Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

fore ventured two hundred leagues from the coast, and these wretched sailors had already come eight hundred leagues. The two affections we call nostalgia and abhorrence of the sea spread among the crew like a pestilence, each taking the contagion from his comrade, until not one was exempt. In their floating prison feelings of enmity arose among them, while all shared in hatred of the admiral who had led them into such dire straits. With wrathful eyes and curse-laden lips they became openly rebellious. No outward influence was there to calm their minds. They who had hailed with gladness the first circling birds beheld. them now with indifference. Not even when the wind changed were their apprehensions allayed. Although Columbus welcomed any breeze, however contrary, because it showed the possibility of progress in some direction, to them the wind seemed too fierce when it bore them away from their loved Andalusia, and too weak to cheer them when it blew to ward home. While the dead calm palsied all progress, they writhed like men possessed; and when it rippled the face of the waters, they fancied themselves driven by blind hazard toward the abyss, and suffered the agonies of the stake and the searing brand.

"They were right who called this Genoese a madman," muttered the sailors. Instead of being himself bound, he, with a madman's cunning, had bound his opponents to his own sad fate. Inspired by greed alone, he looked for power and riches impossible of attainment to a man of his mean talents and lack of capability. Only a foreign outcast, like the admiral, could thus lightly sacrifice valuable Spanish lives to the vain schemes bred in his maggoty brain. The sovereigns had distrusted him; but their courtiers, more vainglorious than sapient, had misled them, and induced them in their goodness of heart to encourage this scatter-brained lunatic. It would be a good thing to lay hold on him and throw him overboard, to make his reckoning with the sharks that hovered anear the caravels in instinctive anticipation of their approaching feast. There was no such thing as land in all that Shadowy Sea; its fancied allurements were but leading them on to be swallowed up in the deep. They had sailed many weary leagues, run long courses day by day, traversed endless spaces with steadfast prow; yet had found naught but watery wastes in that barren expanse, as void of islands and continents as the heaving solitude of the Noachian deluge. There is nothing so epidemic as fear, naught so contagious. These things grew as they were repeated from lip to lip. By his own conduct Columbus fed the doubts he had sown. He slept not, and sleeplessness is a sure sign of madness. He took no food-a proof of hal

lucination, they cried. He was solitary amid scenes where companionship is craved; he prayed for hours like a recluse, which showed his uselessness as a pilot. He was proud of having taken the minor orders of the church, as forestalling a bodily death by dying unto men; like a magician he traced mystic symbols among his papers; he foretold strange events like a soothsayer; from the commonest occurrences he drew the wildest conclusions, like some wizard divining the fortunes of life by palmistry; and he predicted good luck that came not, like a gipsy fortune-teller.

In consequence of all this, the murmurs became threats presaging mutiny. Columbus met this feeling among his crew with the disdain befitting his inner conviction of a fortunate outcome to the voyage. When the crew remonstrated, he answered them patiently; when they thronged to listen, he fascinated them by the flow of his eloquence. After he had overcome their dread of the eruptions of Teyde by telling them of Etna and Vesuvius; their dismay at the variation of the needle by his hypothesis of the shifting of the constellations in whose midst the north star shone; their fear of the sea-tangle by announcing it to be a certain sign of land; their terror when the trade-wind blew unchangingly by predictions of a contrary breeze when they should reach other latitudes; their affright when meteors fell as from aërial volcanoes by theories borrowed from his cosmographic knowledge; their timorousness of the heavy ground-swell, when scarce a breath of air stirred, by half-prophetic conjectures of currents deep in the bowels of the ocean; meeting their apprehensions with facts drawn from his own experience, or by brilliant sallies of imagination, or the incisive utterances of his keen Italian wit, and calculations more or less exact based on his knowledge of mathematics-having done all this, he would become, as it were, transfigured by the ardor of inward faith, offering to them, now voluptuous paradises like Mohammed, now golden cities like Marco Polo; now happy eclogues like Virgil, now fortunate eras like the Cumaan Sibyl; now the spreading of God's holy name among far-off peoples like David or Isaiah, now divine raptures like St. Francis of Assisi; now schemes to win back the Holy Sepulcher like Godfrey of Bouillon, being himself at once cosmographer, mathematician, clairvoyant, prophet, and trader.

But when he withdrew from their sight, when his words were unremembered, they congregated in the forecastle and fell into their old ways, venturing to propose schemes of return; for they had gone further than ever man had gone, and had found abundant proof that i these latitudes there was naught but endles and sky. Punctilious, like all good Spani

timorous, after the wont of sailors; loquacious, like all good Andalusians, the real motive which, after all, defeated their schemes of turning back was what we call "black shame," the dread of being called cowards, an epithet inapplicable to such men as they, who for two months had sailed the Shadowy Sea, defying the fury of the universe, and tempting even the divine wrath by their unparalleled audacity. The established fact is that they held a meeting for the purpose of protesting, and positively, though perhaps not very respectfully, demanded that the ships be turned eastward and homeward.

In these incidents many writers have found material enough for dramas and romances of the most thrilling interest, wherein they picture an active mutiny, ending with a melodramatic appeal by Columbus for three days more of grace, after which, if the Indies were not encountered, the deceiver was to surrender at discretion to the rebels, who had already sworn to quarter his body and to cast it to the fishes. This done, they were to turn back to Spain, where they were assured of a triumphal welcome for so just a punishment of this artful cozener. The story remained in vogue a long time, and the public repeated it. Those most familiar with this interesting period of our story have feared to deprive it of a dramatic element by taking away this picture. But in all conscience we must say that, while our scrupulous investigations as a historian confirm the grumblings and discontent, there was no mutiny, if we are to credit the testimony of eye-witnesses written and avouched at the time. There was much murmuring against the admiral, and even a demand that he should turn back, but no insults or insubordination, much less revolt or disorder.

Yet the opposition to Columbus's purposes and course, even if not disrespectful and riotous, must have been formidable since the admiral found himself forced to call a council, and to seek its advice touching the continuance of the voyage. Pedro Bilbao, a Biscayan, one of the crew of the admiral's caravel, relates that he had often heard that some of the sailors wanted to turn back but were dissuaded by the admiral, who promised them rewards. Garcia Alonso of Palos heard the men say among themselves that they were lost, whereupon the admiral answered that he would soon give them "land ho!" In the judicial proceedings in which many of the shipmates of Columbus testified, only one told of a mutinous rising, but from hearsay merely, for he did not take part in this first voyage. After long study of this incident, I agree with the account of the scene given by the erudite investigator Fernandez Duro, in his essay touching the relations between Pinzon and the admiral in setting on foot the first ex

ploration of the Shadowy Sea, and effecting the discovery of America. The whole narrative of the academic historian rests on the sincere and trustworthy testimony of the pilot Hernan Perez Mateos, given in his retirement at Santo Domingo, when the events were fresh in his memory, and when he, an aged man, soon to appear before the Divine Judge, realized the punishment of falsehood in the other world and its dishonor in this. In fact, the crew of the flagship wanted to turn back, and persisted clamorously in their petition. There are some who would belittle the blindness of those men by the ingenious assertion that they demanded to return, not to Spain, but to the imagined islands left on each hand by the discoverer's pertinacity in steering due westward, unlike Pinzon, who made frequent lateral excursions because his ship was swifter than the admiral's caravel, which, however, he kept in sight. Indeed, the lieutenant advocated bearing a little to the southward in that weary search for the west, but without going beyond mere advice. The sailors of the Santa Maria were probably less deferential than Pinzon when the admiral hurriedly called the council, if we accept the judicial investigation, where the facts of such a complex story as this of the first voyage are so conflictingly told. So, while the two caravels were tacking to and fro, and the flag-ship was holding a steady course, Columbus addressed the assembly, relating what had occurred and truthfully setting forth the demands of his crew. Thereupon Pinzon gave his views simply and fully, adding his condemnation of the malcontents. "Señor," cried the brave shipmaster of Palos, addressing the chief, "your grace should hang half a dozen of these fellows and throw them overboard, and if this likes you not, I and my brothers will bear down on them and do it; for a fleet obeying the orders of such exalted princes must not return without good tidings." Hearing this, in plain Castilian, from a man of such large experience, the grumblers consented to share Columbus's fortunes and returned to orderly obedience.

When the admiral witnessed the moral power of Pinzon over the crew of the flagship, he thanked him with suffused eyes and saddened voice, saying," May fortune ever attend you!" After this benediction, turning to his comrades, and doubtless feeling in his heart that they were not far wrong in view of the indefinite prolongation of the voyage, he added, " Martin Alonso, let us do these hidalgos right; let us sail on a few days more, and if therein we sight not land, we will give another order touching our course." The lieutenant deemed this a needless concession to the malcontents, and in a voice that rose above the tumult of wind and wave he cried, "Forward! forward! forward!" This

thrice-repeated cry, from one of such sturdy will and iron mold, saved the expedition, even as his tireless efforts had aided and equipped it at the outset. Whatever the later acts of Pinzon may have been, let us suspend judgment upon them; it behoves us now to declare that by his steadfast resoluteness in this supreme hour he merits an equal share with Columbus in the unfading glory of the discovery of America.

But in truth none of those who took part in the discovery are undeserving of reward, even though they felt the pangs of a terror born of the doubts inseparable from so daring and uncertain an enterprise. Although the sailors knew the duration of the voyage, they were ignorant of the actual distance they had come. Columbus, as we have said, kept the real runs a secret. On October 1 the pilot of the flagship reckoned that they had run from the meridian of the island of Ferro some 578 leagues, while the admiral knew that they had come 707 leagues. About this same time the Pinta's reckoning was 634 leagues from Ferro, while the Niña made it 540. While sailing thus, one of the Pinzons, from the masthead, cried, "Land!" The cry fell like a paschal peal upon the ears of these mariners, who had given themselves up for lost and doomed to die in the fathomless vast. When Columbus heard the glad cry, he kneeled in rapture on the deck, and with devoutly clasped hands, lifting his joy-filled eyes to heaven, intoned the "Gloria in Excelsis" to the author of all created things.

But all this fervor was in vain. No land appeared; rather the semblance of it vanished as they drew near the spot where the deceptive mirage had beguiled their sight and hopes. A phenomenon like that often produced by an ardent sun among the Libyan sands had been repeated upon the Atlantic. Twice the two caravels, which went ahead at the flag-ship's orders, seemed to behold a dim continent near by, as unreal in sooth as the vague longings and unsubstantial visions of the mind. The sovereigns, among the orders given previous to the sailing of the expedition, had assigned 10,000 maravedís to him who should first see land. Even as the crew, before their fruitless revolt, frustrated in its inception, saw naught before them save the abyss of annihilation, so now, by one of those common mental reactions, all felt the pulsings of a newer and higher life, and beheld the signs of a new world amid the waves. And this assurance, following hard upon their old despondency, took such deep hold on their minds, that they imagined the steadfast westerly course commanded by their leader was leaving undiscovered islands on each side of their track. We may thus comprehend how the sailors of the Niña were so far led away as to fire a gun and to hoist their

flag before a mere mirage. To avert the recurrence of such mistakes, the admiral gave orders peremptorily excluding from the royal prize any one who should cry "Land!" if his announcement were not verified within three days. The frequent raising of false hopes might well bring about renewed disheartenment, which, by begetting outbreaks, would defeat the purpose of the expedition. But to humor the Pinzons after their undeception, and as they continued to tack to and fro some fifteen leagues around the flag-ship, by reason of their impatience and the greater speed of their vessels, Columbus heeded their wishes and, deviating a little from the latitude of Ferro, which he had hitherto followed, turned toward the southwest. As the middle of October drew nigh, birds flocked around the caravels in increasing numbers, and with each day's progress the hopes of making land grew stronger. Pinzon showed the admiral that it was indispensable not only to shape their course by the stars but also by the flight of the birds, as the Portuguese had done before, whereby the latter had discovered the islands already added to their far-stretching dominions. For the birds not only hovered about the ships in the infinite solitude, gladdening the eye with their gay plumage and filling the air with their twitterings, but, like true guiding pilots, went on before toward the land.

IT was the afternoon of October 11, 1492. The signs of land now made it high time to prepare for the approaching disembarkation, for which all needful measures had been ripely planned by the admiral, who in fifteen years had never for an instant doubted the realization of his predictions. He began by heaving the lead, and found bottom instead of the hitherto unfathomable deep. He eagerly scanned the cloud-banks, those mysterious counterfeits of coast and shore so keenly watched by the practical sailor. He also attentively regarded every faint breath of air, and was reassured; for the breezes shifted and blew from every quarter, a sure indication of the irregular conformation and the sinuosity of land near by, in contrast with the winds of the watery waste whose sameness fitly lent constancy to its currents of air. He ordered the sails to be lowered when he should give the word, the other caravels running alongside the flag-ship and heaving to. In these orders he laid stress on the need of coming within unmistakeable range of the shore before crying "Land!" and he added a gaudy trifle in the shape of a satin jerkin to the prize offered by the sovereigns for the first announcement of the discovery. Had Columbus kept the course he laid on leaving Ferro, his landfall would have been in the Florida of today, that is, upon the main continent; but owing

to the deflection suggested by the Pinzons, and tardily accepted by him, it was his hap to strike an island, very fair to look upon, but small and insignificant when compared with the vast island-world in whose waters he was already sailing. Let us not, however, forestall events, but confine ourselves to the historical narrative in due order of time. Each moment brought a revelation. A solitary half-tame turtle-dove flew near them. The dove was soon followed by a floating leafy reed, wherein, gazing upon it from the deck of the Santa Maria, Columbus pictured some broad sea-marsh clinging to the skirts of the firm land. Scarcely had the crew of the flagship seen this green reed, when from the Niña was sighted a branch of hawthorn, such as crowns the hedge-rows of Andalusia, laden with ripe, lustrous berries of coral and crimson. But the Pinta was the most favored of them all, for she met with an object that positively demonstrated the existence of human beings near by, amid the endless sea that stretched around the voyagers. A floating log was seen; the net was cast, and like a fish snared in its meshes the log was brought on board. It proved to be skilfully carved, another sure promise of finding the land they sought. The tidings were borne to Columbus. In the full assurance that he was nearing land, he determined to retire to his cabin and to hold communion with his inmost thoughts. But first he knelt in prayer.

IT was eight in the evening of Thursday, October 11. Columbus, after having performed his daily devotions and refreshed himself, went on deck and eagerly scanned the western space. He stood alone. He had scarcely slept since leaving Palos, and none of his comrades slumbered that night. Standing there, apart, for each sailor was keeping watch in his own place, and performing his allotted duties, after an hour of intense self-communion, with eyes fixed on the surrounding scene, a glad cry leaped from his heart. He had seen a light on land, a light unlike the stars above or the phosphorescent gleam of the waves. He summoned Pedro Gutierrez, chamberlain in the king's service, who had joined him at Palos, and who by reason of his dignity and rank was his constant associate, telling him how his eyes had seen a light, and asking him if indeed he too could see it with his less excited eyes. The chamberlain answered that he saw the light, but in his joy Columbus could scarce credit this assurance, so welcome to his own agitated mind. To be still more certain, the two called to them the purveyor of the fleet, Rodrigo de Segovia. But, probably because he was expected to see something, he saw nothing. The horizon re

lapsed into obscurity, and Columbus into his old anxiety. The little squadron sailed swiftly on before a brisk and favorable breeze. Although close-reefed, the steady wind wafted them on their course. Columbus passed half the night on deck, motionless and chill as a statue, wrapped in ecstatic thought. He knew that the Pinta and the Niña, being swifter ships, were the more likely first to sight land, and so he allowed them to precede him, thinking of naught in that supreme hour save the speediest realization of the coveted discovery. That good fortune fell to the Pinta. At about two in the morning of October 12, amid the sheen of the stars and the phosphorescence of the sea, one of the crew, a native of Seville, keen of sight and with eyes accustomed like some nocturnal creature to the darkness, cried, “Land!” And when he uttered this cry, Martin Alonso Pinzon fired a gun, whose resounding echoes carried consolation to the feverishly expectant sailors, who had well nigh lost faith in the evidence of their own senses, after their prolonged doubts and trials.

Columbus donned his richest apparel, flung upon his shoulders a cloak of rosy purple, grasped in one hand the sword of combat and in the other the Redeemer's cross, and, standing beneath the sovereign banner, spread like a canopy above his head, and gold-embroidered with the royal initials and the Castilian crown, he assembled all the chief comrades of his voyage about him as in a peerless court pageant. Then, disembarking, he knelt upon the land, raised his eyes heavenward, and with uplifted arms joined with his followers in a Te Deum. The miracle was wrought at last, and wrought by faith. He who pens these words, on reading the lines of the great poet Schiller upon Columbus, found therein a philosophical thought, as original as profound, calling upon the discoverer to press ever onward, for a new world will surely arise for him, inasmuch as whatever is promised by genius is always fulfilled by nature. And, musing thereon, I thus expanded that thought as a fitting close to this part of my story of the discovery: When I regard this achievement, the most living, evident, and effulgent lesson it bears is the triumph of Faith. To cross the seas of life, naught suffices save the bark of Faith. In that bark the undoubting Columbus set sail, and at his journey's end found a new world. Had that world not then existed, God would have created it in the solitude of the Atlantic, if to no other end than to reward the faith and the constancy of that great man. America was discovered because Columbus possessed a living faith in his ideal, in himself, and in his God!

Emilio Castelar.

WHEN ANGRY, COUNT A HUNDRED.

[graphic][merged small]

Alfred (slightly embarrassed): Miss Rosewarne, I hope you will believe me when I say that I'm not to blame for this. Until I read your name in the billet handed me as I came into the house, I had no idea that you were to be here. And yet, if I had known, what could I have done? One can free himself from a dinner engagement only by means of suicide. Our short-lived romance was quite unknown to anybody but ourselves; Mrs. Leclerc supposed that she was doing me a great favorkind hostess that she is-in giving me a place next to you at her table. Oh, how happy it would have made me a few weeks earlier! I confess that just now, when I read your name, I felt a sudden, unreasonable sort of thrill. Not of hope, of course. Probably it was some kind of reflex action of despair, not altogether unpleasant. You took my arm silently. All the way down-stairs I was trying to judge whether you were annoyed or indifferent at this unexpected meeting; but you gave no sign. I have not forgotten that, a fortnight ago, you said you never would speak to me again; and heaven defend me from expecting the impossible, that a woman should change her mind, or speak when she had resolved not to do so! I shall not ask you to talk to me,

I am afraid that you would not say anything kind if you should,- but I beg as a great favor, not to me, but to Mrs. Leclerc, who has done nothing to offend you, that you will appear to be on the ordinary terms of acquaintance with me.

Eva (regards him for an instant in silence, takes up her bouquet, examines it, and lays it down upon the table again).

Alfred: I wish to spare you as much as possible. I will gladly do more than my share of the talking. In those other days, when we

[ocr errors]

were friends, I never had much practice at that, but I dare say I can manage it. Ah! I have an idea - not a very brilliant one, perhaps; but it may serve. Miss Rosewarne of course it is an absurdity, but it may be the best means for our-pardon the pronounour charitable purpose toward Mrs. Leclerc. This is it: I once heard of a man who, for some reason or other, had nothing to say one evening at table. So he turned to his neighbor and began to count one, two, three, four, with expression. Will you do that-for the sake of our hostess? It commits you to nothing. It surely is n't talking to me. What information can I get from hearing the numerals recited in the tones of polite society? I know that you are offended with me, perhaps with good reason; but the philosophers advise one, "When angry, count a hundred." You will surely not mind counting the hundred aloud? It will save the situation. Once more, let me ask you to do so for the sake of Mrs. Leclerc.

Eva (assents by a bend of her golden head). Alfred: Thank you-if I may presume so far. I am glad that I never vowed not to speak to you; it seems to me that there are so many things to be said. And since I expect to sail for Europe in a few days, to be gone indefinitely, perhaps, like any other condemned man, I may be allowed a few last words.

Eva: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Alfred: You know that I loved you with my whole heart

Eva (with haste): Eight, nine

Alfred: And now, at this moment, trying to recall the beginning of the end, I cannot find any reason why you and I should be farther apart than if the Atlantic were already between us. How did the trouble arise? The cloud was not so large as a man's hand; it was very small, microscopic-perhaps about the size of your own hand. But it completely covered the heavens for me. But to you, of course, it made no difference. When a cloud comes between the earth and the sun, it is only the terrestrials who put up their umbrellas. The sun continues to shine.

Eva (pensively): Ten, eleven, twelve.

Alfred: I did not ask you to explain to me in what way I had displeased you, nor to divide your part from mine in the quarrel. You are still angry with me, but I shall always be grateful to you. For a few days I lived in Paradise; and it is n't every man who can say as

« AnkstesnisTęsti »