bone, and a net for fishing. In another we
found a wrought block of wood which Fray Ignatio pronounced
their idol.

We went back to our ships, and leaving river, sailed on
in a bright blue sea. The next day we doubled a cape and
found a great haven, but silent and sailless, with no maritime
city thronging the shore. What was this world, so huge, so
sparely, rudely peopled?

We came to anchor close under shore in this haven.
Again the marvelous water, but now it laved a bold and
great country! We landed. Canoes fastened in a row,
another village, most of the folk decamped, but a few
brave men and women tarrying to find out something about
heaven and its inmates. With toys again and pacific gestures
we wiled them to us.

There was upon the _Santa Maria_ a young Indian who
had chosen to come with us from Fernandina. He had courage
and intelligence, was willing to receive instruction and
baptism from Fray Ignatio, and first and last followed the
Admiral with devotion. The latter had him christened
Diego Colon. We taught him Spanish as fast and soundly as
we might, and used him as interpreter. The tongue of his
island was not just the tongue of Cuba, but near enough to
serve. All these Indians have a gift of oratory and dote to
speak at length, with firm voice and great gestures. Now
we set Diego Colon to his narration. We of Castile had so
much of the tongue by now that we could in some wise
follow.

Forth it poured! We were gods come from heaven.
Yonder stood the chief god that the others obeyed. He
was very great, strong, good, wise, kind, giving beautiful
gifts! We were all kind--no one was going to be hurt.
We made magic with harac--which we called "gold."
In heaven was not enough harac. So important is it to the
best magic that a chief god has come to earth to seek it.
We also liked cotton and things to eat, especially cassava
cakes, and we liked a very few parrots. But it was gold
that in chief we wanted. The man who brought the gods
gold might go home with gifts so beautiful that there was
never anything seen like them! Especially is there something
that the gods call "bells" that ring and sound in
your hand when you dance! Gold--do you know where
to find it? Another thing! They desire to find a god who
dropped out of the sky a long time ago, and has now a people
and a great, marvelous village. Thinking he might be
here, they have dived down to our land, for they dive in
the sky as we dive in water! The name of the god they
hunt is Grand Khan or Cublai Khan, and his village is
Quinsai. Have you heard of him? They are very anxious
to find him. The chief god with white hair and wonderful
clothes--It is what they call clothes; under it they are as
you and me, only the color is different--the chief god will
give many bells to any folk who can show him the way to
Quinsai. Gold and Quinsai where lives the god Grand
Khan."

As might have been expected, this brought tidings. "Cubanacan!
Cubanacan!" Whatever that might mean, they
said it with assurance, pointing inland. Diego Colon interrupted
their further speech. "There is a river. Go up
it three days and come to great village. Cacique there
wearing clothes. All men there have gold!"

Pedro Gutierrez spoke. "They'll promise anything for a
hawk bell!"

"What do they understand and what do they not understand?
What do they say and what do they not say?"
That was Martin Pinzon. "Between them all we are
fooled!"

The Admiral, who was gazing inland after the dark
pointing finger, turned and spoke. "At the root of all
things sit Patience and Make Trial!

"Well, I know," answered Pinzon, "that if these ships
be not careened and mended we shall have trouble! Weather
changes. There will be storm!"

He was right as to ships and weather, and the Admiral
knew it and said as much. I never saw him grudge recognition
to Martin Pinzon. It has been said that he did, but
I never saw it.

That night, on board the _Santa Maria_ there was held a
great council. At last it was settled that we should rest
here a week and overhaul the ships, and that while that
was doing, there should be sent two or three with Indian
guides to find, if might be, this river and this town.
And there were chosen, and given a week to go and come,
Juan Lepe, Luis Torres and a seaman Roderigo Jerez,
with Diego Colon, the Fernandina youth. Likewise there
would go two Indians of this village, blithe enough to
show their country to the gods and the gods to their country.

The next day being Sunday, Fray Ignatio preached a sermon
to the Indians. He assumed, and at this time I think
the Admiral assumed, that these folk had no religion. That
was a mistake. I doubt if on earth can be found a people
without religion.

Men and women they watched and listened, still, attentive,
knowing that it had somehow to do with heaven. After
sermon and after we had prayed and sung, we fashioned
and set up a great cross upon cliff brow. Again the Indians
watched and seemed to have some notion of what we
did.

The remainder of the day we rested, and on Monday
early Roderigo Jerez, Luis Torres and Juan Lepe with
Diego Colon and two Cuba men made departure, We had
a pack of presents and a letter from the Admiral. For we
might meet some administrator or commandant or other,
from Quinsai or Zaiton or we knew not where. This was
the first of many--ah, so many--expeditions, separations
from main body and return, or not return, as the case
might be!



CHAPTER XIX

FOREST endless and splendid! We white men often
saw no path, but the red-brown men saw it. It ran
level, it climbed, it descended; then began the three
again. It was lost, it was found. They said, "Here path!"
But we had to serpent through thickets, or make
way on edge of dizzy crag, or find footing through morass.
We came to great stretches of reeds and yielding grass,
giving with every step into water. It was to toil through
this under hot sun, with stinging clouds of insects. But
when they were left behind we might step into a grove of
the gods, such firmness, such pleasantness, such shady going
or happy resting under trees that dropped fruit.

We met no great forest beasts. There seemed to be none
in this part of Asia. And yet Luis and I had read of great
beasts. Dogs of no considerable size were the largest four-
footed things we had come upon from San Salvador to
Cuba. There were what they called _utias_, like a rabbit,
much used for food, and twice we had seen an animal the
size of a fox hanging from a bough by its tail.

If the beasts were few the birds were many. To see the
parrots great and small and gorgeously colored, to see those
small, small birds like tossed jewels that never sang but
hummed like a bee, to hear a gray bird sing clear and loud
and sweet every strain that sang other birds, was to see
and hear most joyous things. Lizards were innumerable;
at edge of a marsh we met with tortoises; once we passed
coiled around a tree a great serpent. It looked at us with
beady eyes, but the Indians said it would not harm a man.
A thousand, thousand butterflies spread their painted fans.

The trees! so huge of girth and height and wherever was
room so spreading, so rich of grain, so full, I knew, of
strange virtues! We found one that I thought was cinnamon,
and broke twigs and bark and put in our great pouch
for the Admiral. Only time might tell the wealth of this
green multitude. I thought, "Here is gold, if we would wait
for it!" Fruit trees sprang by our path. We had with us
some provision of biscuit and dried meat, and we never
lacked golden or purple delectable orbs. We found the
palm that bears the great nut, giving alike meat and
milk.

By now Luis Torres and I had no little of Diego Colon's
tongue and he had Spanish enough to understand the simplest
statements and orders. Ferdandina tongue was not
quite Cuba tongue, but it was like enough to furnish sea
room. We asked this, we asked that. No! No one had
ever come to the end of their country. When one town
was left behind, at last you came to another town. One
by one, were they bigger, better towns? They seemed to
say that they were, but here was always, I thought, doubtful
understanding. But no one had ever walked around their
country--they seemed to laugh at the notion--land that
way, always land! On the other hand, there was sea yonder
--like sea here. They pointed south. Not so far there!
"It must be," said Luis, "that Cuba is narrow, though
without end westwardly. A great point or tongue of
Asia?"

The Cubans were strong young men and not unintelligent.
"Chiefs?" Yes, they had chiefs, they called them
_caciques_. Some of them were fighters, they and their people.
Not fighters like Caribs! Whereupon the speaker
rose--we were resting under a tree--and facing south,
used for gesture a strong shudder and a movement as if to
flee.

South--south--always they pointed south! We were
going south--inland. Would we come to Caribs? But
no. Caribs seemed not to be in Cuba, but beyond sea, in
islands.

Luis and I made progress in language and knowledge.
Roderigo Jerez, a simple man, slept or tried the many kinds
of fruit, or teased the slender, green-flame lizards.

We slept this night high on the mountainside, on soft grass
near a fall of water. The Indians showed no fear of attack
from man or beast. They could make fire in a most
ingenious fashion, setting stick against larger stick and
turning the first with such skill, vigor and persistence that
presently arose heat, a spark, fire. But they seemed to need
or wish no watch fire. They lay, naked and careless, innocent--
fearless, as though the whole land were their castle.
Luis tried to find out how they felt about dangers. We
pieced together. "None here! And the Great Lizard takes
care!" That was the Cuban. Diego Colon said, "The
Great Turtle takes care!"

Luis Torres laughed. "Fray Ignatio should hear that!"

"It is on the road," I said and went to sleep.

The second day's going proved less difficult than the first.
Less difficult means difficult enough! And as yet we had met
no one nor anything that remotely favored golden-roofed
Cipango, or famous, rich Quinsai, or Zaiton of the marble
bridges. Jerez climbed a tall tree and coming down reported
forest and mountain, and naught else. Our companions
watched with interest his climbing. "Do you go
up trees in heaven?"

This morning we had bathed in a pool below the little
waterfall. Diego Colon by now was used to us so, but the
Cuba men displayed excitement. They had not yet in mind
separated us from our clothes. Now we were separated and
were found in all our members like them, only the color differing.
Color and the short beards of Luis Torres and Juan
Lepe. They wished to touch and examine our clothes
lying upon the bank, but here Diego Colon interfered.
They were full of magic. Something terrible might happen!
When Luis and I came forth from water and dried
ourselves with handfuls of the warm grass, they asked:
"Do they do so in heaven?" The stronger, more intelligent
of the two, added, "It is not so different!"

I said to Luis as we took path after breakfast, "It is
borne in upon me that only from ourselves, Admiral to
ship boy, can we keep up this heaven ballad! Clothes,
beads and hawk bells, cannon, harquebus, trumpet and
banner, ship and sails, royal letters and blessing of the Pope
--nothing will do it long unless we do it ourselves!"

"Agreed!" quoth Luis. "But gods and angels are beginning
to slip and slide, back there by the ships! We have
the less temptation here."

He began to speak of a sailor and a brown girl upon
whom he had stumbled in a close wood a little way from
shore. She thought Tomaso Pasamonte was a god wooing
her and was half-frightened, half-fain. "And two hours
later I saw Don Pedro Gutierrez--"

"Ay," said Juan Lepe. "The same story! The oldest
that is!" And as at the word our savages, who had been
talking together, now at the next resting place put forward
their boldest, who with great reverence asked if there were
women in heaven.

Through most of this day we struggled with a difficult
if fantastically beautiful country. Where rock outcropped
and in the sands of bright rapid streams we looked
for signs of that gold, so stressed as though it were the
only salvation! But the rocks were silent, and though in
the bed of a shrunken streamlet we found some glistening
particles and scraping them carefully together got a small
spoonful to wrap in cloth and bestow in our pouch of
treasures, still were we not sure that it was wholly gold. It
might be. We worked for an hour for just this pinch.

Since yesterday morning our path had been perfectly
solitary. Then suddenly, when we were, we thought, six
leagues at least from the ships, the way turning and entering
a small green dell, we came upon three Indians seated
resting, their backs to palm trees. We halted, they raised
their eyes. They stared, they rose in amazement at the sight
of those gods, Roderigo Jerez, Luis Torres and Juan Lepe.
They stood like statues with great eyes and parted lips. For
us, coming silently upon them, we had too our moment of
astonishment.

They were three copper men, naked, fairly tall and well
to look at. But each had between his lips what seemed a
brown stick, burning at the far end, dropping a light ash
and sending up a thin cloud of odorous smoke. These burning
sticks they dropped as they rose. They had seemed so
silent, so contented, so happy, sitting there with backs to
trees, a firebrand in each mouth, I felt a love for them!
Luis thought the lighted sticks some rite of their religion,
but after a while when we came to examine them, we found
them not true stick, but some large, thickish brown leaf
tightly twisted and pressed together and having a pungent,
not unpleasing odor. We crumbled one in our hands and
tasted it. The taste was also pungent, strange, but one
might grow to like it. They called the stick tobacco, and
said they always used it thus with fire, drinking in the smoke
and puffing it out again as they showed us through the
nostrils. We thought it a great curiosity, and so it was!

But to them we were unearthly beings. The men from
the sea told of us, then as it were introduced Diego Colon,
who spoke proudly with appropriate gesture, loving always
his part of herald Mercury--or rather of herald Mercury's
herald--not assuming to be god himself, but cherishing
the divine efflux and the importance it rayed upon him!

The three Indians quivered with a sense of the great
adventure! Their town was yonder. They themselves had
been on the path to such and such a place, but now would
they turn and go with us, and when we went again to the
sea they, if it were permitted, would accompany us and
view for themselves our amazing canoes! All this to our
companion. They backed with great deference from us.

We went with these Indians to their town, evidently the
town which we sought. And indeed it was larger, fitter, a
more ordered community than any we had met this side
Ocean-Sea, though far, far from travelers' tales of Orient
cities! It was set under trees, palm trees and others, by
the side of a clear river. The huts were larger than those
by the sea, and set not at random but in rows with a great
trodden square in the middle. From town to river where
they fished and where, under overhanging palms, we found
many Canoes, ran a way wider than a path, much like a
narrow road. But there were no wheeled vehicles nor
draught animals. We were to find that in all these lands
they on occasion carried their caciques or the sick or hurt
in litters or palanquins borne on men's shoulders. But for
carrying, grinding, drawing, they knew naught of the wheel.
It seemed strange that any part of Asia should not know!

In this town we found the cacique, and with him a _butio_
or priest. Once, too, I thought, our king and church were
undeveloped like these. We were looking in these lands
upon the bud which elsewhere we knew in the flower. That
to Juan Lepe seemed the difference between them and us.

The people swarmed out upon us. When the first admiration
was somewhat over, when Diego Colon and the two
seaside men and the Cubans of the burning sticks had made
explanation, we were swept with them into their public
square and to a hut much larger than common where we
found a stately Indian, the cacique, and an ancient wrinkled
man, the _butio_. These met us with their own assumption
of something like godship. They had no lack of manner,
and Luis and I had the Castilian to draw upon. Then came
presents and Diego Colon interpreting. But as for the
Admiral's letter, though I showed it, it was not understood.

It was gazed upon and touched, considered a heavenly
rarity like the hawk bells we gave them, but not read nor
tried to be read. The writing upon it was the natural
veining of some most strange leaf that grew in heaven, or
it was the pattern miraculously woven by a miraculous
workman with thread miraculously finer than their cotton!
It was strange that they should have no notion at all--not
even their chieftains and priests--of writing! Any part
of Asia, however withdrawn, surely should have tradition
there, if not practice!

In this hut or lodge, doored but not windowed, we found
a kind of table and seats fashioned from blocks of some
dark wood rudely carved and polished. The cacique would
have us seated, sat himself beside us, the _butio_ at his hand.

There seemed no especial warrior class. We noted that,
it being one of the things it was ever in order to note. No
particular band of fighting men stood about that block
of polished wood, that was essentially throne or chair of
state. The village owned slender, bone or flint-headed lances,
but these rested idly in corners. Upon occasion all or any
might use them, but there was no evidence that those occasions
came often. There was no body of troops, nor armor,
no shields, no crossbows, no swords. They had knives,
rudely made of some hard stone, but it seemed that they
were made for hunting and felling and dividing. No clothing
hid from us any frame. The cacique had about his middle
a girdle of wrought cotton with worked ends and some
of the women wore as slight a dress, but that was all. They
were formed well, all of them, lithe and slender, not lacking
either in sinew and muscle, but it was sinew and muscle of
the free, graceful, wild world, not brawn of bowman and
pikeman and swordman and knight with his heavy lance.
In something they might be like the Moor when one saw
him naked, but the Moor, too, was perfected in arms, and
so they were not like.

We did not know as yet if ever there were winter in this
land. It seemed perpetual, serene and perfect summer. Behind
these huts ran small gardens wherein were set melons
and a large pepper of which we grew fond, and a nourishing
root, and other plants. But the soil was rich, rich, and
they loosened and furrowed it with a sharpened stick. There
were no great forest beasts to set them sternly hunting.
What then could give them toil? Not gathering the always
falling fruit; not cutting from the trees and drying the
calabashes, great and small, that they used for all manner
of receptacle; not drawing out with a line of some stouter
fiber than cotton and with a hook of bone or thorn the
painted fish from their crystal water! To fell trees for
canoes, to hollow the canoe, was labor, as was the building
of their huts, but divided among so many it became light
labor. In those days we saw no Indian figure bowed with
toil, and when it came it was not the Indian who imposed
it.

But they swam, they rowed their canoes, they hunted in
their not arduous fashion, they roved afar in their country
at peace, and they danced. That last was their fair, their
games, their tourney, their pilgrimage, their processions to
church, their attendance at mass, their expression of anything
else that they felt altogether and at once! It was like
children's play, renewed forever, and forever with zest. But
they did not treat it as play. We had been showed dances
in Concepcion and Isabella, but here in Cuba, in this inland
town, Jerez and Luis and I were given to see a great and
formal dance, arranged all in honor of us, gods descended
for our own reasons to mix with men! They danced in the
square, but first they made us a feast with _hutias_ and cassava
and fish and fruit and a drink not unlike mead, exhilarating
but not bestowing drunkenness. Grapes were all over these
lands, purple clusters hanging high and low, but they knew
not wine.

Men and women danced, now in separate bands, now
mingled together. Decorum was kept. We afterwards
knew that it had been a religious dance. They had war
dances, hunting dances, dances at the planting of their corn,
ghost dances and others. This now was a thing to watch,
like a beautiful masque. They were very graceful, very supple;
they had their own dignity.

We learned much in the three days we spent in this town.
Men and women for instance! That nakedness of the body,
that free and public mingling, going about work and adventure
and play together, worked, thought Juan Lepe no
harm. Later on in this vast adventure of a new world,
some of our churchmen were given to asserting that they
lived like animals, though the animals also are there slandered!
The women were free and complaisant; there were
many children about. But matings, I thought, occurred
only of free and mutual desire, and not more frequently
than in other countries. The women were not without modesty,
nor the men without a pale chivalry. At first I thought
constraint or rule did not enter in, but after a talk with their
priest through Diego Colon, I gathered that there prevailed
tribe and kinship restraints. Later we were to find that a
great network of "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" ran
through their total society, wherever or to what members
it might extend. Common good, or what was supposed to
be common good, was the master here as it is everywhere!
The women worked the gardens, the men hunted; both men
and women fished. Women might be caciques. There were
women caciques, they said, farther on in their land. And it
seemed to us that name and family were counted from the
mother's side.

The Admiral had solemnly laid it upon us to discover the
polity of this new world. If they held fief from fief, then
at last we must come through however many overlords to
the seigneur of them all, Grand Khan or Emperor. We
applied ourselves to cacique and butio, but we found no
Grand Seigneur. There were other caciques. When the
Caribs descended they banded together. They had dimly,
we thought, the idea of a war-lord. But it ended there, when
the war ended. Tribute: He found they had no idea of
tribute. Cotton grew everywhere! Cotton, cassava, calabashes,
all things! When they visited a cacique they took
him gifts, and at parting he gave them gifts. That was all.

Gold? They knew of it. When they found a bit they kept
it for ornament. The cacique possessed a piece the size
of a ducat, suspended by a string of cotton. It had been
given to him by a cacique who lived on the great water.
Perhaps he took it from the Caribs. But it was in the mountains, too. He indicated the heights beyond.
Sometimes
they scraped it from sand under the stream. He seemed indifferent
to it. But Diego Colon, coming in, said that it
was much prized in heaven, being used for high magic, and
that we would give heavenly gifts for it. Resulted from that
the production in an hour of every shining flake and grain
and button piece the village owned. We carried from this
place to the Admiral a small gourd filled with gold. But it
was not greatly plentiful; that was evident to any thinking
man! But we had so many who were not thinking men.
And the Admiral had to appease with his reports gold-thirsty
great folk in Spain.

We spent three days in this village and they were days for
gods and Indians of happy wonder and learning. They
would have us describe heaven. Luis and I told them of
Europe. We pointed to the east. They said that they knew
that heaven rested there upon the great water. The town
of the sun was over there. Had we seen the sun's town? Was
it beside us in heaven, in "Europe"? The sun went down
under the mountains, and there he found a river and his
canoe. He rowed all night until he came to his town. Then
he ate cassava cakes and rested, while the green and gold
and red Lizard [These were "Lizard" folk. They had a
Lizard painted on a great post by the cacique's house.] went
ahead to say that he was coming. Then he rose, right out
of the great water, and there was day again! But we must
know about the sun's town; we, the gods!

Luis and I could have stayed long while and disentangled
this place and loved the doing it.

But it was to return to the Admiral and the waiting ships.

The three tobacco men would go with us to see wonders,
so we returned nine in number along the path. Before we
set out we saw that a storm threatened. All six Indians
were loth to depart until it was over, and the cacique would
have kept us. But Luis and I did not know how long the
bad weather might hold and we must get to the ships. It
was Jerez who told them boastfully that gods did not fear
storms,--specimen of that Spanish folly of ours that worked
harm and harm again!

We traveled until afternoon agreeably enough, then with
great swiftness the clouds climbed and thickened. Sun went
out, air grew dark. The Indians behind us on the path, that
was so narrow that we must tread one after the other, spoke
among themselves, then Diego Colon pushed through marvelously
huge, rich fern to Luis and me. "They say, `will
not the gods tell the clouds to go away?' " But doubt like
a gnome sat in the youth's eye. We had had bad weather off
Isabella, and the gods had had to wait for the sun like
others. By now Diego Colon had seen many and strange
miracles, but he had likewise found limitations, quite numerous
and decisive limitations! He thought that here was
one, and I explained to him that he thought correctly. Europeans
could do many things but this was not among them.
Luis and I watched him tell the Cubans that he, Diego
Colon, had never said that we three were among the highest
gods. Even the great, white-headed, chief god yonder in the
winged canoe was said to be less than some other gods in
heaven which we called Europe, and over all was a High
God who could do everything, scatter clouds, stop thunder
or send thunder, everything! Had we brought our butio
with us he might perhaps have made great magic and helped
things. As it was, we must take luck. That seeming rational
to the Indians, we proceeded, our glory something diminished,
but still sufficient.

The storm climbed and thickened and evidently was to
become a fury. Wind began to whistle, trees to bend, lightnings
to play, thunder to sound. It grew. We stood in
blazing light, thunder almost burst our ears, a tree was riven
a bow-shot away. Great warm rain began to fall. We
could hardly stand against the wind. We were going under
mountainside with a splashing stream below us. Diego
Colon shouted, as he must to get above wind and thunder.
"Hurry! hurry! They know place." All began to run.
After a battle to make way at all, we came to a slope of loose,
small stones and vine and fern. This we climbed, passed
behind a jagged mass of rock, and found a cavern. A
flash lit it for us, then another and another. At mouth
it might be twenty feet across, was deep and narrowed
like a funnel. Panting, we threw ourselves on the cave
floor.

The storm prevailed through the rest of this day and far
into the night. "_Hurricane!_" said the Cubans. "Not great
one, little one!" But we from Spain thought it a great
enough hurricane. The rain fell as though it would make
another flood and in much less than forty days. We must
be silent, for wind and thunder allowed no other choice.
Streams of rain came into the cavern, but we found ledges
curtained by rock. We ate cassava cake and drank from a
runlet of water. The storm made almost night, then actual
night arrived. We curled ourselves up, hugging ourselves
for warmth, and went to sleep.

The third day from the town we came to the sea and the
ships. All seemed well. Our companions had felt the
storm, had tales to tell of wrenched anchors and the _Pinta's_
boat beat almost to pieces, uprooted trees, wind, lightning,
thunder and rain. But they cut short their recital, wishing
to know what we had found.

Luis and I made report to the Admiral. He sat under a
huge tree and around gathered the Pinzons, Fray Ignatio,
Diego de Arana, Roderigo Sanchez and others. We related;
they questioned, we answered; there was discussion; the
Admiral summed up.

But later I spoke to him alone. We were now on ship,
making ready for sailing. We would go eastward, around
this point of Asia, since from what all said it must be
point, and see what was upon the other side. "They all
gesture south! They say `Babeque--Babeque! Bohio!' "

I asked him, "Why is it that these Indians here seem glad
for us to go?"

He sighed impatiently, drawing one hand through the
other, with him a recurring gesture. "It is the women!
Certain of our men--" I saw him look at Gutierrez who
passed.

"Tomaso Passamonte, too," I said.

"Yes. And others. It is the old woe! Now they have
only to kill a man!"

He arraigned short-sightedness. I said, "But still we are
from heaven?"

"Still. But some of the gods--just five or six, say--
have fearful ways!" He laughed, sorrowfully and angrily.
"And you think there is little gold, and that we are very
far from clothed and lettered Asia?"

"So far," I answered, "that I see not why we call these
brown, naked folk Indians."

"What else would you call them?"

"I do not know that."

"Why, then, let us still call them Indians." He drummed
upon the rail before him, then broke out, "Christ! I think
we do esteem hard, present, hand-held gold too much!"

"I say yes to that!"

He said, "We should hold to the joy of Discovery and
great use hereafter--mounting use!"

"Aye."

"Here is virgin land, vast and beautiful, with a clime like
heaven, and room for a hundred colonies such as Greece and
Rome sent out! Here is a docile, unwarlike people ready to
be industrious servitors and peasants, for which we do give
them salvation of their souls! It is all Spain's, the banner
is planted, the names given! We are too impatient! We
cannot have it between dawn and sunset! But look into the
future--there is wealth beyond counting! No great amount
of gold, but enough to show that there is gold."

I followed the working of his mind. It was to smile
somewhat sorrowfully, seeing his great difficulties. He was
the born Discoverer mightily loving Discovery, and watching
the Beloved in her life through time. But he had to
serve Prince Have-it-now, in the city Greed. I said, "Senor,
do not put too much splendor in your journal for the King
and Queen and the Spanish merchants and the Church and
all the chivalry that the ended war releases! Or, if you
prophesy, mark it prophecy. It is a great trouble in the
world that men do not know when one day is talked of or
when is meant great ranges of days! Otherwise you will
have all thirsty Spain sailing for Ophir and Golden Chersonesus,
wealth immediate, gilding Midas where he stands!
If they find disappointment they will not think of the future;
they will smite you!"

I knew that he was writing in that book too ardently,
and that he was even now composing letters to great persons
to be dispatched from what Spanish port he should
first enter, coming back east from west, over Ocean-Sea,
from Asia!

But he had long, long followed his own advice, stood by
his own course. The doing so had so served him that it
was natural he should have confidence. Now he said only,
"I do the best I can! I have little sea room. One Scylla
and Charybdis? Nay, a whole brood of them!"

I could agree to that. I saw it coming up the ways that
they would give him less and less sea room. He went on,
"Merchandise has to be made attractive! The cook dresses
the dish, the girl puts flowers in her hair. . . . Yet, in the
end the wares are mighty beyond description! The dish is
for Pope and King--the girl is a bride for a paladin!"

Again he was right afar and over the great span. But
they would not see in Spain, or not many would see, that
the whole span must be taken. But I was not one to
chide him, seeing that I, too, saw afar, and they would not
see with me either in Spain.



CHAPTER XX

WE sailed for two days east by south. But the
weather that had been perfection for long and
long again from Palos, now was changed. Dead
winds delayed us, the sea ridged, clouds blotted out the
blue. We held on. There was a great cape which we called
Cape Cuba. Off this a storm met us. We lived it out and
made into one of those bottle harbors of which, first and
last, we were to find God knows how many in Cuba!

The Admiral named it Puerto del Principe, and we raised
on shore here a very great cross. We had done this on
every considerable island since San Salvador and now twice
on this coast. There were behind us seven or eight crosses.
The banner planted was the sign of the Sovereignty of Spain,
the cross the sign of Holy Church, Sovereign over sovereigns,
who gave these lands to Spain, as she gave Africa
and the islands to Portugal. We came to a great number
of islets, rivers of clear blue sea between. The ships lay
to and we took boat and went among these. The King's
Gardens, the Admiral called them, and the calm sea between
them and mainland the Sea of Our Lady. They were
thickly wooded, and we thought we found cinnamon, aloes
and mastic. Two lovely days we had in this wilderness
of isles and channels where was no man nor woman at all,
then again we went east and south, the land trending that
way. Very distant, out of eastern waste, rose what seemed
a large island. The Admiral said that we should go discover,
and we changed course toward it, but in three hours'
time met furious weather. The sea rose, clouds like night
closed us in. Night came on without a star and a contrary
wind blew always. When the dawn broke sullenly we were
beaten back to Cuba, and a great promontory against which
truly we might have been dashed stood to our north and
shut out coast of yesterday. Here we hung a day and
night, and then the wind lulling and the sea running not
so high, we made again for that island which might be
Babeque. We had Indians aboard, but the sea and the
whipping and groaning of our masts and rigging and sails
and the pitching of the ship terrified them, and terror made
them dull. They sat with knees drawn up and head buried
in arms and shivered, and knew not Babeque from anything
else.

Christopherus Columbus could be very obstinate. Wishing
strongly to gain that island, through all this day he had
us strive toward it. But the wind was directly ahead and
strong as ten giants. The master and others made representations,
and at last he nodded his gray head and ordered
the _Santa Maria_ put about and the Pinta and the Nina
signaled. The Nina harkened and turned, but the Pinta.
at some distance seemed deaf and blind. Night fell while
still we signaled. We were now for Cuba, and the wind
directly behind us, but yet as long as we could see, the Pinta
chose not to turn. We set lights for signals, but her light
fell farther and farther astern. She was a swifter sailer
than we; there was no reason for that increasing distance.
We lay to, the _Nina_ beside us. Ere long we wholly lost
the Pinta's light. Night passed. When morning broke
Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon and the Pinta were gone.

The sea, though rough, was not too perilous, and never
a signal of distress had been seen nor heard.

"Lost? Is the Pinta lost?"

"Lost! No!--But, yes. Willfully lost!"

It was Roderigo Sanchez who knew not much of the
sea who asked, and the Admiral answered. But having
spoken it that once, he closed his strong lips and coming
down from deck said he would have breakfast. All that
day was guessing and talk enough upon the _Santa Maria_;
silent or slurred talk at last, for toward noon the Admiral
gave sharp order that the Pinta should be left out of
conversation. Captain Martin Pinzon was an able seaman.
Perhaps something (he reminded us of the rudder before
the Canaries) had gone wrong. Captain Pinzon may have
thought the island was the nearer land, or he may have
returned to Cuba, but more to the north than were we. He
looked for the _Pinta_. again in a reasonable time. In the
meantime let it alone!

So soon as the sea allowed, Vicente Pinzon came in his
boat to the Santa Maria, but he seemed as perplexed as we.
He did not know his brother's mind. But Martin Pinzon
forever and always was a good sea captain and a Castilian
of his word, knowing what was proper observance to his
Admiral. If he did this or that, it would be for good reasons.
So Vicente, and the Admiral was cordial with him, and
saw him over rail and down side with cheerful words. He
was cheerful all that day in his speech, cheerful and suave
and prophesying good in many directions. But I knew the
trouble behind that front.

In some ways the _Pinta_ was the best of our ships. Martin
Pinzon was a bold and ready man, and those aboard
with him devoted to his fortunes. He did not lack opinions
of his own, and often they countered the Admiral's.
He was ambitious, and the Admiral's rights were so vast
and inclusive that there seemed not much room to make
name and fame. Much the same with riches! What
Martin Pinzon had loaned would come back to him beyond
doubt, back with high interest and a good deal more.
But still it would seem to him that room was needed. In
his mind he had said perhaps many times to the Admiral,
"Do not claim too much soil! Do not forget that other
trees want to grow!"

Martin Pinzon might have put back to Spain, but who
knew the man would not think that likely. Far more probable
that he might be doing discovery of his own. Perhaps
he would rejoin us later with some splendid thing to his
credit, claim that Spain could not deny!

Cuba coast rose high and near. It is a shore of the fairest
harbors! We made one of these into which emptied a little
river. He named haven and river Saint Catherine. In the
bed of this stream, when we went ashore, we found no little
gold. He took in his hand grains and flakes and one or
two pieces large as beans. It was royal monopoly, gold, and
every man under strict command--to bring to the Admiral
all that was found. Seamen and companions gathered
around him, Admiral, Viceroy and Governor, King Croesus
to be, a tenth of all gold and spoil filling his purse! And
they, too, surely some way they would be largely paid! The
dream hovered, then descended upon us, as many a time it
descended. Great riches and happiness and all clothed in
silk, and every man as he would be and not as he was, a
dim magnificence and a sense of trumpets in the air, acclaiming
us! I remember that day that we all felt this mystic
power and wealth, the Admiral and all of us. For a short
time, there by Saint Catherine's River, we were brought into
harmony. Then it broke and each little self went its way
again. But for that while eighty men had felt as though
we were a country and more than a country. The gold
in the Admiral's hand might have been gold of consciousness.

After this day for days we sailed along Cuba strand,
seeing many a fair haven and entering two or three. There
were villages, and those dusk, naked folk to whom by now
we were well used, running to beach or cliff brow, making
signs, seeming to cry, "Heaven come down, heaven, heaven
and the gods!" The notion of a sail had never come to
them, though with their cotton they might have made them.
They were slow to learn that the wind pushed us, acting
like a thousand tireless rowers. We were thrillingly new to
them and altogether magical. To any seeing eye a ship under
full sail is a beautiful, stately, thrilling thing! To these
red men there was a perilous joy in the vision. If to us in
the ships there hung in this voyage something mystic, hidden,
full of possibility, inch by inch to unroll, throbbing all
with the future which is the supernatural, be sure these, too,
who were found and discovered, moved in a cloud of mystery
torn by strange lightnings!

Sometimes we came into haven, dropped anchor and lowered
sails, whereupon those on the shore again cried out.
When we took our boats and went to land we met always
the same reception, found much the same village, carried on
much the same conversations. Little by little we collected
gold. By now, within the Admiral's chest, in canvas bags,
rested not a little treasure for Queen Isabella and King
Ferdinand. And though it was forbidden, I knew that many
of our seamen hid gold. All told we found enough to whet
appetite. But still the Indians said south, and Babeque and
Bohio!

At last we had sailed to the very eastern end of Cuba and
turned it as we might turn the heel of Italy. A great spur
that ran into the ocean the Admiral dubbed Alpha and
Omega, and we planted a cross.

It fell to me here to save the Admiral's life.

We had upon the _Santa Maria_ a man named Felipe who
seemed a simple, God-fearing soul, very attentive to Fray
Ignatio and all the offices of religion. He was rather a silent
fellow and a slow, poor worker, often in trouble with boatswain
and master. He said odd things and sometimes wept
for his soul, and the forecastle laughed at him. This man
became in a night mad.

It was middle night. The _Santa Maria_ swung at anchor
and the whole world seemed a just-breathing stillness.
There was the watch, but all else slept. The watch, looking
at Cuba and the moon on the water, did not observe Felipe
when he crept from forecastle with a long, sharp two-edged
knife such as they sell in Toledo.

Juan Lepe woke from first sleep and could not recover
it. He found Bernardo Nunez's small, small cabin stifling,
and at last he got up, put on garments, and slipped forth
and through great cabin to outer air. He might have found
the Admiral there before him, for he slept little and was
about the ship at all hours, but to-night he did sleep.

I spoke to the watch, then set myself down at break of
poop to breathe the splendor of the night. The moon bathed
Alpha and Omega, and the two ships, the _Nina_ and the Santa
Maria. It washed the Pinta but we saw it not, not knowing
where rode the Pinta and Martin Alonzo Pinzon. So bright,
so pleasureable, was the night!

An hour passed. My body was cooled and refreshed,
my spirit quiet. Rising, I entered great cabin on my way
to bed and sleep. I felt that the cabin was not empty, and
then, there being moonlight enough, I saw the figure by the
Admiral's door. "Who is it?" I demanded, but the unbolted
door gave to the man's push, and he disappeared. I
knew it was not the Admiral and I followed at a bound. The
cabin had a window and the moonbeams came in. They
showed Felipe and his knife and the great Genoese asleep.
The madman laughed and crooned, then lifted that Toledo
dagger and lunged downward with a sinewy arm. But I
was upon him. The blow fell, but a foot wide of mark.
There was a struggle, a shout. The Admiral, opening eyes,
sprang from bed.

He was a powerful man, and I, too, had strength, but
Felipe fought and struggled like a desert lion. He kept
crying, "I am the King! I will send him to discover Heaven!
I will send him to join the prophets!" At last we had him
down and bound him. By now the noise had brought the
watch and others. A dozen men came crowding in, in the
moonlight. We took the madman away and kept him fast,
and Juan Lepe tried to cure him but could not. In three
days he died and we buried him at sea. And Fernando,
creeping to me, asked, "senor, don't you feel at times that
there is madness over all this ship and this voyage and _him_
--the Admiral, I mean?"

I answered him that it was a pity there were so few
madmen, and that Felipe must have been quite sane.

"Then what do you think was the matter with Felipe,
Senor?"

I said, "Did it ever occur to you, Fernando, that you had
too much courage and saw too far?" At which he looked
frightened, and said that at times he had felt those symptoms.



CHAPTER XXI

MARTIN PINZON did not return to us. That tall,
blond sea captain was gone we knew not where. The
_Santa Maria_ and the Nina sailed south along the foot
of Cuba. But now rose out of ocean on our southeast quarter
a great island with fair mountain shapes. We asked
our Indians--we had five aboard beside Diego Colon--
what it was. "Bohio! Bohio!" But when we came there,
its own inhabitants called it Hayti and Quisquaya.

The Admiral paced our deck, small as a turret chamber,
his hands behind him, his mind upon some great chart drawn
within, not without. At last, having decided, he called Juan
de la Cosa. "We will go to Bohio."

So it was done whereby much was done, the Woman with
the distaff spinning fast, fast!

As this island lifted out of ocean, we who had said of
Cuba, "It is the fairest!" now said, "No, this is the fairest!"
It was most beautiful, with mountains and forests and
vales and plains and rivers.

The twelfth day of December we came to anchor in a
harbor which the Admiral named Concepcion.

On this shore the Indians fled from us. We found a
village, but quite deserted. Not a woman, not a man, not a
child! Only three or four of those silent dogs, and a great
red and green parrot that screamed but said nothing.
There was something in this day, I know not what,
but it made itself felt. The Admiral, kneeling, kissed the
soil, and he named the island Hispaniola, and we planted a
cross.

For long we had been beaten about, and all aboard the
ships were well willing to leave them for a little. We had
a dozen sick and they craved the shore and the fruit trees.
Our Indians, too, longed. So we anchored, and mariners
and all adventurers rested from the sea. A few at a time,
the villagers returned, and fearfully enough at first. But
we had harmed nothing, and what greatness and gentleness
was in us we showed it here. Presently all thought they
were at home with us, and that heaven bred the finest folk!

Our people of Hispaniola, subjects now, since the planting
of the flag, were taller, handsomer, we thought, than the
Cubans, and more advanced in the arts. Their houses were
neat and good, and their gardens weeded and well-stocked.
The men wore loin cloths, the women a wide cotton girdle or
little skirt. We found three or four copper knives, but
again they said that they came from the south. As in Spain
"west--west" had been his word, so now the Admiral
brooded upon south.

These folk had a very little gold, but they seemed to say
that theirs was a simple and poor village, and that we should
find more of all things farther on. So we left Concepcion,
the cross upon the rock showing a long way through the pure
air.

For two days we coasted, and at the end of this time we
came to a harbor of great beauty and back from it ran a
vale like Paradise, so richly sweet it was! Christopherus
Columbus was quick to find beauty and loved it when found.
Often and often have I seen his face turn that of a child
or a youth, filled with wonder. I have seen him kiss a
flower, lay a caress upon stem of tree, yearn toward palm
tops against the blue. He was well read in the old poets,
and he himself was a poet though he wrote no line of verse.

We entered here and came to anchor and the sails rattled
down. "Hispaniola--Hispaniola, and we will call this
harbor St. Thomas! He was the Apostle to India. And
now we are his younger brothers come after long folding
away. Were we more--did we have a fleet--we might
set a city here and, it being Christmas, call it La Navidad!"
Out came the canoes to us, out the swimmers, dark and
graceful figures cleaving the utter blue. Some one passing
that way overland, hurrying with news, had told these villages
how peaceful, noble, benevolent, beneficent we were.

The canoes were heaped with fruit and cassava bread, and
they had cotton, not in balls, but woven in pieces. And
these Indians had about neck or in ear some bits of gold.
These they changed cheerfully, taking and valuing what
trifle was given. "Gold. Where do you get your gold?
Do you know of Cipango or Cathay or India? Have ever
you heard of Zaiton, or of Quinsai and Cublai Khan?"
They gave us answers which we could not fully understand,
and gestured inland and a little to the east. "Cibao! Cibao!"
They seemed to say that there was all the gold
there that a reasonable mortal might desire. "Cibao?--
Cipango?" said the Admiral. "They might be the same."

"Like Cuba and Cublai Khan," thought Juan Lepe.

Around a point of shore darted a long canoe with many
rowers. Other canoes gave way for it, and the Indians already
upon the _Santa Maria_ exclaimed that it was the
boat of the cacique, though not the cacique but his brother
sat in it. Guacanagari was the cacique. His town was
yonder! They pointed to a misty headland beyond St.
Thomas's bay.

The Indian from the great canoe came aboard, a handsome
fellow, and he brought presents not like any we had
seen. There was a width of cotton embroidered thick with
bits of gleaming shell and bone, but what was most welcome
was a huge wooden mask with eyes and tongue of gold.
Fray Ignatio crossed himself. "The devil they worship,--
poor lost sheep!" The third gift was a considerable piece
of that mixed and imperfect gold which afterwards we
called guanin. And would we go to visit the cacique whose
town was not so far yonder?

It was Christmas Eve. We sailed with a small, small
wind for the cacique's village, out from harbor of St.
Thomas, around a headland and along a low, bright green
shore. So low and fitful was the wind that we moved
like two great snails. Better to have left the ships and gone,
so many of us, in our boats with oars, canoes convoying us!
The distance was not great, but distance is as the power
of going. "I remember," quoth the Admiral, "a calm,
going from the Levant to Crete, and our water cask broken
and not a mouthful for a soul aboard! That was a long,
long two days while the one shore went no further and the
other came no nearer. And going once to Porto Santo
with my wife she fell ill and moaned for the land, and we
were held as by the sea bottom, and I thought she would die
who might be saved if she could have the land. And I remember
going down the African coast with Santanem--"

Diego de Arana said, "You have had a full life, senor!"

He was cousin, I had been told, to that Dona Beatrix
whom the Admiral cherished, mother of his youngest son,
Fernando. The Admiral had affection for him, and Diego
de Arana lived and died, a good, loyal man. "A full outward
life," he went on, "and I dare swear, a full inward
one!"

"That is God's truth!" said the Admiral. "You may
well say that, senor! Inside I have lived with all who have
lived, and discovered with all who have discovered!"

I remember as a dream this last day upon the _Santa Maria_.
Beltran the cook had scalded his arm. I dressed it each
day, and dressing it now, half a dozen idling by, watching
the operation, I heard again a kind of talk that I had heard
before. Partly because I had shipped as Juan Lepe an
Andalusian sailor and had had my forecastle days, and
partly because men rarely fear to speak to a physician, and
partly because in the great whole there existed liking between
them and me, they talked and discussed freely enough
what any other from the other end of ship could have
come at only by formal questioning. Now many of the
seamen wanted to know when we were returning to Palos,
and another number said that they would just as soon never
return, or at least not for a good while! But they did not
wish to spend that good while upon the ship. It was a
good land, and the heathen also good. The heathen might
all be going to burn in hell, unless Fray Ignatio could get
them baptized in time, and so numerous were they that
seemed hardly possible! Almost all might have to go to hell.
But in the meantime, here on earth, they had their uses, and
one could even grow fond of them--certainly fond of the
women. The heathen were eager to work for us, catch
us coneys, bring us gold, put hammocks for us between
trees and say "Sleep, senor, sleep!" Here even Tomaso
Passamonte was "senor" and "Don." And as for the
women--only the skin is dark--they were warm-hearted!
Gold and women and never any cold nor hunger nor toil!
The heathen to toil for you--and they could be taught to
make wine, with all these grapes dangling everywhere?
Heathen could do the gathering and pressing, and also the
gold hunting in rocks and streams. Spain would furnish the
mind and the habit of command. It were well to stay and
cultivate Hispaniola! The Admiral and those who wanted
to might take home the ships. Of course the Admiral would
come again, and with him ships and many men. No one
wanted, of course, never to see again Castile and Palos
and his family! But to stay in Hispaniola a while and
rest and grow rich,--that was what they wanted. And no
one could justly call them idle! If they found out all about
the land and where were the gold and the spices, was there
not use in that, just as much use as wandering forever on
the _Santa Maria_?

Mother earth was kind, kind, here, and she didn't have a
rod like mother country and Mother Church! They did not
say this last, but it was what they meant.

"You don't see the rod, that is all," said Juan Lepe.

But there had eventually to be colonies, and I knew that
the Admiral was revolving in his head the leaving in this
new world certain of our men, seed corn as it were, organs
also to gather knowledge against his speedy return with
power of ships and men. For surely Spain would be
grateful,--surely, surely! But he was not ready yet to set
sail for Spain. He meant to discover more, discover further,
come if by any means he could to the actual wealth of great,
main India; come perhaps to Zaiton, where are more merchants
than in all the rest of the world, and a hundred
master ships laden with pepper enter every year; or to
Quinsai of the marble bridges. No, he was not ready to
turn prow to Spain, and he was not likely to bleed himself
of men, now or for many days to come. All these who
would lie in hammocks ashore must wait awhile, and even
when they made their colony, that is not the way that colonies
live and grow.

Beltran said, "Some of you would like to do a little
good, and some are for a sow's life!"

It was Christmas Eve, and we had our vespers, and we
thought of the day at home in Castile and in Italy. Dusk
drew down. Behind us was the deep, secure water of
St. Thomas, his harbor. The Admiral had us sound and
the lead showed no great depth, whereupon we stood a little
out to avoid shoal or bar.

For some nights the Admiral had been wakeful, suffering,
as Juan Lepe knew, with that gout which at times troubled
him like a very demon. But this night he slept. Juan de la
Cosa set the watch. The helmsman was Sancho Ruiz than
whom none was better, save only that he would take a risk
when he pleased. All others slept. The day had been long,
so warm, still and idle, with the wooded shore stealing so
slowly by.

Early in the night Sancho Ruiz was taken with a great
cramp and a swimming of the head. He called to one of
the watch to come take the helm for a little, but none answered;
called again and a ship boy sleeping near, uncurled
himself, stretched, and came to hand. "It's all safe, and
the Admiral sleeping and the master sleeping and the watch
also!" said the boy. Pedro Acevedo it was, a well-enough
meaning young wretch.

Sancho Ruiz put helm in his hand. "Keep her so, while I
lie down here for a little. My head is moving faster than
the _Santa Maria_!"

He lay down, and the swimming made him close his
eyes, and closed eyes and the disappearance of his pain, and
pleasant resting on deck caused him to sleep. Pedro Acevedo
held the wheel and looked at the moon. Then the
wind chose to change, blowing still very lightly but bearing
us now toward shore, and Pedro never noticing this grow
larger. He was looking at the moon, he afterwards said
with tears, and thinking of Christ born in Bethlehem.

The shore came nearer and nearer. Sancho Ruiz slept.
Pedro now heard a sound that he knew well enough. Coming
back to here and now, he looked and saw breakers upon a
long sand bar. The making tide was at half, and that and
the changed wind carried us toward the lines of foam. The
boy cried, "Steersman! Steersman!" Ruiz sat up, holding
his head in his hands. "Such a roaring in my ears!"
But "Breakers! Breakers!" cried the boy. "Take the
helm!"

Ruiz sprang to it, but as he touched it the _Santa Maria_
grounded. The shock woke most on board, the immediate
outcry and running feet the rest.

The harm was done, and no good now in recriminations!
It was never, I bear witness, habit of Christopherus Columbus.

The Santa Maria listed heavily, the sea pounding against
her, driving her more and more upon the sand. But order
arrived with the Admiral. The master grew his lieutenant,
the mariners his obedient ones. Back he was at thirty, with a
shipwreck who had seen many and knew how to toil with
hands and with head. Moreover, the great genius of the
man shone in darkness. He could encourage; he could
bring coolness.

We tried to warp her off, but it was not to be done. We
cut away mast to lighten her, but more and more she grew
fast to the bank, the waves striking all her side, pushing her
over. Seams had opened, water was coming in. The _Nina_ a
mile away took our signal and came nearer, lay to, and sent
her boat.

The Santa Maria, it was seen, was dying. Nothing more
was to be done. Her mariners could only cling to her like
bees to comb. We got the two boats clear and there was the
boat of the Nina. Missioned by the Admiral, Juan Lepe
got somehow into cabin, together with Sancho and Luis
Torres, and we collected maps and charts, log, journal, box
with royal letters and the small bags of gold, and the Admiral's
personal belongings, putting all into a great sack
and caring for it, until upon the _Nina_ we gave it into his
hand. Above us rang the cry, "All off!"

From Christopherus Columbus to Pedro Acevedo all left
the Santa Maria and were received by the Nina. Crowded,
crowded was the Nina! Down voyaged the moon, up came
with freshness the rose-chapleted dawn. A wreck lay the
Santa Maria, painted against the east, about her a low thunder
of breakers. Where was the _Pinta_ no man knew! Perhaps
halfway back to Spain or perhaps wrecked and drowned
like the flagship. The Nina, a small, small ship and none too
seaworthy, carried all of Europe and Discovery.



CHAPTER XXII

IN the small, small cabin of the _Nina_ Christopherus Columbus
sat for a time with his head bowed in his arms,
then rose and made up a mission to go to the cacique
Guacanagari and, relating our misfortune, request aid and
shelter until we had determined upon our course. There
went Diego de Arana and Pedro Gutierrez with Luis Torres
and one or two more, and they took Diego Colon and the
two St. Thomas Indians. It was now full light, the shore
and mountains green as emerald, the water its old unearthly
blue.

The _Nina_ swung at anchor just under the land and the
now receding tide uncovered more and more those sands
where the Santa Maria lay huddled and dying. The Admiral
gazed, and the tears ran down his face. He was so great
that he never thought to hide just emotion. He spoke as
though to himself. "Many sins have I, many, many! But
thou wilt not, O God, cast me utterly away because of them!
I will not doubt Thee, nor my calling!"

There was little space about him. The _Nina_ seemed to
quiver, packed and dark with men. His deep voice went on,
and they could hear him, but he did not seem to know that
they were there. "As though upon a raft, here a thousand
leagues in Ocean-Sea! Yet wilt Thou care for thy Good
News. I will come to Spain, and I will tell it. Chosen, and
almost by very name pointed out in Thy Book! The first
Christian shore that I touch I will walk barefoot and in my
shirt at the head of twelve to the first shrine. And, O my
Lord, never more will I forget that that tomb in which
thou didst rest, still, still is held by the infidel!" He beat
his breast. "_Mea culpa! mea culpa!_"

His voice sank, he looked at the sky, then with a turn
of the wrist at the wheel he put that by and became again
the vigilant Admiral of a fleet of one. "She will hold together
yet a while! When the tide is out, we can get to her
and empty her. Take all ashore that can be carried or floated
and may be of use. Up and down--down and up!"

The inhabitants of Hispaniola were now about us in
canoes or swimming. They seemed to cry out in distress
and sympathy, gazing at the _Santa Maria_ as though it were
a god dying there. Their own canoes were living things to
them as is any ship to a mariner, and by analogy our great
canoe was a Being dying, more of a Being than theirs, because
it had wings and could open and fold them. And
then back came our boat with Diego de Arana and the others,
and they had with them that same brother of the cacique who
had come to us in St. Thomas Harbor. And had we been
wrecked off Palos, not Palos could have showed more concern
or been more ready to help than were these men.

We had three boats and the Indian canoes and hands
enough, white and copper-hued. Now at low tide, we could
approach and enter the _Santa Maria_. A great breach had
been made and water was deep in her hold, but we could
get at much of casks and chests, and could take away sails
and cordage, even her two cannon. Eventually, as she broke
up, we might float away to shore much of her timber. When
I looked from the wreck to the little Nina, I could see,
limned as it were in air, the Viceroy's first colony, set in
Hispaniola, beside Guacanagari's town. All Christmas day
we toiled and the Indians at our side. We found them ready,
not without skill, gay and biddable.

Toward sunset came Guacanagari. All the little shore was
strewn and heaped with our matters. And here I will say
that no Indian stole that day though he might have stolen,
and though our possessions seemed to him great wonders
and treasure beyond estimation. What was brought from
the _Santa Maria_ lay in heaps and our men came and went.
The most of our force was ashore or in the boats; only so
many on the Nina. The Admiral, just returned to the ship,
stretched himself upon the bench in her small cabin. Powerful
was his frame and constitution, and powerfully tried
all his life with a thousand strains and buffetings! It seemed
still to hold; he looked a muscular, sinewy, strong and ruddy
man. But there were signs that a careful eye might find.
He lay upon the bench in the cabin and I, who was his
physician, brought him wine and biscuit and made him eat
and drink who, I knew, had not touched food since the
evening before; after which I told him to close eyes and
go away to Genoa and boyhood. He shut them, and I sitting
near brought my will as best I could to the quieting
of all heavy and sorrowful waves.

But then the cacique came. So small was the _Nina_ that
we could hear well enough the word of his arrival. The
Admiral opened his eyes and sat stiffly up. He groaned
and took his head into his hands, then dropped these and
with a shake of his shoulders resumed command. So many
and grievous a sea had dashed over him and retreated and
he had stood! What he said now was, "The tide of the
spirit goes out; the tide comes back in. Let it come back a
spring tide!"

Guacanagari entered. This cacique, whose fortunes now
began to be intertwined with ours, had his likeness, so far
as went state and custom, to that Cuban chieftain whom Luis
Torres and I had visited. But this was an easier, less
strongly fibred person, a big, amiable, indolent man with
some quality of a great dog who, accepting you and
becoming your friend, may never be estranged. He was
brave after his fashion, gifted enough in simple things. In
Europe he would have been an. easy, well-liked prince or
duke of no great territory. He kept a simple state, wore
some slight apparel of cotton and a golden necklet. He
brought gifts and an unfeigned sympathy for that death
upon the sand bar.

He and the Admiral sat and talked together. "Gods
from heaven?"--"Christian men and from Europe," and
we could not make him, at this time, understand that that
was not the same thing. We began to comprehend that
"heaven" was a word of many levels, and that they ascribed
to it everything that they chose to consider good and that
was manifestly out of the range of their experience.



 

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1492
by
Mary Johnston
Part 4 out of 7

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In his turn the Admiral was ready for all that Guacanagari
could tell him. "Gold?" His eyes were upon the
Indian's necklet. Removing it, the cacique laid it in the
god's hand. All Indians now understood that we made
high magic with gold, getting out of it virtues beyond their
comprehension. In return the Admiral gave him a small
brazen gong and hammer. "Where did they get the gold?"
Again like the Cuban chief this cacique waved his hand to
the mountains. "Cibao!" and then turning he too pointed
to the south. "Much gold there," said Diego Colon. "Inland,
in the mountains," quoth the Admiral, "and evidently,
in very great quantity, in some land to the south! This is
not Cipango, but I think that Cipango lies to the south."
He asked who ruled Hayti that we called Hispaniola. We
understood that there were a number of caciques, but that
for a day's journey every way it was Guacanagari's country.

"A cacique who ruled them all?" No, there was no such
thing.

"Had ships like ours and clothed men ever before come
to them?"

No, never! But then he seemed to say that there was
undoubtedly a tradition. Gods had come, and would come
again, and when they did so great things would follow!
But no cacique nor priest nor any knew when the gods
had come.

The Admiral made some question of Caribs. Again there
was gesture southward, though it seemed to us that something
was said of folk within this great island who were
at least like Caribs. And where was the most gold and
the greatest other wealth that they knew of? Again south,
though this time we thought it rather south by west. The
Admiral sighed, and spoke of Cuba. Yes, Guacanagari
knew of Cuba. Had it end far yonder to the westward, or
no end? Had any one ever come to its end? The cacique
thought not, or knew not and assumed deliberation. Luis
and I agreed that we had not met among these Indians
any true notion of a continent. To them Hayti was vast,
Cuba was vast, the lands of the Caribs, wherever they were,
were vast, and vast whatever other islands there might be.
To them this was the _OEcumene_, the inhabited and inhabitable
world, Europe--Asia--Africa? Their faces stayed
blank. Were these divisions of heaven?

Guacanagari would entertain and succor us. This canoe
--oh, the huge marvel!--was too crowded! Yonder lay his
town. All the houses that we might want were ours, all
the hammocks, all the food. And he would feast the gods.
That had been preparing since yesterday, A feast with
dancing. He hoped the great cacique and his people from
far nearer heaven than was Guacanagari would live as long
as might be in his town. Guarico was his town. A big,
easy, amiable, likeable man, he sat in nakedness only not
utter, save for that much like a big hidalgo offering sympathy
and shelter to some fire-ousted or foe-ousted prince!
As for the part of prince it was not hard for the Admiral
to play it. He was one naturally.

He thanked the cacique to whom, I could see, he had taken
liking. Seven houses would be enough. To-night some of
us would sleep upon the beach beside the heaped goods.
To-morrow we would visit Guacanapri. The big, lazy,
peaceable man expressed his pleasure, then with a wide and
dignified gesture dismissing all that, asked to be shown
marvels.



CHAPTER XXIII

GUACANAGARI'S town was much perhaps as was
Goth town, Frank town, Saxon town, Latin town,
sufficient time ago. As for clothed and unclothed,
that may be to some degree a matter of cold or warm
weather. We had not seen that ever it was cold in this
land.

Guacanagari feasted us with great dignity and earnestness,
for he and his people held it a momentous thing our
coming here, our being here. Utias we had and iguana,
fish, cassava bread, potato, many a delicious fruit, and
that mild drink that they made. And we had calabashes,
trenchers and fingers, stone knives with which certain officers
of the feast decorously divided the meat, small gourds for
cups, water for cleansing, napkins of broad leaves. It was
a great and comely feast. But before the feast, as in Cuba,
the dance.

I should say that three hundred young men and maidens
danced. They advanced, they retreated, they cowered, they
pressed forward. They made supplication, arms to heaven
or forehead to ground, they received, they were grateful,
they circled fast in ease of mind, they hungered again and
were filled again, they flowed together, they made a great
square, chanting proudly!

Fray Ignatio beside me glowered, so far as so good a
man could glower. But Juan Lepe said, "It is doubt and
difficulty, approach, reconciliation, holy triumph! They
are acting out long pilgrimages and arrivals at sacred cities
and hopes for greater cities. It is much the same as in
Seville or Rome!" Whereupon he looked at me in astonishment,
and Jayme de Marchena said to Juan Lepe, "Hold
thy tongue!"

Dance and the feast over, it became the Admiral's turn.
He was set not to seem dejected, not to give any Spaniard
nor any Indian reason to say, "This Genoese--or this
god--does not sustain misfortune!" But he sat calm,
pleased with all; brotherly, fatherly, by that big, easy,
contented cacique. Now he would furnish the entertainment!
Among us we had one Diego Minas, a huge man and as
mighty a bowman as any in Flanders or England. Him
the Admiral now put forward with his great crossbow and
long arrows. A stir ran around. "Carib! Carib!" We
made out that those mysterious Caribs had bows and arrows,
though not great ones like this. Guacanagari employed
gestures and words that Luis Torres and I strove
to understand. We gathered that several times in the
memory of man the Caribs had come in many canoes, warred
dreadfully, killed and taken away. More than that, somewhere
in Hayti or Quisquaya or Hispaniola were certain
people who knew the weapon. "Caonabo!" He repeated
the name with respect and disliking. "Caonabo, Caonabo!"
Perhaps the Caribs had made a settlement.

Diego fastened a leaf upon the bark of a tree and from
a great distance transfixed it with an arrow, then in succession
sent four others against the trunk, making precisely
the form of a cross. The Indians cried, "Hai! Hai!"
But when the four harquebus men set up their iron rests,
fixed the harquebuses, and firing cut leaves and twigs from
the same tree, there was a louder crying. And when there
was dragged forth, charged with powder and fired, one of
the lombards taken from the _Santa Maria_, wider yet sprang
the commotion. Pedro Gutierrez and a young cavalier from
the _Nina_ deigned to show lance play, and Vicente Pinzon
who had served against the Moors took a great sword and
with it carved calabashes and severed green boughs. The
sword was very marvelous to them. We might have danced
for them for Spain knows how to dance, or we might have
sung for them, for our mariners sing at sea. But these
were not the superior things we wished to show them.

Guacanagari, big and easy and gentle, said, "Live here,
you who are so great and good! We will take you into
the people. We shall be brothers." We understood them
that the great white heron was their guardian spirit and
would be ours. I said, "They do not think of it as just
those stalking, stilly standing birds! It is a name for something
hovering, brooding, caring for them."

The Viceroy spoke with energy. "Tell them of Father,
Son and Holy Ghost!"

Fray Ignatio stood and spoke, gentle and plain. Diego
Colon made what headway he could. Guacanagari listened,
attentive. The Franciscan had a certainty that presently
he might begin to baptize. His face glowed. I heard him
say to the Admiral, "If it be possible, senor, leave me
here when you return to Spain! I will convert this chief
and all his people--by the time you come again there shall
be a church!"

"Let me ponder it yet a while," answered the other.

He was thoughtful when he went back to the _Nina_.
Vicente Pinzon, too, was anxious for light. "This ship
is crowded to sinking! If we meet wretched weather, or if
sickness break out, returning, we shall be in bad case!"
Roderigo Sanchez also had his word. "Is it not very important,
senor, that we should get the tidings to the Sovereigns?
And we have now just this one small ship, and so
far to go, and all manner of dangers!"

"Aye, it is important!" said the Admiral. "Let me
think it out, senor."

He had not slept at all, thought Juan Lepe, when next
morning he came among us. But be looked resolved, hardy
to accomplish. He had his plan, and he gave it to us in
his deep voice that always thrilled with much beside the
momentary utterance. We would build a fort here on shore,
hard by this village, felling wood for it and using also the
timbers of the _Santa Maria_. We would mount there her
two guns and provide an arsenal with powder, shot, harquebuses
and bows. Build a fort and call it La Navidad, because
of Christmas day when was the wreck. It should
have a garrison of certainly thirty men, a man for each
year of Our Lord's life when He began his mission. So
many placed in Hispaniola would much lighten the _Nina_,
which indeed must be lightened in order with safety to recross Ocean-Sea. For yes, we would go back to
Palos!
Go, and come again with many and better ships, with hidalgos
and missionary priests, and very many men! In the
meantime so many should stay at La Navidad.

"In less than a year--much less, I promise it--I the
Admiral will be here again at La Navidad, when will come
happy greeting between brothers in the greatest service of
our own or many ages! Sea and land, God will keep us
so long as we are His!"

All loved Christopherus Columbus that day. None was to
be forced to stay at La Navidad. It was easy to gain
thirty; in the end there tarried thirty-eight.

The building of the fort became a pleasurable enterprise.
We broke up with singing the Santa Maria, and
with her bones built the walls. Guacanagari and his people
helped. All was hurried. The Admiral and Viceroy, now
that his mind was made up, would depart as soon as might
be.

We built La Navidad where it might view the sea, upon
a hillside above a brown river sliding out to ocean. Beyond
the stream, in the groves, a quarter-league away, stood the
hundred huts of Guarico. We built a tower and storehouse
and wall of wood and we digged around all some kind
of moat, and mounted three lombards. All that we could
lift from the Santa Maria and what the _Nina_ could spare
us of arms, conveniences and food went into our arsenal
and storehouse. We had a bubbling spring within the enclosure.
When all was done the tower of La Navidad,
though an infant beside towers of Europe, might suffice
for the first here of its brood. It was done in a week from
that shipwreck.

Who was to be left at La Navidad? Leave was given to
volunteer and the mariners' list was soon made up, good
men and not so good. From the poop there volunteered
Pedro Gutierrez and Roderigo de Escobedo. The Admiral
did not block their wish, but he gave the command not to
Escobedo who wished it, but to Diego de Arana whom
he named to stay, having persuaded him who would rather
have returned with the _Nina_. But he could trust Diego de
Arana, and, with reason, he was not sure of those other hidalgos.
De Arana stayed and fulfilled his trust, and died a brave
man. Fray Ignatio would stay. "Bring me back, Senor, a
goodly bell for the church of La Navidad! A bell and a
font."

Juan Lepe would stay. There needed a physician. But
also Jayme de Marchena would stay. He thought it out.
Six months had not abolished the Holy Office nor converted
to gentleness Don Pedro nor the Dominican.

But the Admiral had assigned me to return with the
_Nina_. I told him in the evening between the sunset and
the moonrise what was the difficulty. He was a man profoundly
religious, and also a docile son of the Church. But
I knew him, and I knew that he would find reasons in
the Bible for not giving me up. The deep man, the whole
man, was not in the grasp of bishop or inquisitor or papal
bull.

He agreed. "Aye, it is wiser! I count two months to
Spain, seeing that we may not have so favorable a voyage.
Three or maybe four there, for our welcome at court, and
for the gathering a fleet--easy now to gather for all will
flock to it, and masters and owners cry, `Take my ship--
and mine!' Two months again to recross. Look for me it
may be in July, it may be in August, it may be in September!"

The Viceroy spoke to us, gathered by our fort, under
the banner of Castile, with behind us on hill brow a cross
gleaming. Again, all that we had done for the world and
might further do! Again, we returning on the _Nina_ or
we remaining at La Navidad were as crusaders, knights
of the Order of the Purpose of God! "Cherish good--
oh, men of the sea and the land, cherish good! Who
betrays here betrays almost as Judas! The Purpose of God
is Strength with Wisdom and Charity which only can make
joy! Therefore be ye here at La Navidad strong, wise and
charitable!"

He said more, and he gave many an explicit direction,
but that was the gist of all. Strength, wisdom and charity.

Likewise he spoke to the Indians and they listened and
promised and meant good. An affection had sprung
between Guacanagari and Christopherus Columbus. So different
they looked! and yet in the breast of each dwelled much
guilelessness and the ability to wonder and revere. The
Viceroy saw in this big, docile ruler of Guarico however
far that might extend, one who would presently be baptized
and become a Christian chief, man of the Viceroy of Hispaniola,
as the latter was man of the Sovereigns of Spain. All
his people would follow Guacanagari. He saw Christendom
here in the west, and a great feudal society, acknowledging
Castile for overlord, and Alexander the Sixth as its spiritual
ruler.

Guacanagari may have seen friends in the gods, and
especially in this their cacique, who with others that they would
bring, would be drawn into Guarico and made one and whole
with the people of the heron. But he never saw Guacanagari
displanted--never saw Europe armed and warlike,
hungry and thirsty.

The _Nina_ and La Navidad bade with tears each the other
farewell. It was the second of January, fourteen hundred
and ninety-three. We had mass under the palm trees, by
the cross, above the fort. Fray Ignatio blessed the going,
blessed the staying. We embraced, we loved one another, we
parted. The _Nina_ was so small a ship, even there just
before us on the blue water! So soon, so soon, the wind
blowing from the land, she was smaller yet, smaller, smaller,
a cock boat, a chip, gone!

Thirty-eight white men watched her from the hill above
the fort, and of the thirty-eight Juan Lepe was the only one
who saw the Admiral come again.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE butio of this town had been absent for some reason
in the great wood those days of the shipwreck and
the building of La Navidad. Now he was again here,
and I consorted with him and chiefly from him learned
their language. The Admiral had taken Diego Colon to
Spain, and to Spain was gone too Luis Torres, swearing
that he would come again. To Spain was gone Sancho, but
Beltran the cook stayed with us. Pedro and Fernando also.

Time passed. With the ending of January the heat increased.
The butio knew all manner of simples; he was
doctor and priest together. He had a very simple magic.
He himself did not expect it to reach the Great Spirit, but
it might affect the innumerable _zemes_ or under and under-
under spirits. These barbarians, using other words for
them, had letter-notion of gnome, sylph, undine and salamander.
All things lived and took offense or became propitious.
Effort consisted in making them propitious. If
the effort was too great one of them killed you. Then you
went to the shadowy caves. There was a paradise, too,
beautiful and easy. But the Great Spirit could not be hurt
and had no wish to hurt any one else, whether _zemes_ or men.
To live with the Great Spirit, that was really the Heron
wish, though the little herons could not always see it.

This butio--Guarin his name--was a young man with
eyes that could burn and voice that fell naturally into a
chant. He took me into the forest with him to look for a
very rare tree. When it was found I watched him gather
plants from beneath it and scrape bits off its bark into a
small calabash. I understood that it was good for fever,
and later I borrowed from him and found that he had
grounds for what he said.

La Navidad and Guarico neighbored each other. The
Indians came freely to the fort, but Diego de Arana made
a good _alcayde_ and he would not have mere crowding within
our wooden wall. Half of our thirty-eight, permitted at a
time to wander, could not crowd Guarico. But in himself
each Spaniard seemed a giant. At first a good giant, profoundly
interesting. But I was to see pleased interest become
a painful interest.

Women. The first complaint arose about the gods or the
giants and women. Guacanagari came to La Navidad with
Guarin and several old men his councilors. Diego de Arana
received them and there was talk under the great tree within
our gate. Then all the garrison was drawn up, and in the
presence of the cacique Arana gave rebuke and command,
and the two that had done the outrage had prison for
a week. It was our first plain showing in this world that
heaven-people or Europeans could differ among themselves
as to right and wrong, could quarrel, upbraid and punish.
But here was evidently good and bad. And what might be
the proportion? As days went by the question gathered in
this people's bosom.

It was not that their women stood aloof from our men.
Many did not so in the least! But it was to be free will and
actual fondness, and in measure.--But there were those
among us who, finding in lonely places, took by force. These
became hated.

Diego de Arana was to collect the gold that was a royal
monopoly. Trading for gold for one's self was forbidden.
Assuredly taking it by force--assuredly all robbery of that
or anything else--was forbidden. But there came a robbery,
and since it was resisted, murder followed. This
was a league from Guarico and from La Navidad. The
slain Indian's companion escaping, told.

This time Diego de Arana went to Guarico and Guacanagari. He took with him a rich present, and he
showed how
the guilty men were punished. "You do not slay them?"
asked Guacanagari. Arana shook his head. He thought
we were too few in this land to be ridding of life the violent
and lustful. But the Indians seemed to think that he said
that he could not. They still doubted, I think, our mortality.
As yet they had seen no mighty stranger bleed or die.

Arana would have kept his garrison within the walls.
But indeed it was not healthful for them there, and at the
very word of confinement faction rose. There were now
two parties in La Navidad, the Commandant's party and
Escobedo's party.

The heat increased. It was now March. An illness fell
among us. I took Guarin into counsel and gave in water the
bitter inner bark of that tree shredded and beaten fine. Those
who shook with cold and burned with fever recovered.

Fray Ignatio was among those who sickened. He left
after some days his hammock, but his strength did not come
back to him. Yet, staff in hand, he went almost daily to
Guarico. Then, like that! Fray Ignatio died. He died
--his heart stopped--on the path between Guarico and
La Navidad. He had been preaching, and then, Guarin told
me, he put his hand to his side, and said, "I will go home!"
He started up the path, but at the big tree he dropped. Men
and women ran to him, but the butio was dead.

We buried Fray Ignatio beneath the cross on the hilltop.
The Indians watched, and now they knew that we could
die.

The heat increased.

At first Diego de Arana sent out at intervals exploring
parties. We were to learn, at least, Guacanagari's country.
But the heat was great, and so many of those left at La
Navidad only idle and sensual. They would push on to a
village--we found in Guacanagari's country many hamlets,
but no other town like Guarico--and there they would
stop, with new women, new talk, and the endless plenty
to eat and sleep in the shade. When, at their own
sweet will, they returned to La Navidad, the difficulties
had been too great. They could not get to the high mountains
where might or might not be the mines. But what
they did was to spread over the country scandalous news of
scandalous gods.

At last Arana sorted out those who could be trusted
at least to strive for knowledge and self-control and sent
these. But that weakened him at La Navidad, draining
him of pure blood and leaving the infected, and by mid-April he ceased any effort at exploration. It must
wait
until the Admiral returned, and he began to be hungry indeed
for that return.

Escobedo and Pedro Gutierrez were not hungry for
it--not yet. These two became the head and front of ill,
encouraging every insubordinate, infuriating all who suffered
penalties, teaching insolence, self-will and license. They
drew their own feather to them, promising evil knows what
freedom for rapine.

All the silver weather, golden weather, diamond weather
since we had left Gomera in the Canaries--how many ages
since!--now was changed. We had thought it would last
always, but now we entered the long season of great heat
and daily rain. At first we thought these rains momentary,
but day after day, week after week, with stifling heat, the
clouds gathered, broke, and came mighty rain that at last
ceased to be refreshing, became only wearying and hateful.
It did not cool us; we lived in a sultry gloom. And the
garrison of La Navidad became very quarrelsome. La Navidad
showed the Indians Europeans cursing one another,
giving blows, only held back by those around from rushing
at each other, stabbing and cutting. Finally they saw Tomaso
Passamonte kill one Jacamo. Diego de Arana hung Tomaso
Passamonte. But what were the Indians to think? Not
what they thought when first we came from the winged
canoes to their beaches.

The last of April fell the second sickness and it was far
worse than the first. Eleven men died, and we buried them.
When it passed we were twenty-five Spaniards in Hispaniola,
and we liked not the Indians as well as we had done, and
they liked not us. Oh, the pity--pity--pity, the pity and
the blame!

Guacanagari came to visit the commandant, none with
him but the butio Guarin, and desiring to speak with
Arana out of the company. They talked beneath the big
tree, that being the most comfortable and commodious council
chamber. Don Diego was imperfect yet in the tongue
of Guarico, and he called Juan Lepe to help him out.

It was a story of Caonabo, cacique of Maguana that ran
into the great mountains of Cibao, that cacique of whom
we had already heard as being like Caribs. Caonabo had
sent quite secretly two of his brothers to Guacanagari. He
had heard ill of the strangers and thought they were demons,
not gods! He advised the cacique of Guarico to surprise
them while they slept and slay them. It was in his experience
that all who ate and slept could be slain. If his brother
Guacanagari needed help in the adventure, Caonabo would
give it. He would even come in person.

Diego de Arana said, "What did you answer, O Cacique."

Guacanagari spoke at some length of our Great Cacique
and his longing that he might return. Everything had gone
well while he was here! "He will return," said Arana.
"And he has your word."

Guacanagari stated that he meant to keep his word. He
had returned answer to Caonabo that there had been misfortunes
but that the mighty strangers were truly mighty,
and almost wholly beneficent. At any rate, he was not
prepared to slay them, did not wish to slay them.

Arana spoke vigorously, pointing out to the cacique all
the kindliness that had attended our first intercourse. The
unhappinesses of February, March and April he attributed
to real demons, not to our own fiend but to small powers
at large, maleficent and alarmed, heathen powers in short,
jealous of the introduction of the Holy Catholic religion.
Guacanagari seemed to understand about these powers. He
looked relieved. But Guarin who was with him regarded
the sea and I saw his lip curl.

The commandant wished to know if there were any danger
of Caonabo, alone, descending upon us from the mountains.
But no! Maguana and Guarico were friends. They
had not always been so, but now they were friends. De
Arana looked doubtfully, and I saw him determine to keep
watch and ward and to hold the men within or near to fort.
But Guacanagari sat serene. He repeated that there were
always preliminaries before wars, and that for a long time
there had only been peace between Guarico and Maguana.
"Caonabo is Carib," said the young copper priest. The
cacique answered, "Carib long ago. Not now."

At sunset, the rain ceasing for a little, the earth smoking,
the west a low, vaporous yellow, the swollen river sounding,
Diego de Arana had summoned by the drum every man in
La Navidad. He stood beneath our banner and put his
hand upon the staff and spoke earnestly to those gathered
before him, in their duty and out of their duty. He told
of Caonabo, and of his own sense that Guacanagari was
too confident. He told of Guacanagari's fidelity to the Admiral,
and he appealed to every Christian there to be at
least as faithful. We were few and far from Spain, and
we had perhaps more than we could conceive in trust. "Far
from Spain, but no farther than we will from the blessed
saints and the true Christ. Let us put less distance there,
being few in this land and in danger!"

He knew that he had a dozen with him, and looked straight
at Escobedo.

The latter said, "Live in the open and die there, if need
be! To live in this rat hole, breathing plague, is dying
already! Caonabo is a fable! These people! Spaniards
have but to lift voice and they flee!"

He received from his following acquiescent sound. Spoke
Pedro Gutierrez. "Guacanagari wishes to bottle us here;
that is the whole of it. Why play his game? I never saw
a safer land! Only La Navidad is not safe!"

Those two had half and perhaps more than half of the
garrison. Arana cried, "Don Roderigo de Escobedo and
Don Pedro Gutierrez, you serve the Queen ill!"

"You, Senor," answered Gutierrez, "serve my Lady Idle
Fear and my Lord Incapacity!"

Whereupon Arana put him in arrest and he lay that night
in prison. The cloud was black over La Navidad.



CHAPTER XXV

IT did not lighten. Escobedo waited two days, then in
the dark night, corrupting the watch, broke gaol for
Pedro Gutierrez and with him and nine men quitted
La Navidad. Beltran the cook it was who heard and procured
a great smoking torch, and sent out against them a
voice like a bull of Bashan's. Arana sprang up, and the
rest of us who slept. They were eleven men, armed and
alert. There were shouts, blows, a clutching and a throwing
off, a detaining and repelling. In the east showed long
ghost fingers, the rain held away. They were at the gate
when we ran upon them; they burst it open and went forth,
leaving one of their own number dead, and two of them
who stayed with Arana desperately hurt. We followed
them down the path, through the wood, but they had the
start. They did not go to Guarico, but they seized the boat
of the _Santa Maria_ which the Admiral had left with us and
went up the river. We heard the dash of their oars, then
the rain came down, with a weeping of every cloud.

The dead man they left behind was Fernando. I had seen
Pedro in the gate, going forth.

Fourteen men, two of whom were ill and two wounded,
stayed at La Navidad. Arana said with passion, "Honest
men and a garrison at one! There is some gain!"

That could not be denied. Gain here, but how about it
yonder?

It was May. And now the rain fell in a great copious
flood, huge-dropped and warm, and now it was restrained
for a little, and there shone a sun confused and fierce. Earth
and forest dripped and streamed and smoked. We were
Andalusians, but the heat drained us. But we held, we fourteen
men. Arana did well at La Navidad. We all did
what we could to live like true not false Castilians, true not
false Christians. And I name Beltran the cook as hero and
mighty encourager of hearts.

We went back and forth between La Navidad and Guarico,
for though the Admiral had left us a store of food we got
from them fruit and maize and cassava. They were all
friendly again, for the fourteen withheld themselves from
excess. Nor did we quarrel among ourselves and show
them European weakness.

Guacanagari remained a big, easy, somewhat slothful,
friendly barbarian, a child in much, but brave enough when
roused and not without common sense. He had an itch for
marvels, loved to hear tales of our world that for all one
could say remained to them witchcraft and cloudland, world
above their world! What could they, who had no great
beasts, make of tales of horsemen? What could their huts
know of palace and tower and cathedral, their swimmers of
stone bridges, their canoes of a thousand ships greater far
than the_ Santa Maria_ and the _Nina_? What could Guarico
know of Seville? In some slight wise they practiced barter,
but huge markets and fairs to which traveled from all quarters
and afar merchants and buyers went with the tales of
horsemen. And so with a thousand things! We were the
waving oak talking to the acorn.

But there were among this folk two or three ready for
knowledge. Guarin was a learning soul. He foregathered
with the physician Juan Lepe, and many a talk they had,
like a master and pupil, in some corner of La Navidad, or
under a palm-thatched roof, or, when the rain held, by river
or sounding sea. He had mind and moral sense, though
not the European mind at best, nor the European moral
sense at highest. But he was well begun. And he had
beauty of form and countenance and an eager, deep eye.
Juan Lepe loved him.

It was June. Guacanagari came to La Navidad, and his
brown face was as serious as a tragedy. "Caonabo?" asked
Diego de Arana.

A fortnight before this the cacique, at Arana's desire,
had sent three Indians in a canoe up the river, the object
news if possible of that ten who had departed in that direction.
Now the Indians were back. They had gone a long
way until the high mountains were just before them, and
there they heard news from the last folk who might be
called Guarico and the first folk who might be called Maguana.
The mighty strangers had gone on up into the
mountains and Caonabo had put them to death.

"To death!"

It appeared that they had seized women and had beaten
men whom they thought had gold which they would not
give. They were madmen, Escobedo and Gutierrez and
all with them!

Guacanagari said that Caonabo had invited them to a feast.
It was spread in three houses, and they were divided so,
and around each Spaniard was put a ring of Indians. They
were eating and drinking. Caonabo entered the first house,
and his coming made the signal. Escobedo and Pedro
Gutierrez were in this house. They raised a shout, "Undone,
Spaniards!" But though they were heard in the
other houses--these houses being nothing more than booths
--it was to no use. There followed struggle and massacre;
finally Gutierrez and Escobedo and eight men lay dead.
But certain Indians were also killed and among them a son
of Caonabo.

It was July. We began to long toward the Admiral's
return. A man among us went melancholy mad, watching
the sea, threatening the rain when it came down and
hid the sea, and the Admiral might go by! At last he threw
himself into ocean and was drowned. Another man was
bitten by a serpent, and we could not save him. We were
twelve Spaniards in La Navidad. We rested friends with
Guarico, though now they held us to be nothing more than
demigods. And indeed by now we were ragged!

Then, in a night, it came.

Guacanagari again appeared. It had reached him from
up the river that Caonabo was making pact with the cacique
of Marien and that the two meant to proceed against us.
Standing, he spoke at length and eloquently. If he rested
our friend, it might end in his having for foes Maguana
and Marien. There had been long peace, and Guarico did
not desire war. Moreover, Caonabo said that it was idle
to dread Caribs and let in the mighty strangers! He said
that all pale men, afraid of themselves so that they covered
themselves up, were filled with evil _zemes_ and were worse
than a thousand Caribs! But Caonabo was a mocker and a
hard-of-heart! Different was Guacanagari. He told us
how different. It all ended in great hope that Caonabo would
think better of it.

We kept watch and ward. Yet we could not be utterly
cooped within La Navidad. Errands must be done, food
be gathered. More than that, to seem to Guarico frightened,
to cry that we must keep day and night behind wall with
cannon trained, notwithstanding that Caonabo might be
asleep in the mountains of Cibao, would be but to mine
our own fame, we who, for all that had passed, still seemed
to this folk mighty, each of us a host in himself! And as
nothing came out of the forest, and no more messengers of
danger, they themselves had ceased to fear, being like children
in this wise. And we, too, at last; for now it was
late August, and the weather was better, and surely, surely,
any day we might see a white point rise from blue ocean,
--a white point and another and another, like stars after
long clouded night skies!

So we watched the sea. And also there was a man to
watch the forest. But we did not conceive that the dragon
would come forth in the daytime, nor that he could come
at any time without our hearing afar the dragging of his
body and the whistling of his breath.

It was halfway between sunrise and noon. Five of us
were in the village, seven at La Navidad. The five were
there for melons and fruit and cassava and tobacco which
we bought with beads and fishhooks and bits of bright cloth.
Three of the seven at La Navidad were out of gate, down

at the river, washing their clothes. Diego Minas, the archer,
on top of wall, watched the forest. Walking below, Beltran
the cook was singing in his big voice a Moorish song
that they made much of year before last in Seville. I had a
book of Messer Petrarca's poems. It had been Gutierrez's,
who left it behind when he broke forth to the mountains.

Beltran's voice suddenly ceased. Diego the archer above
him on wall had cried down, "Hush, will you, a moment!"
Diego de Arana came up. "What is it?"

"I thought," said the archer, "that I heard a strange
shouting from toward village. Hark ye! There!"

We heard it, a confused sound. "Call in the men from
the river!" Arana ordered.

Diego Minas sent his voice down the slope. The three
below by the river also heard the commotion, distant as
Guarico. They were standing up, their eyes turned that
way. Just behind them hung the forest out of which slid,
dark and smooth, the narrow river.

Out of the forest came an arrow and struck to the heart
Gabriel Baraona. Followed it a wild prolonged cry of many
voices, peculiar and curdling to the blood, and fifty--a
hundred--a host of naked men painted black with white
and red and yellow markings. Guarico did not use bow
and arrow, but a Carib cacique knew them, and had so
many, and also lances flint or bone-headed, and clubs with
stones wedged in them and stone knives. Gabriel Baraona
fell, whether dead or not we could not tell. Juan Morcillo
and Gonzalo Fernandez sent a scream for aid up to La
Navidad. Now they were hidden as some small thing by
furious bees. Diego de Arana rushed for his sword. "Down
and cut them out!"

Diego Minas fired the big lombard, but for fear of hurting
our three men sent wide the ball. We looked for terror
always from the flame, the smoke and great noise, and so
there was terror here for a moment and a bearing back in
which Juan and Gonzalo got loose and made a little way up
path. But a barbarian was here who could not long be
terrified. Caonabo sent half his horde against Guarico, but
himself had come to La Navidad. That painted army rallied
and overtook the fleeing men.

Shouting, making his swung sword dazzle in light, Diego
de Arana raced down path, and Diego Minas and Beltran
the cook and Juan Lepe with him. Many a time since then,
in this island, have I seen half a dozen Christians with their
arms and the superstitious terror that surrounded them put
to flight twenty times their number. But this was early,
and the spirit of these naked men not broken, and Caonabo
faced us. It was he himself who, when three or four had
been wounded by Arana, suddenly rushed upon the commandant.
With his stone-headed club he struck the sword
away, and he plunged his knife into Arana's breast. He
died, a brave man who had done his best at La Navidad.

Juan Morcillo and Gonzalo Fernandez and Diego Minas
were slain. I saw a lifted club and swerved, but too late.

Blackness and neither care nor delight. Then, far off,
a little beating of surf on shore, very far and nothing to do
with anything. Then a clue of pain that it seemed I must
follow or that must follow me, and at first it was a little
thin thread, but then a cable and all my care was to thin
it again. It passed into an ache and throb that filled my
being like the rain clouds the sky. Then suddenly there
were yet heavy clouds but the sky around and behind. I
opened my eyes and sat up, but found that my arms were
bound to my sides.

"We aren't dead, and that's some comfort, Doctor, as
the cock said to the other cock in the market pannier!"
It was Beltran the cook who spoke and he was bound like
me. Around us lay the five dead. A score of Indians
warded us, mighty strangers in bonds, and we heard the
rest up at the fort where they were searching and pillaging.

Guarico, and the men there?

We found that out when at last they were done with La
Navidad and they and we were put on the march. We came
to where had been Guarico, and truly for long we had smelled
the burning of it, as we had heard the crying and shouting.
It was all down, the frail houses. I made out in the loud
talking that followed the blending of Caonabo's bands what
had been done and not done. Guacanagari, wounded, was
fled after fighting a while, he and his brother and the butio
and all the people. But the mighty strangers found in the
village, were dead. They had run down to the sea, but
Caonabo's men had caught them, and after hard work killed
them. Juan Lepe and Beltran, passing, saw the five bodies.

I do not think that Caonabo had less than a thousand
with him. He had come in force, and the whole as silent
as a bat or moth. We were to learn over and over again
that "Indians" could do that, travel very silently, creatures
of the forest who took by surprise. Well, Guarico was destroyed,
and Guacanagari and Guarin fled, and in all Hispaniola
were only two Spaniards, and we saw no sail upon the
sea, no sail at all!



CHAPTER XXVI

WE turned from the sea. Thick forest came between
us and it. We were going with Caonabo to the
mountains. Beltran and I thought that it had been
in question whether he should kill us at once, or hold us in
life until we had been shown as trophies in Maguana, and
that the pride and vanity of the latter course prevailed. After
two days in this ruined place, during which we saw no
Guarico Indian, we departed. The raid was over. All their
war is by raid. They carried everything from the fort
save the fort itself and the two lombards. In the narrow
paths that are this world's roads, one man must walk after
another, and their column seems endless where it winds and
is lost and appears again. Beltran and I were no longer
bound. Nor were we treated unkindly, starved nor hurt in
any way. All that waited until we should reach Caonabo's
town.

Caonabo was a most handsome barbarian, strong and
fierce and intelligent, more fierce, more intelligent than Guacanagari.
All had been painted, but the heat of the lowland
and their great exertion had made the coloring run and
mix most unseemly. When they left Guarico they plunged
into the river and washed the whole away, coming out clear
red-brown, shining and better to look upon. Caonabo
washed, but then he would renew his marking with the
paint which he carried with him in a little calabash.

A pool, still and reflecting as any polished shield, made his
mirror. He painted in a terrific pattern what seemed meant
for lightning and serpent. It was armor and plume and
banner to him. I thought of our own devices, comforting
or discomforting kinships! He had black, lustrous hair, no
beard--they pluck out all body hair save the head thatch
--high features, a studied look of settled and cold fierceness.
Such was this Carib in Hispaniola.

Presently they put a watch and the rest all lay down and
slept, Beltran beside me. The day had been clear, and now
a great moon made silver, silver, the land around. It
shone upon the Spanish sailor and upon the Carib chief
and all the naked Manguana men. I thought of Europe,
and of how all this or its like had been going on hundred
years by hundred years, while perished Rome and quickened
our kingdoms, while Charlemagne governed, while the Church
rose until she towered and covered like the sky, while we
went crusades and pilgrimages, while Venice and Genoa
and Lisbon rose and flourished, while letters went on and
we studied Aristotle, while question arose, and wider knowledge.
At last Juan Lepe, too, went to sleep.

Next day we traveled among and over mountains. Our
path, so narrow, climbed by rock and tree. Now it overhung
deep, tree-crammed vales, now it bore through just-
parted cliffs. Beltran and Juan Lepe had need for all their
strength of body.

The worst was that that old tremor and weakness of one
leg and side, left after some sea fight, which had made Beltran
the cook from Beltran the mariner, came back. I saw his
step begin to halt and drag. This increased. An hour later,
the path going over tree roots knotted like serpents, he
stumbled and fell. He picked himself up. "Hard to keep
deck in this gale!"

When he went down there had been an exclamation from
those Indians nearest us. "Aiya!" It was their word for
rotten, no good, spoiled, disappointing, crippled or diseased,
for a misformed child or an old man or woman arrived
at helplessness. Such, I had learned from Guarin, they
almost invariably killed. It was why, from the first, we
hardly saw dwarfed or humped or crippled among them.

We had to cross a torrent upon a tree that falling had
made from side to side a rounded bridge. Again that old
hurt betrayed him. He slipped, would have fallen into the
torrent below, but that I, turning, caught him and the Indian
behind us helped. We managed across. "My ship," said
Beltran, "is going to pieces on the rocks."

The path became ladder steep. Now Beltran delayed all,
for it was a lame man climbing. I helped him all I could.

The sun was near its setting. We were aloft in these
mountains. Green heads still rose over us, but we were
aloft, far above the sea. And now we were going through a
ravine or pass where the walking was better. Here, too, a
wind reached us and it was cooler. Cool eve of the heights
drew on. We came to a bubbling well of coldest water and
drank to our great refreshment. Veritable pine trees, which
we never saw in the lowlands, towered above and sang. The
path was easier, but hardly, hardly, could Beltran drag himself
along it. His arm was over my shoulder.

Out of the dark pass we came upon a table almost bare
of trees and covered with a fine soft grass. The mountains
of Cibao, five leagues--maybe more--away, hung in emerald
purple and gold under the sinking sun. The highest
rocky peaks rose pale gold. Below us and between those
mountains on which we stood and the golden mountains
of Cibao, spread that plain, so beautiful, so wide and long,
so fertile and smiling and vast, that afterwards was
called the Royal Plain! East and west one might not see
the end; south only the golden mountains stopped it. And
rivers shone, one great river and many lesser streams. And
we saw afar many plumes of smoke from many villages,
and we made out maize fields, for the plain was populous.
_Vega Real_! So lovely was it in that bright eve! The very
pain of the day made it lovelier.

The high grassy space ran upon one side to sheer precipice,
dropping clear two hundred feet. But there was camping
ground enough--and the sun almost touched the far,
violet earth.

The Indians threw themselves down. When they had
supper they would eat it, when they had it not they would
wait for breakfast. But Caonabo with twenty young men
came to us. He said something, and my arms were caught
from behind and held. He faced Beltran seated against a
pine. "Aiya!" he said. His voice was deep and harsh, and
be made a gesture of repugnance. There was a powerfully
made Indian beside him, and I saw the last gleam of the
sun strike the long, sharp, stone knife. "Kill!" said the
cacique.

A dozen flung themselves upon Beltran, but there was no
need, for he sat quite still with a steady face. He had time
to cry to Juan Lepe, who cried to him, "That's what I say!
Good cheer and courage and meet again!"

He had no long suffering. The knife was driven quickly
to his heart. They drew the shell to the edge of the precipice
and dropped it over.

It was early night, it was middle night, it was late night.
They had set no watch, for where and what was the danger
here on this mountain top?

One side went down in a precipice, one sloping less steeply
we had climbed from the pine trees and the well, one of a
like descent we would take to-morrow down to the plain,
but the fourth was mountain head hanging above us and
thick wood,--dark, entangled, pathless. And it chanced
or it was that Juan Lepe lay upon the side toward the peak,
close to forest. The Indians had no thought to guard me.
We lay down under the moon, and that bronze host slept,
naked beautiful statues, in every attitude of rest.

The moon shone until there was silver day. Juan Lepe
was not sleeping.

There was no wind, but he watched a branch move. It
looked like a man's arm, then it moved farther and was a
full man,--an Indian, noiseless, out clear in the moon,
from the wood. I knew him. It was the priest Guarin,
priest and physician, for they are the same here. Palm
against earth, I half rose. He nodded, made a sign to rise
wholly and come. I did so. I stood and saw under the
moon no waking face nor upspringing form. I stepped
across an Indian, another, a third. Then was clear space,
the wood, Guarin. There was no sound save only the constant
sound of this forest by night when a million million
insects waken.

He took my hand and drew me into the brake and wilderness.
There was no path. I followed him over I know
not what of twined root and thick ancient soil, a powder
and flake that gave under foot, to a hidden, rocky shelf
that broke and came again and broke and came again. Now
we were a hundred feet above that camp and going over
mountain brow, going to the north again. Gone were Caonabo
and his Indians; gone the view of the plain and the
mountains of Cibao. Again we met low cliff, long stony
ledges sunk in the forest, invisible from below. I began
to see that they would not know how to follow. Caonabo
might know well the mountains of Cibao, but this sierra
that was straight behind Guarico, Guarico knew. It is a
blessed habit of their priests to go wandering in the forest,
making their medicine, learning the country, discovering,
using certain haunts for meditation. Sometimes they are
gone from their villages for days and weeks. None indeed
of these wild peoples fear reasonable solitude. Out of all
which comes the fact that Guarin knew this mountain. We
were not far, as flies the bird, from the burned town of
Guarico, from the sea without sail, from the ruined La
Navidad. When the dawn broke we saw ocean.

He took me straight to a cavern, such another as that in
which Jerez and Luis Torres and I had harbored in Cuba.
But this had fine sand for floor, and a row of calabashes,
and wood laid for fire.

Here Juan Lepe dropped, for all his head was swimming
with weariness.

The sun was up, the place glistered. Guarin showed how
it was hidden. "I found it when I was a boy, and none but
Guarin hath ever come here until you come, Juan Lepe!"
He had no fear, it was evident, of Caonabo's coming. "They
will think your idol helped you away. If they look for you,
it will be in the cloud. They will say, `See that dark mark
moving round edge of cloud mountain! That is he!' "
I asked him, "Where are Guacanagari and the rest?"

"Guacanagari had an arrow through his thigh and a
deep cut upon the head. He was bleeding and in a swoon.
His brother and the Guarico men and I with them took
him, and the women took the children, and we went
away, save a few that were killed, upon the path that we
used when in my father's time, the Caribs came in canoes.
After a while we will go down to Guacanagari. But now
rest!"

He looked at me, and then from a little trickling spring
he took water in a calabash no larger than an orange and
from another vessel a white dust which he stirred into it,
and made me drink. I did not know what it was, but I
went to sleep.

But that sleep did not refresh. It was filled with heavy
and dreadful dreams, and I woke with an aching head and
a burning skin. Juan Lepe who had nursed the sick down
there in La Navidad knew feebly what it was. He saw in
a mist the naked priest, his friend and rescuer, seated upon
the sandy floor regarding him with a wrinkled brow and
compressed lips, and then he sank into fever visions uncouth
and dreadful, or mirage-pleasing with a mirage-ecstasy.

Juan Lepe did not die, but he lay ill and like to die for
two months. It was deep in October, that day at dawn
when I came quietly, evenly, to myself again, and lay most
weak, but with seeing eyes. At first I thought I was alone
in the cavern, but then I saw Guarin where he lay asleep.

That day I strengthened, and the next day and the next.
But I had lain long at the very feet of death, and full
strength was a tortoise in returning. So good to Juan Lepe
was Guarin!

Now he was with me, and now he went away to that
village where was Guacanagari. He had done this from
the first coming here, nursing me, then going down through
the forest to see that all was well with his wounded cacique
and the folk whose butio he was. They knew his ways and
did not try to keep him when he would return to the mountain,
to "make medicine." So none knew of the cavern or
that there was one Spaniard left alive in all Hayti.

I strengthened. At last I could draw myself out of cave
and lie, in the now so pleasant weather, upon the ledge
before it. All the vast heat and moisture was gone by;
now again was weather of last year when we found San
Salvador.

I could see ocean. No sail, and were he returning, surely
it should have been before this! He might never return.

When Guarin was away I sat or lay or moved about a
small demesne and still prospered. There were clean rock,
the water, the marvelous forest. He brought cassava cake,
fruit, fish from the sea. He brought me for entertainment
a talking parrot, and there lived in a seam of the rock a
beautiful lizard with whom I made friends. The air was
balm, balm! A steady soft wind made cataract sound in
the forest. Sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight, were great
glories.

It was November; it was mid-November and after.

Now I was strong and wandered in the forest, though
never far from that cliff and cavern. It was settled between
us that in five days I should go down with Guarin
to Guacanagari. He proposed that I should be taken formally
into the tribe. They had a ceremony of adoption,
and after that Juan Lepe would be Guarico. He would
live with and teach the Guaricos, becoming butio--he and
Guarin butios together. I pondered it. If the Admiral
came not again it was the one thing to do.

I remember the very odor and exquisite touch of the
morning. Guarin was away. I had to myself cave and
ledge and little waterfall and great trees that now I was
telling one from another. I had parrot and lizard and spoke
now to the one and now to the other. I remember the
butterflies and the humming birds.

I looked out to sea and saw a sail!

It was afar, a white point. I leaned against the rock for
I was suddenly weak who the moment before had felt strong.
The white point swelled. It would be a goodly large ship.
Over blue rim slipped another flake. A little off I saw a
third, then a fourth. Juan Lepe rubbed his eyes. Before
there came no more he had counted seventeen sail. They
grew; they were so beauteous. Toward the harbor sailed
a fleet. Now I made out the flagship.

O Life, thou wondrous goddess of happenings!

An hour I sat on cliff edge and watched. They were
making in, the lovely white swans. When they were fairly
near, when in little time the foremost would bring to, down
sail and drop anchor, Juan Lepe, gathering his belongings
together, bidding the lizard farewell and taking the parrot
with him on shoulder, left cavern and cliff and took Guarin's
path down through the forest.

Halfway to level land he met Guarin coming up; the
two met beneath a tree huge and spreading, curtained with
a vine, starred with flowers. "He has come!" cried the
Indian. "They have come!" In his voice was marveling,
awe, perturbation.

The sun in the sky shone, and in the bay hung that wonder
of return, the many ships for the _Nina_. Juan Lepe and
Guarin went on down through wood to a narrow silver
beach, out upon which had cast itself an Indian village.

Guacanagari was not here. He waited within his house
for the Admiral. But his brother, and others of Guarico,
saw me and there rose a clamor and excitement that for the
moment took them from the ships. Guarin explained and
Juan Lepe explained, but still this miraculous day dyed also
for them my presence here. I had been slain, and had come
to life to greet the Great Cacique! It grew to a legend. I
met it so, long afterwards in Hispaniola.



CHAPTER XXVII

ONE by one were incoming, were folding wings, were
anchoring, Spanish ships. Three were larger each
than the _Santa Maria_ and the _Pinta_ together; the
others caravels of varying size. Seventeen in all, a fleet,
crowded with men, having cannon and banners and music.
Europe was coming with strength into Asia! The Indians
on the beach were moved as by an unresting wind. They
had terror, they had delight, and some a mere stupidity of
staring. The greatest ship, the first to anchor, carried the
banner of Castile and Leon, and the Admiral's banner.
Now a boat put off from her, boats also from the two ships
next in grandeur.

As they came over the blue wave Juan Lepe stepped down
sand to water edge. Not here, but somewhat to the west,
before La Navidad would one look for this anchoring. He
thought rightly that the Admiral came here from La Navidad,
where he found only ruin, but also some straying Indian
who could give news. So it was, for presently in the
foremost boat I made out two Guarico men. They had told
of Caonabo and of Guacanagari's fortunes, and of every
Spaniard dead of that illness or slain by Caonabo. They
would put Juan Lepe among these last, but here was Juan
Lepe, one only left of that thirty-eight.

The boat approached. I saw the bared head, higher than
any other, the white hair, the blue-gray eyes, the strong
nose and lips, the whole majestic air of the man, as of a
great one chosen. Master Christopherus--Don Cristoval
--_el Almirante_! One of the rowers, and that was Sancho
with whom I had walked on the Fishertown road, first saw
me and gave a startled cry. All in the boat turned head.
I heard the Admiral's voice, "Aye, it is! It is!"

Boat touched sand, there was landing. All sprang out.
The Admiral took me in his arms. "You alone--one
only?"

I answered, "One only. The most died in their duty."

He released me. "senors, this is senor Juan Lepe, that
good physician whom we left. Now tell--tell all--before
we go among this folk!"

By water edge I told, thirty men of Spain around me.
A woeful story, I made it short. These men listened, and
when it was done fell a silence. Christopherus Columbus
broke it. "The wave sucks under and throws out again,
but we sail the sea, have sailed it and will sail it!--Now
were these Indians false or fair?"

I could tell how fair they had been--could praise Guarico
and Guacanagari and Guarin. He listened with great satisfaction.
"I would lay my head for that Indian!"

Talk with him could not be prolonged, for we were in
a scene of the greatest business and commotion. When I
sought for Guarin he was gone. Nor was Guacanagari yet
at hand. I looked at the swarming ships and ship boats,
and the coming and coming upon the beach of more and
more clothed men, and at the tall green palms and the feathered
mountains. This host, it seemed to me, was not so
artlessly amazed as had been we of the _Santa Maria_, the
_Pinta_ and the _Nina_, when first we came to lands so strange
to Europe. Presently I made out that they had seen others
of these islands and shores. Coming from Spain they had
sailed more southerly than we had done before them. They
had made a great dip and had come north-by-west to Hispaniola.
I heard names of islands given by the Admiral, Dominica,
Marigalante, Guadaloupe, Santa Maria la Antigua,
San Juan. They had anchored by these, set foot
upon them, even fought with people who were Caribs, Caribals
or Cannibals. They had a dozen Caribs, men and
women, prisoners upon the _Marigalante_ that was the Admiral's
ship.

This group about Juan Lepe, survivor of La Navidad,
talked like seasoned finders and takers. For the most part
they were young men and hidalgos, fighters against the
Moors, released by the final conquest of those paynims, out
now for further wild adventure and for gold with which to
return, wealthy and still young, to Spanish country, Spanish
cities, Spanish women! They had the virtue and the vice
of their sort, courage, miraculous generosities and as miraculous
weaknesses. Gold, valor, comradeship--and eyes resting
appraisingly upon young Guarico women there upon the
silver beach with Guarico men.

I heard one cry "Master Juan Lepe!" and turning found
Luis Torres. We embraced, we were so glad each to see
the other. My hidalgos were gone, but before I could
question Luis or he me, there bore down upon us, coming
together like birds, half a dozen friars. "We bring twelve
--number of the Apostles!" said Luis. "Monks and
priests. Father Bernardo Buil is their head. The Holy
Father hath appointed him Vicar here. You won't find him
a Fray Ignatio!"

A bull-necked, dark-browed, choleric looking man addressed
me. His Benedictine dress became him ill. He
should have been a Captain of Free Lances in whatever
brisk war was waging. He said, "The survivor, Juan
Lepe?--We stopped at your La Navidad and found ruin
and emptiness. There must have been ill management--
gross!"

"They are all dead," I answered. "None of us manage
the towers so very well!"

He regarded me more attentively. "The physician, Juan
Lepe. Where did you study?"

"In Poitiers and in Paris, Father."

"You have," he said, "the height and sinew and something
of the eye and voice of a notable disappeared heretic,
Jayme de Marchena, who slipped the Dominicans. I saw
him once from a doorway. But that the Prior of La Rabida
himself told me that he had accurate knowledge that
the man was gone with the Jews to Fez, I could almost think
--But of course it is not possible, and now I see the differences."

I answered him with some indifferent word, and we came
to the Haytiens, and how many had Fray Ignatio made
Christian? "I knew him," said the Benedictine. "A good
man, but weak, weak!"

Juan Lepe asked of the Indians the Admiral had taken
to Spain. "But six reached us alive. We instructed them
and baptized them. A great event--the Grand Cardinal
and the King and the Queen attending! Three died during
the summer, but blessedly, being the first of all their people
in all time to enter heaven. A great salvation!"

He looked at the forest and mountains, the sands, the
Guaricos, as at a city he was besieging.

"Ha!" said Father Buil, and with his missionaries moved
up the beach.

Luis and I began to talk. "No need to tell me that Spain
gave you welcome!"'

"The royalest ever! First we came to Lisbon, driven
in by storm, and had it there from King John, and then to
Palos which, so to speak, went mad! Then through Spain
to Barcelona, where was the court, and all the bells in every
town ringing and every door and window crowded, and here
is the Faery Prince on a white charger, his Indians behind
him and gold and parrots and his sailors! Processions and
processions--alcalde and alcayde and don and friar and
priest, and let us stop at the church and kneel before high
altar, and vow again in seven years to free the Sepulchre!
He hath walked and ridden, waked and slept, in a great, high
vision! Most men have visions but he can sustain vision."

"Aye, he can!"

"So at last into Barcelona, where grandees meet us, and
so on to the court, and music as though the world had turned
music! And the King and Queen and great welcome, and,
`Sit beside us, Don Cristoval Colon!' and `Tell and tell
again', and `Praise we Most High God!' "

"It is something for which to praise! Ends of the earth
beginning to meet."

"Aye! So we write that very night to the Pope to be
confirmed that the glory and profit under God are to Castile
and Aragon. But the Queen thought most of the heathen
brought to Christ. And the Admiral thinks of his sons
and his brothers and his old father, and of the Holy Sepulchre
and of the Prophecies, and he has the joy of the
runner who touches the goal!--I would you could have
seen the royalty with which he was treated--not one day
nor week but a whole summer long--the flocking, the bowing
and capping, the `Do me the honor--', the `I have a
small petition.' Nothing conquers like conquering!"

"He had long patience."

"Aye. Well, he is at height now. But he has got with
him the old disastrous seeds.--Fifteen hundred men, and
among them quite a plenty like Gutierrez and Escobedo!
But there are good men, too, and a great lot of romantical
daredevils. No pressing this time! We might have brought
five thousand could the ships have held them. `Come to the
Indies and make your fortune!'--`Aye, that is my desire!' "

I said, "I am looking now at a romantical daredevil
whom I have seen before, though I am sure that he never
noticed me."

"Don Alonso de Ojeda? He is feather in cap, and sometimes
cap, and even at stress head within the cap! Without
moving you've beckoned him."

There approached a young man of whom I knew something,
having had him pointed out by Enrique de Cerda in
Santa Fe. I had before that heard his name and somewhat
of his exploits. In our day, over all Spain, one might find or
hear of cavaliers of this brand. War with the Moor had
lasted somewhat longer than the old famed war with Troy.
It had modeled youth; young men were old soldiers. When
there came up a sprite like this one he drank war like wine.
A slight young man, taut as a rope in a gale, with dark
eyes and red lips and a swift, decisive step, up he came.

"Oh, you are the man who lived out of all your fort?
How did you manage it?"

"I had a friend among these friendly Indians who rescued
me."

"Yes! It is excellent warfare to have friends.--You
have seen no knight nor men-at-arms, nor heard of such?"

"Not under those names."

"How far do you think we may be from true houses
and cities, castles, fortresses?"

"I haven't the least idea. By the looks of it, pretty far."

"It seems to me that you speak truth," he answered.
"Well, it isn't what we looked for, but it's something! Room
yet to dare!" Off he went, half Mercury, half Mars,
and a sprig of youth to draw the eyes.

"Was there nothing ever heard," I asked Luis, "of the
_Pinta_ and Martin Pinzon?"

"He is dead."

"You saw the wreck?"

"No, not that way, though true it is that he wrecked
himself! I forget that you know nothing. We met the
_Pinta_ last January, not a day from here, with Monte Cristi
there yet in sight. When he came aboard and sat in the
great cabin I do not know what he said, except that it was
of separation by that storm, and the feeling that two parties
discovering would thereby discover the more, and the better
serve their Majesties. The Admiral made no quarrel with
him. He had some gold and some news of coasts that we
had not seen. And he did not seem to think it necessary
to seem penitent or anything but just naturally Martin
Pinzon. So on we sailed together, he on the _Pinta_ and the
Admiral on the _Nina_. But that was a rough voyage home
over Ocean-Sea! Had we had such weather coming, might
have been mutiny and throat-cutting and putting back,
Cathay and India being of no aid to dead men! Six times
at least we thought we were drowned, and made vows,
kneeling all together and the Admiral praying for us, Fray
Ignatio not being there. Then came clear, but beyond
Canaries a three days', three nights' weather that truly drove
us apart, the _Pinta_ and the _Nina_. We lost each other in the
darkness and never found again. We were beaten into the
Tagus, the _Pinta_ on to Bayonne. Then, mid-March, we came
to Palos, landed and the wonder began. And in three days
who should come limping in but the _Pinta_? But she missed
the triumph, and Martin Pinzon was sick, and there was
some coldness shown. He went ashore to his own house,
and his illness growing worse he died there. Well, he had
qualities."

"Aye," I answered, with a vision of the big, bluff, golden-haired man.

"Vicente Pinzon is here; his ship the _Cordera_ yonder.
What's the stir now? The Admiral will go to see Guacanagari?"

That, it seemed, was what it was, and presently came
word that Juan Lepe should go with him. A body of cavaliers
sumptuously clad, some even wearing shining corselet,
greaves and helm, was forming about him who was himself
in a magnificent dress. Besides these were fifty of the
plainer sort, and there lacked not crossbow, lance and arquebus.
And there were banners and music. We were going
like an army to be brotherly with Guacanagari. Father
Buil was going also, and his twelve gowned men. "Who,"
I asked Luis, "is the man beside the Admiral? He seems
his kin."

"He is. It is his brother, Don Diego. He is a good
man, able, too, though not able like the Admiral. They
say the other brother, Bartholomew, who is in England or
in France, is almost as able. How dizzily turns the wheel
for some of us! Yesterday plain Diego and Bartholomew,
a would-be churchman and a shipmaster and chart-maker!
Now Don Diego--Don Bartholomew! And the two sons
watching us off from Cadiz! Pages both of them to the
Prince, and pictures to look at! `Father!' and `Noble
father! and `Forget not your health, who are our Dependance!' "

Waiting for all to start, I yet regarded that huge dazzle
upon the beach, so many landed, so many coming from
the ships, the ships themselves so great a drift of sea birds!
As for those dark folk--what should they think of all
these breakers-in from heaven? It seemed to me to-day
that despite their friendliness shown us here from the first,
despite the miracle and the fed eye and ear and the excitement,
they knew afar a pale Consternation.

At last, to drum and trumpet, we passed from shining
beach into green forest. I found myself for a moment beside
Diego Colon--not the Admiral's brother, but the young
Indian so named. Now he was Christian and clothed, and
truly the Haitiens stared at him hardly less than at the
Admiral. I greeted him and he me. He tried to speak in
Castilian but it was very hard for him, and in a moment we
slipped into Indian.

I asked him, "How did you like Spain?"

He looked at me with a remote and childlike eye and began
to speak of houses and roads and horses and oxen.

A message came from the Admiral at head of column. I
went to him. Men looked at me as I passed them. I was
ragged now, grizzle-bearded and wan, and they seemed to
say, "Is it so this strange land does them? But those first
ones were few and we are many, and it does not lie in our
fortune! Gold lies in ours, and return in splendor and
happiness." But some had more thoughtful eyes and truer
sense of wonder.

We found Guacanagari in a new, large, very clean house,
and found him lying in a great hammock with his leg bound
with cotton web, around him wives and chief men. He sat
up to greet the Admiral and with a noble and affecting air
poured forth speech and laid his hand upon his hidden hurt.

Now I knew, because Guarin had told me so, that that
wound was healed. It had given trouble--the Caribs poisoned
their darts--but now it was well. But they are
simpler minded than we, this folk, and I read Guacanagari
that he must impress the returning gods with his fidelity.
He had proved it, and while Juan Lepe was by he did not
need this mummery, but he had thought that he might need.
So, a big man evidently healthful, he sighed and winced and
half closed his eyes as though half dying still in that old
contest when he had stood by the people from the sky. I
interpreted his speech, the Admiral already understanding,
but not the surrounding cavaliers. It was a high speech or
high assurance that he had done his highest best.

"Do I not believe that, Guacanagari?" said the Admiral,
and thinking of Diego de Arana and Fray Ignatio and others
and of the good hope of La Navidad, tears came into his
eyes.

He sat upon the most honorable block of wood which was
brought him and talked to Guacanagari. Then at his gesture
one brought his presents, a mirror, a rich belt, a knife, a pair
of castanets. Guacanagari, it seemed, since the sighting of
the ships, had made collection on his part. He gave enough
gold to make lustful many an eye looking upon that scene.

The women brought food and set before the Spaniards
in the house. I found Guarin and presently we came to
be standing without the entrance--they had no doors;
sometimes they had curtains of cotton--looking upon that
strange gathering in the little middle square of the town.
So many Spaniards in the palm shadows, and the women
feeding them, and Alonso de Ojeda's hand upon the arm of
a slender brown girl with a wreath of flowers around her
head. Father Buil was within with the Admiral, truculently
and suspiciously regarding the idolater who now had left
the hammock and seemed as well of a wound as any there!
But here without were eight or ten friars, gathered together
under a palm tree, making refection and talking
among themselves. One devout brother, sitting apart and
fasting, told his beads.

Said Guarin, "I have been watching him. He is talking
to his _zeme_.--They are all butios?"

"Yes. Most of them are good men."

"What is going to happen here to all my people? Something
is over against me and my people, I feel it! Even
the cacique has fear."

"It is the dark Ignorance and the light Ignorance, the
clothed Ignorance and the naked Ignorance. I feel it too,
what you feel. But I feel, O Guarin, that the inner and
true Man will not and cannot take hurt!"

He said, "Do they come for good?"

I answered, "There is much good in their coming. Seen
from the mountain brow, enormous good, I think. In the
long run I am fain to think that all have their market here,
you no less than I, Guacanagari no less than the Admiral."

"I do not know that," he said. "It seems to me the
sunny day is dark."

I said, "In the main all things work together, and in the
end is honey."

Out they came from palm-roofed house, the Admiral of
the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy of what Indies he could find
for Spain and Spain could take, and the Indian king or
grandee or princeling. Perceiving that what he did was
appreciated for what it was, Guacanagari had recovered his
lameness. The cotton was no longer about his thigh; he
moved straight and lightly,--a big, easy Indian.

It was now well on in the afternoon, but he would go with
the Mighty Stranger, the Great Cacique his friend, to see
the ships and all the wonders. His was a childlike craving
for pure novelty and marvel.

So we went, all of us, back through vast woodland to
cerulean water. Water was deep, the _Marigalante_ rode close
in, and about and beyond her the _Santa Clara_, the _Cordera_,
the _San Juan_, the _Juana_, another _Nina_, the _Beatrix_ and
many another fair name. They were beautiful, the ships
on the gay water and about them the boats and the red
men's canoes.

We went to the _Marigalante_, I with the Admiral. Dancing
across in the boat there spoke to me Don Diego Colon,
born Giacomo Colombo, and I found him a sober, able man,
with a churchly inclination. Here rose the Marigalante,
and now we were upon it, and it was a greater ship than the
_Santa Maria_, a goodly ship, with goodly gear aboard and
goodly Spaniards. Jayme de Marchena felt the tug of
blood, of home-coming into his country.



CHAPTER XXVIII

FINDING young Sancho upon the _Marigalante_, I kept
him beside me for information's sake. He, too, had
his stories. And he asked me how Pedro and Fernando
died.

In this ship were two sets of captives, animals brought
from Spain and Indians from those fiercer islands to the
south. The _Monsalvat_ that was a freight ship had many
animals, said Sancho, cattle and swine and sheep and goats
and cocks and hens, and thirty horses. But upon the _Marigalante_,
well-penned, the Admiral had a stallion and two
mares, a young bull and a couple of heifers, and two dogs
--bloodhounds. The Caribs were yonder, five men in all.

He took me to see them. They were tall, strong, sullen
and desperate in aspect, hardier, fiercer than Indians of
these northward lands. But they were Indians, and their
guttural speech could be made out, at least in substance.
They asked with a high, contemptuous look when we meant
to slay and eat them.

"They eat men's flesh, every Caribal of them! We saw
horrid things in Guadaloupe!"

Away from these men sat or stood seven women. "They
were captives," said Sancho. "Caribs had ravished them
from other islands and they fled in Guadaloupe to us."

These women, too, seemed more strongly fibred, courageous,
high of head than the Hayti women. There was among
them one to whom the others gave deference, a chieftainess,
strong and warlike in mien, not smoothly young nor after
their notions beautiful, but with an air of sagacity and pride.
A ship boy stood with us. "That is Catalina," he said.
"Ho, Catalina!"

The woman looked at him with disdain and what she
said was, "Young fool with fool-gods!"

"They came to us for refuge," said Sancho. "We think
they are Amazons. There was an island where they fought
us like men--great bow-women! Don Alonso de Ojeda
first called this one Catalina, so now we all call her Catalina.
At first they liked us, but now that they are safe away from
Caribs--all but these five and they can't hurt them--
they sit and pine! I call it ungrateful, Catalina!"

We moved away. There came from the great cabin where
they had wine and fine sweet cakes the Admiral and Guacanagari,
with them Don Diego and three or four cavaliers.
Guarin was not with the cacique, upon the _Marigalante_.
He would not come. I had a vision of him, in the forest,
seated motionless, communing with the deepest self to
which he could reach, seeking light with the other light-seekers.

Christopherus Columbus beckoned me and I went the
round of the ship with him and others and his guest, this
far-away son of Great India. So, presently, he was taken to
view the horses and the cattle. Whoever hath seen lions
brought to a court for show hath seen some shrinking from
too-close and heard timorous asking if the bars be really
strong. And the old, wild beasts at Rome for the games.
If one came by chance upon them in a narrow quarter
there might be terror. And the bull that we goad to madness
for a game in Spain--were barriers down would come
a-scrambling! This cacique had never seen an animal larger
than a fox or a dog, Yet he stood with steadiness, though
his glance shot here and there. The stallion was restless
and fiery-eyed; the bull sent forth a bellow. "Why do they
come? What will they do here? Will you put them in the
forest? The people will be afraid to wander!"

He looked away to sky and sea and shore. "It grows
toward night," he said. "I will go back to my town."

The Admiral said, "I would first show you the Caribs,"
and took him there where they were bound. The Haytien
regarded them, but the Caribs were as contemptuously silent
as might have been Alonso de Ojeda in like circumstances.
Only as Guacanagari turned away, one spoke in a fierce,
monotonous voice. "You also, Haytien, one moon!"

"You lie! Only Caribs!" Guacanagari said back.

The cacique stood before the woman whom they called
Catalina. She broke into speech. It was cacique to
cacique. She was from Boriquen--she would return in a
canoe if she were free! Better drown than live with the
utterly un-understandable--only that they ate and drank
and laid hold of women whether these would or would not,
and were understandable that far! Gods! At first she
thought them gods; now she doubted. They were magicians.
If she were free--if she were free--if she were free!
Home--Boriquen! If not that, at least her own color and
the understandable!"

Guacanagari stood and listened. She spoke so fast--the
Admiral never became quite perfect in Indian tongues, and
few upon the _Marigalante_ were so at this time. Juan Lepe
understood. But just as he was thinking that in duty bound
he must say to the Admiral, "She is undermining reputation.
Best move away!" Guacanagari made a violent gesture
as though he would break a spell. "Where could they
come from with all that they have except from heaven?
Who can plan against gods? It is sin to think of it! _El
Almirante_ will make you happy, Boriquen woman!"

We left the women. But Guacanagari himself was not
happy, as he had been that Christmas-tide when first the
gods came, when the _Santa Maria_ was wrecked and he gave
us hospitality.

The Admiral did not see that he was unhappy. The Admiral
saw always a vast main good, and he thought it pearl
and gold in every fiber. As yet, he saw no rotted string,
no snarl to be untangled. It was his weakness, and maybe,
too, his strength.

The sunset hung over this roadstead and the shore. The
mountains glowed in it, the nearer wood fell dark, the beach
showed milky white, a knot of palms upon a horn of land
caught full gold and shone as though they were in heaven.
Over upon the _Cordera_ they were singing. The long cacique-canoe shot out from the shadow of the
_Marigalante_.

Sun dipped, night cupped hands over the world. The long
day of excitement was over. Mariners slept, adventurers
gentle and simple, the twelve friars and Father Buil. Seventeen
ships, nigh fifteen hundred men of Europe, swinging
with the tide before the land we were to make Spanish.

The watch raised a cry. Springing from his bed Juan Lepe
came on deck to find there confusion, and under the moon
in the clear water, swimming forms, swimming from us
in a kind of desperate haste and strength. There was shouting
to man the boat. One jostling against me cried that
they were the captive Indians. They had broken bonds,
lifted hatch, knocked down the watch, leaped over side.
Another shouted. No, the Caribs were safe. These were
the women--

The women--seven forms might be made out--were
not far from land. I felt tingling across to me their hope
and fear. Out of ship shadow shot after them our boat.
Strongly rowed, it seemed to gain, but they made speed
strongly, strongly. The boat got into trouble with the
shallows. The swimmers now stood and ran, now were
racers; in a moment they would touch the dry, the shining
beach. Out of boat sprang men running after them, running
across low white lines of foam. The women, that
strong woman cacique ahead, left water, raced across sand
toward forest. Two men were gaining, they caught at the
least swift woman. The dark, naked form broke from
them, leaped like a hurt deer and running at speed passed
with all into the ebony band that was forest.

Alonso de Ojeda burst into a great laugh. "Well done,
Catalina!"

The Admiral's place could ever be told by his head over
all. Moreover his warm, lifted, powerfully pulsing nature
was capable of making around him a sphere that tingled
and drew. One not so much saw him as felt him, here,
there. Now I stood beside him where he leaned over rail.
"Gone," he said. "They are gone!" He drew a deep
breath. I can swear that he, too, felt an inner joy that they
had escaped clutching.

But in the morning he sent ashore a large party under
his brother, Don Diego. We received another surprise. No
Indians on the beach, none in the forest, and when they
came to the village, only houses, a few parrots and the
gardens, dewy fresh under the sun's first streaming. No
Indians there, nor man nor woman nor child, not Guacanagari,
not Guarin, not Catalina and her crew--none! They
were gone, and we knew not where, Quisquaya being a huge
country, and the paths yet hidden from us or of doubtful
treading. But the heaped mountains rose before us, and
Juan Lepe at least could feel assured that they were gone
there. They vanished and for long we heard nothing of
them, not of Guacanagari, nor of Guarin who had saved
Juan Lepe, not of Catalina, nor any.

This neighborhood, La Navidad and the shipwreck of the
_Santa Maria_, burned Guarico and now this empty village,
perpetual reminder that in some part our Indian subjects
liked us not so well as formerly and could not be made
Christian with a breath, grew no longer to our choice.
Something of melancholy overhung for the Admiral this part
of Hispaniola. He was seeking a site for a city, but now
he liked it not here. The seventeen ships put on sail and,
a stately flight of birds greater than herons, pursued their
way, easterly now, along the coast of Hispaniola.

Between thirty and forty leagues from the ruin of La
Navidad opened to us a fair, large harbor where two rivers
entered the sea. There was a great forest and bright protruding
rock, and across the south the mountains. When
we landed and explored we found a small Indian village that
had only vaguely heard that gods had descended. Forty
leagues across these forests is a long way. They had heard
a rumor that the cacique of Guarico liked the mighty
strangers and Caonabo liked them not, but as yet knew
little more. The harbor, the land, the two rivers pleased us.
"Here we will build," quoth the Viceroy, "a city named
Isabella."



CHAPTER XXIX

CHRISTMASTIDE, a year from the sinking of the
_Santa Maria_, came to nigh two thousand Christian men
dwelling in some manner of houses by a river in a
land that, so short time before, had never heard the word
"Christmas." Now, in Spain and elsewhere, men and
women, hearing Christmas bells, might wonder, "What
are they doing--are they also going to mass--those
adventurers across the Sea of Darkness? Have they converted
the Indies? Are they moving happily in the golden,
spicy lands? Great marvel! Christ now is born there as
here!"

Juan Lepe chanced to be walking in the cool of the evening
with Don Francisco de Las Casas, a sensible, strong man,
not unread in the philosophers. He spoke to me of his son,
a young man whom he loved, who would sooner or later
come out to him to Hispaniola, if he, the elder, stayed here.
So soon as this we had begun to speak thus, "Come out to
Hispaniola." "Come out to Isabella in Hispaniola." What
a strong wind is life, leaping from continent to continent and
crying, "Home wherever I can breathe and move!" This
young man was Bartolome, then at Salamanca, at the University.
Bartolome de Las Casas, whom Juan Lepe should
live to know and work with. But this evening I heard the
father talk, as any father of any promising son.

With us, too, was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had a
story out of Mandeville of a well by the city of Polombe in
Prester John's country. If you drank of the well, though
you were dying you would never more have sickness, and
though you were white-bearded you would come young
again!

The palms waved above Isabella that was building behind
the camp by the river. It was beginning, it was planned
out; the stone church, the stone house of the Viceroy were
already breast-high. A Spanish city building, and the bells
of Europe ringing.

Out sprang the noise of a brawl.--There was that in the
Admiral that would have when it could outward no less
than inward magnificence. He could go like a Spartan or
Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance came--magnificence!
With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household.
He had no less than thirty personal servants and
retainers. Hidalgos here at Isabella had also servants,
but no one more than two or three. It was among these
folk that first arose our amazing jealousies and envies. Now
and again the masters must take part. Not the Viceroy
who in such matters went very stately, but certain of our
gentlemen. Loud and angry voices rose under the palms,
under a sky of pale gold.

Sent for, I found the Admiral lying on his bed, not yet
in his stone house but in a rich and large pavilion brought
out especially for the Viceroy and now pitched upon the
river bank, under palms. I came to him past numbers out
of that thirty. Idle here; they certainly were idle here!
With him I found a secretary, but when he could he preferred
always to write his own letters, in his small, clear,
strong hand, and now he was doing this, propped in bed,
in his brow a knot of pain. He wrote many letters. Long
afterwards I heard that it had become a saying in Spain,
"Write of your matters as often as Christopherus Columbus!"

I sat waiting for him to finish and he saw my eyes upon
yet unfolded pages strewing the table taken from the _Marigalante_
and set here beside him. "Read if you like," he said.
"The ships set sail day after to-morrow."

I took and read in part his letter to a learned man with
whom, once or twice, Jayme de Marchena had talked. It
was a long letter in which the Admiral, thinker to thinker,
set forth his second voyage and now his city building, and
at last certain things for the mind not only of Spain but of
France and Italy and England and Germany. "All lands
and all men whom so far we have come to," wrote the Admiral,
"are heathen and idolaters. In the providence of
God all such are given unto Christendom. Christendom
must take possession through the acts of Christian princes,
under the sanction of Holy Church, allowed by the Pope who
is Christ our King's Viceroy. Seeming hardship bringeth
great gain! Millions of souls converted, are baptized. Every
infant feeleth the saving water. Souls that were lost now
are found. Christ beameth on them! To that, what is it
that the earthly King of a country be changed?"

His quill traveled on over paper. Another sheet came
into my hand. I read it, then sat pondering. He sighed
with pain, pushed all aside and presently bade the secretary
forth. When the man was gone he told me of an agony
behind his eyes that now stabbed and now laid him in a
drowsiness. I did what I could for him then waited until
the access was over. It passed, and he took again his pen.

I said, "You advise that there be made a market for
Carib slaves, balancing thus the negroes the Portuguese are
bringing in, and providing a fund for our needs--"

He said, "They are eaters of men's flesh, intractable and
abominable, not like the gentler people we find hereabouts!
It is certain that before long, fleet after fleet coming, our
two thousand here growing into many thousands, more
cities than Isabella arising, commerce and life as in Europe
beginning--Well, these fiercer, Caribal islands will be overrun,
taken for Spain! What better to do with their people?
I do not wish to slay them and eat them!"

"Slaves--"

"How many Moors in Castile and Arragon, slaves and
none the worse for it, being baptized, being kindly enough
entreated! And now the Portuguese bring Negroes, and
are they the worse off, being taken from a deep damnation?
Long ago, I have read, the English were taken to Rome and
sold in the market place, and the blessed Gregory, seeing
them, cried, `Christ shall be preached in their nation!'
Whereupon he sent Augustine and all England was saved.--
Look you, this world is rude and worketh rudely! But it
climbs in the teeth of its imperfections!"

"I do not doubt that," I said. "When it wills to climb."

"I do but lay it before the Sovereigns," he answered.
"I do not know what they will think of it there. But truly
I know not what else to do with these Asiatics when they
withstand us! And even in slavery they must gain from
Christians! What matters masters when they find the True
Master?"

Juan Lepe brooded still while the pen scratched and
scratched across the page. The noise ceased. I looked up
to see if he were in pain again, and met gray-blue eyes as
longing as a child's. "What I would," he said, "is that
the Lord would give to me forever to sail a great ship, and
to find, forever to find! The sea is wider than the land,
and it sends its waves upon all lands. Not Viceroy, but
the Navigator, the Finder--"

Juan Lepe also thought that there streamed his Genius.
Here he was able, but there played the Fire. But he, like
many another, had bound himself. Don Cristoval Colon--
Viceroy--and eighths and tenths!



CHAPTER XXX

TWELVE of our ships went home to Spain.

February wheeled by. March was here, and every
day the sun sent us more heat.

The Indians around us still were friendly--women and
all. From the first there was straying in the woods with
Indian women. Doubtless now, in the San Salvador islands,
in Cuba and in Hispaniola, among those Guaricos fled from
us to the mountains, would be infants born of Spanish
fathers. Juan Lepe contemplated that filling in the sea between
Asia and Europe with the very blood.

Sickness broke out. It was not such as that first sickness
at La Navidad, but here were many more to lie ill. Besides
Juan Lepe, we now possessed three physicians. They
were skillful, they labored hard, we all labored. Men died
of the malady, but no great number. But now among the
idle of mind and soul and the factious arose the eternal
murmur. Not heaven but hell, these new lands! Not wealth
and happy ease, but poverty and miserable toil! Not forever
new spectacle and greedy wonder, but tiresome river,
forest and sea, tiresome blue heaven, tiresome delving and
building, tiresome rules, restrictions, commandments, yeas
and nays! Parties arose, two main parties, and within each
lesser differings.



 

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