Part 10 (1/2)
The fitting out of the s.h.i.+ps restored his spirits considerably. Whenever Christopher had to do with boats and sea preparations he was in his element. He now grew optimistic, and, with his usual fatal habit of promising great results, he told his Sevilla acquaintances that he expected to circ.u.mnavigate the world. Fatal habit, yes; but it meant that he still kept that rich imagination, without which he never would have made his first voyage.
Meanwhile, he realized that he was getting old, and that he might never come back from this trip. His thoughts often turned to his native Genoa, where he had played so happily as a child in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; so, one day he sat down and generously wrote to the authorities of Genoa that, should his claims against the Spanish Crown ever be settled, a part of his money was to be used in paying the Genoese tax on wheat and wine, so that the poor might buy these two staples at a lower price.
Finally all was ready; four small, weather-beaten s.h.i.+ps; a crew of one hundred and fifty men and boys; a few months' provisions. His brother Bartholomew, not very willingly, and his son Fernando, almost too eagerly, accompanied him. This, his fourth and last voyage, started from Cadiz on May 9, 1502.
CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST VOYAGE
Fernando Columbus, though only a lad of fourteen, noted every new experience with intelligent delight. He had his father's pa.s.sion for writing things down. As it was the result of personal observation, Fernando's account of the fourth voyage may be accepted as more reliable than many other items he has left us concerning the Admiral's history.
Among other things, Fernando says that the little fleet intended starting its search at the outlet of the Gulf of Paria, and then following the land west until they came to the straits leading into the Indian Ocean; but while approaching the Caribbean Islands, his father discovered that one of the vessels was in need of repairs; for which reason he headed for San Domingo, where he hoped to purchase a better caravel.
As Columbus had been told _not_ to stop there till his return trip, he sent one of the faster s.h.i.+ps ahead with a letter to Governor Ovando, explaining that he wanted to buy another s.h.i.+p, and also that he was seeking protection from a hurricane that he saw approaching. Knowing the peculiarities of weather in those regions, he was so sure of the storm that he advised Ovando to hold back any vessels that might be about to depart for Spain.
Our weather-wise old Admiral was not mistaken in his prophecy. A furious West Indian hurricane broke on the last day of June; but his poor little s.h.i.+ps, instead of lying safe in the shelter of San Domingo harbor, were exposed to all the ravages of the storm. Why? Because Ovando had refused to let him enter the port! A cruel insult; but the Admiral was too busy just then to brood over it. He must hastily draw in under the lee of the land and wait for the hurricane to pa.s.s.
It was not the sort that pa.s.sed, for it stayed and stayed till it was worn out by its own fury. ”Eighty-eight days,” Columbus wrote to his sovereign, ”did this fearful tempest continue, during which I was at sea and saw neither sun nor stars. My s.h.i.+ps lay exposed with sails torn; and anchors, cables, rigging, boats, and a quant.i.ty of provisions lost....
Other tempests have I experienced, but none of so long duration or so frightful as this.”
And all this perilous time, when men and vessels narrowly escaped going to the bottom, the discoverer of the New World was denied the privilege of the only seaport in it! It makes one's blood boil, even to-day, to think that at San Domingo the Comendador Ovando and the whole group of ungrateful landsmen went safely to bed every night in the very houses that they had hated Columbus for making them build, while he was las.h.i.+ng about on the furious waves, thinking his other three s.h.i.+ps lost, and expecting every minute a similar fate for his own!
The eighty-eight days, fortunately, were not continuously stormy; there were occasional lulls. It was the end of June when Columbus had asked for shelter; not till the middle of July did the first clear weather come. Then the scattered, battered boats reunited as by a miracle, and found themselves near the ”Queen's Garden” islands south of Cuba. Let us leave them there patching their boats and enjoying a bit of suns.h.i.+ne while we see what has been happening at ungrateful San Domingo.
Ovando had been on the island a month and a half when Columbus came along asking permission to land. Whether this was refused through the new governor's ugly nature alone, or whether he believed Columbus's prophecy of bad weather merely an excuse to land, is not known. Certain it is that, although the Spanish monarchs thought San Domingo could get along better without the Admiral, they never intended him to be turned off when a violent hurricane was pending. Ovando evidently did not believe in the hurricane; besides, he did not want Columbus to find out that the new governors were managing no better than he had managed. In this respect there was nothing to be proud of, else Ovando would surely have believed in the hurricane. Bobadilla had been a miserable failure; and he himself had not been there long enough to make any improvements, except the detestable one of sending for African negroes to replace Indian slaves!
One thing, however, had turned out a little better than any one expected, and that was the gold mine near which the town of San Domingo had been built. When Columbus's warning about the storm came, eighteen caravels lay in the harbor ready to start for Spain with eighteen hundredweight of gold. One nugget alone, Las Casas tells us, weighed thirty-five pounds. Out of all this treasure, Columbus's share was forty pounds, and that was set aside and loaded on the poorest, leakiest caravel of the lot, called _The Needle_, to be sent to Spain and to remain there until he should appear to claim it.
Ovando, like Columbus, wanted the colony to appear profitable in the eyes of the monarchs, and was eager to start off this first golden cargo, also all the spoils he had filched from the natives since his arrival. Then, too, the Comendador Bobadilla was already aboard, and Ovando was eager to be rid of him and also of Francisco Roldan, who never had been, and never could be, of use in any colony; so Ovando, when he read Columbus's warning, threw back his head and exclaimed, ”Nonsense! Let them start just the same!”
And start they did; and scarcely were the vessels out of sight when the hurricane broke. Of the eighteen s.h.i.+ps only one ever got to Spain. Three returned much damaged to San Domingo. The others went down. The one vessel that reached Spain was the leaky little tub called _The Needle_, laden with the Admiral's gold! Thus the same storm that sent many of his San Domingo enemies to a watery grave saved for him the first profits he received from the island. It would be some satisfaction to learn that Ovando was rebuked for his cruelty and stupidity; but there is no record of such a reprimand. Perhaps no one even knew that Ovando had been warned. As for the wholesale s.h.i.+pwreck, people merely looked at such things piously in those days, and said, ”It is the will of Heaven!”
When the first lull came in that devastating storm, Columbus found himself south of Cuba among the little ”Garden” group. It was the third time he had had a chance to sail along the Cuban coast and discover whether it really was an island, as the natives said, or whether it was the mainland, as he had forced his sailors to swear while on the Cuban voyage when his brain was full of fever. Again he let the problem go unsolved; the object of this fourth voyage was to find the straits leading into the Indian Ocean. Having failed to begin his search from Trinidad by following South America westward, as originally planned, he expected he would come to the straits by following Cuba's southern sh.o.r.e in the same direction, if Cuba, as he hoped, was a great strip of land projecting eastward from the continent. And yet, instead of sailing along Cuba, or returning to the Gulf of Paria and hugging the land westward, he suddenly decided to put out southwest into the open sea.
This seems to us a foolish course, for no matter at what point he struck land, how would he know whether to explore to the left or right for his straits? Why this least desirable of three courses was taken neither the Admiral nor his son explained in their diaries. Of course he found land,--the Honduras coast; but of course he had no means of knowing what relation it had either to Cuba or to the land around the Gulf of Paria.
Thus the poor Admiral lost his last chance of arriving at any just conclusions of the magnitude of his discovery.
Before reaching this Honduras coast they stopped at the Isle of Pines, where they saw natives in comfortable-looking house boats; that is, huge canoes sixty feet long, cut from a single mahogany tree, and with a roofed caboose amids.h.i.+ps. These natives wore plenty of gold ornaments and woven clothing; they had copper hatchets and sharp blades of flint; and they used a sort of money for buying and selling. In other words, it was the nearest approach to civilization that Columbus had ever seen in his new lands. He tried by signs to ask about all these things, and the natives pointed west as the place from which their house boat had come.
But so keen was Columbus for ”the straits” to the Indian Ocean that even gold could not divert him this time; he refused to proceed due west, and thus failed to discover Mexico, the richest region the Spaniards were ever to find on the North American continent.
From the Isle of Pines, the Admiral put out again into the open sea, southwest, and the moment he had cleared land terrific storms were encountered. Worse still, when he neared the coast which he named Honduras, the currents were so violent that his boats could hardly make headway against them. All July and August thunder and lightning were incessant. Timbers creaked and strained till each minute it appeared as if they must have reached the breaking point. Meanwhile the Admiral was enduring the tortures of rheumatism and could not leave his bed; and so, up on deck where the gales and the waves swept free, he ordered them to rig a little cabin of sailcloth; there he lay and directed every move of his crew. One minute he saw his terrified seamen clinging to masts or slipping over wet decks; another, hauling in the mere shreds of sails that were left. One minute he heard them vowing pilgrimages and penances if only they might be saved; another, denouncing the madman who brought them to these terrible waters.
But the sick man did not heed all this; his business was to bring them out alive if possible; so he kept a clear head and issued his orders.
Whenever he became discouraged, he looked across the wave-washed decks to the comforting sight of a slender lad of fourteen, brought up delicately at court, but now turning to with a will and helping the sailors with every rough, heavy task. How proud the Admiral must have felt when he wrote in his journal, ”It was as if Fernando had been at sea eighty years!”
At last they rounded a point where better weather greeted them, and in thankfulness Columbus called it Cape Gracias a Dios (Thanks to G.o.d). But straightway came another blow. On the very first day when they could catch their breath and cease struggling against wind and current and rain, their spirits were again dashed. A rowboat went near the mouth of a river to take on fresh water, and the river came out with a gush, upset the boat, and drowned the men in it. So our sick Admiral, who was drawing a map of the coast, and had just finished writing ”Thanks to G.o.d,” marks down the rus.h.i.+ng river and names it ”Rio de Desastre” (River of Disaster).