The Voyage Home - 2

The Voyage Home - 2

Columbus was very curious about the island of Matinino,—[Martinique]—which was the

one said to be inhabited only by women, and he wished very much to go there; but the

caravels were leaking badly, the crews were complaining, and he was reluctantly

compelled to shape his course for Spain. He sailed to the north-east, being anxious

apparently to get into the region of westerly winds which he correctly guessed would be

found to the north of the course he had sailed on his outward voyage. By the 17th of

January he was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this time had no terrors

for him. From his journal the word "gold" suddenly disappears; the Viceroy and

Governor-General steps off the stage; and in his place appears the sea captain, watching

the frigate birds and pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the

breezes that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May. He had a good deal

of trouble with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to the changing winds and

currents; but he made always from fifty to seventy miles a day in a direction between

north-by-east and north-north-east. The Pinta was not sailing well, and he often had to

wait for her to come up with him; and he reflected in his journal that if Martin Alonso

Pinzon had taken as much pains to provide himself with a good mast in the Indies as he

had to separate himself from the Admiral, the Pinta would have sailed better.

And so he went on for several days, with the wind veering always south and south-west,

and pointing pretty steadily to the north-east. On February 4th he changed his course, and

went as near due east as he could. They now began to find themselves in considerable

doubt as to their position. The Admiral said he was seventy-five leagues to the south of

Flores; Vincenti Pinzon and the pilots thought that they had passed the Azores and were

in the neighbourhood of Madeira. In other words, there was a difference of 600 miles

between their estimates, and the Admiral remarks that "the grace of God permitting, as

soon as land is seen, it will be known who has calculated the surest."

A great quantity of birds that began to fly about the ship made him think that they were

near land, but they turned out to be the harbingers of a storm. On Tuesday, February 12th,

the sea and wind began to rise, and it continued to blow harder throughout that night and

the next day. The wind being aft he went under bare poles most of the night, and when

day came hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not been so sure of

the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in danger of being lost. The next day

the sea, instead of going down, increased in roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which

kept breaking right over the ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in order to

run before the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into the trough of the seas. All

through Thursday he ran thus under the half hoisted staysail, and he could see the Pinta

running also before the wind, although since she presented more surface, and was able to

carry a little more sail than the Nina, she was soon lost to sight. The Admiral showed

lights through the night, and this time there was no lack of response from Martin Alonso;

and for some part of that dark and stormy night these two humanly freighted scraps of

wood and cordage staggered through the gale showing lights to each other; until at last

the light from the Pinta disappeared. When morning came she was no longer to be seen;

and the wind and the sea had if anything increased. The Nina was now in the greatest

danger. Any one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it had broken fairly across her, would

have sunk her; and she went swinging and staggering down into the great valleys and up

into the hills, the steersman's heart in his mouth, and the whole crew in an extremity of

fear. Columbus, who generally relied upon his seamanship, here invoked external aid,

and began to offer bargains to the Almighty. He ordered that lots should be cast, and that

he upon whom the lot fell should make a vow to go on pilgrimage to Santa Maria de

Guadaloupe carrying a white candle of five pounds weight. Same dried peas were

brought, one for every member of the crew, and on one of them a cross was marked with

a knife; the peas were well shaken and were put into a cap. The first to draw was the

Admiral; he drew the marked pea, and he made the vow. Lots were again drawn, this

time for a greater pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Loretto in Ancona; and the lot fell on a

seaman named Pedro de Villa,—the expenses of whose pilgrimage Columbus promised

to pay. Again lots were drawn for a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Clara of Moguer,

the pilgrim to watch and pray for one night there; and again the lot fell on Columbus. In

addition to these, every one, since they took themselves for lost, made some special and

private vow or bargain with God; and finally they all made a vow together that at the first

land they reached they would go in procession in their shirts to pray at an altar of Our

Lady.

The scene thus conjured up is one peculiar to the time and condition of these people, and

is eloquent and pathetic enough: the little ship staggering and bounding along before the

wind, and the frightened crew, who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled

together under the forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making

vows upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by their offers of

candles and pilgrimages. Poor Christopher, standing in his drenched oilskins and clinging

to a piece of rigging, had his own searching of heart and examining of conscience. He

was aware of the feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been

successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits of it; his desire

to prove true what he had promised was so great that, in his own graphic phrase, "it

seemed to him that every gnat could disturb and impede it"; and he attributed this anxiety

to his lack of faith in God. He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar

extremity, by considering on the other hand what favours God had shown him, and by

remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits of his discovery were to be

dedicated. But in the meantime here he was in a ship insufficiently ballasted (for she was

now practically empty of provisions, and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and

water casks with salt water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest such as he

had never experienced in his life. As a last resource, and in order to give his wonderful

news a chance of reaching Spain in case the ship were lost, he went into his cabin and

somehow or other managed to write on a piece of parchment a brief account of his

discoveries, begging any one who might find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns. He

tied up the parchment in a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without any one

seeing him, and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the sea, which the crew took to

be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion. Then he went back on deck and watched the

last of the daylight going and the green seas swelling and thundering about his little ship,

and thought anxiously of his two little boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what

would become of them if he were lost. The next morning the wind had changed a little,

though it was still very high; but he was able to hoist up the bonnet or topsail, and

presently the sea began to go down a little. When the sun rose they saw land to the eastnorth-

east. Some of them thought it was Madeira, others the rock of Cintra in Portugal;

the pilots said it was the coast of Spain, the Admiral thought it was the Azores; but at any

rate it was land of some kind. The sun was shining upon it and upon the tumbling sea;

and although the waves were still raging mast-high and the wind still blowing a hard gale,

the miserable crew were able to hope that, having lived through the night, they could live

through the day also. They had to beat about to make the land, which was now ahead of

them, now on the beam, and now astern; and although they had first sighted it at sunrise

on Friday morning it was early on Monday morning, February 18th, before Columbus

was able to cast anchor off the northern coast of an island which he discovered to be the

island of Santa Maria in the Azores. On this day Columbus found time to write a letter to

Luis de Santangel, the royal Treasurer, giving a full account of his voyage and

discoveries; which letter he kept and despatched on the 4th of March, after he had arrived

in Lisbon. Since it contained a postscript written at the last moment we shall read it at

that stage of our narrative. The inhabitants of Santa Maria received the voyagers with

astonishment, for they believed that nothing could have lived through the tempest that

had been raging for the last fortnight. They were greatly excited by the story of the

discoveries; and the Admiral, who had now quite recovered command of himself, was

able to pride himself on the truth of his dead-reckoning, which had proved to be so much

more accurate than that of the pilots.