His illness

His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known that he was
dying. He was not without friends, among them the faithful Diego Mendez, his son
Ferdinand, and a few others. His lodging was in a small house in an unimportant street of
Valladolid, now called the "Calle de Colon"; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be
seen by curious eyes. As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by
Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on the 20th May
1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.
. . . And as strange thoughts
Grow with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes
And new-found agate urns fresh as day . . .
. . . we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew deeper about him, as
the sounds of the world, the noises from the sunny street, grew fainter, and the images
and sounds of memory clearer and louder. Perhaps as he lay there with closed eyes he
remembered things long forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico
Dritto di Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his childish feet
used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the drowning swish of waters and sudden
roar of breakers sounding to anxiously strained ears in the still night; bright sunlit
pictures of faraway tropical shores, with handsome olive figures glistening in the sun; the
sight of strange faces, the sound of strange speech, the smell of a strange land; the glitter
of gold; the sudden death-shriek breaking the stillness of some sylvan glade; the sight of
blood on the grass . . . . The Admiral's face undergoes a change; there is a stir in the
room; some one signs to the priest Gaspar, who brings forth his sacred wafer and holy
oils and administers the last sacraments. The wrinkled eyelids flutter open, the sea-worn
voice feebly frames the responses; the dying eyes are fixed on the crucifix; and—"In
manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum." The Admiral is dead.
He was in his fifty-sixth year, already an old man in body and mind; and his death went
entirely unmarked except by his immediate circle of friends. Even Peter Martyr, who was
in Valladolid just before and just after it, and who was writing a series of letters to
various correspondents giving all the news of his day, never thought it worth while to
mention that Christopher Columbus was dead. His life flickered out in the completest
obscurity. It is not even known where he was first buried; but probably it was in the
Franciscan convent at Valladolid. This, however, was only a temporary resting-place; and
a few years later his body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las
Cuevas at Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual chauntings. After
that it was translated to the cathedral in San Domingo; rested there for 250 years, and
then, on the cession of that part of the island to France, the body was removed to Cuba.
But the Admiral was by this time nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also were
brother Bartholomew and son Diego, and Diego's son, all collected together in that place.
There were various examinations of the bone-boxes; one, supposed to be the Admiral's,
was taken to Cuba and solemnly buried there; and lately, after the conquest of the island
in the Spanish-American War, this box of bones was elaborately conveyed to Seville,
where it now rests.
But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made new
discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which bore to them
authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral's and not his grandson's; and in
spite of the Academy of History at Madrid, it is indeed far from unlikely that the
Admiral's dust does not lie in Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still. Whole books have
been written about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about them,
experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and meantime the dust
of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was committed in the transference to
Cuba, is not even collected all in one box. A sacrilegious official acquired some of it
when the boxes were opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who
have preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver. Thus a bit of him is worn by an
American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies in a glass vial in a New York
mansion; other pinches in the Lennox Library, New York, in the Vatican, and in the
University of Pavia. In such places, if the Admiral should fail to appear at the first note of
their trumpets, must the Angels of the Resurrection make search.