On the deck appears the outline of a giant mariner wearing a broad sombrero, which may represent Columbus, in a thick coat, and with a telescope to his eye.
Within the Capitular Library are his books of reference, neatly annotated in his own clear hand, and a chart drawn by himself on parchment—a rude sketch of the American seaboard and the surrounding ocean, with soundings for sunken rocks; the course of winds, tides, and currents specially noted, the parchment partly blurred, as if by marks of sea-water.
Gazing at these relics, so neatly precise, and finished with the care of a man who knows how to wait with the patience of genius, a tall form rises before the eye, fair-complexioned, thin-faced, blue-eyed, and grey at thirty, such as Queen Isabel saw him, sitting at the poop of his little vessel, his eyes fixed on the chart, issuing orders to his helmsman to steer into unknown seas, while around him a mutinous crew gathers, calling on him to turn the rudder and sail home.
Time after time this happened. The sailors mutinied and threatened to throw him overboard. Time after time his dignity and eloquence mastered them, until that wild cry of “Tierra! Tierra!” broke from the masthead, as the advancing waves gathered on the shore of San Salvador.
On his return from his fourth voyage, his constant friend and protectress, Isabel, was dead!
This was the last drop in the cup of suffering to a broken-hearted man. His robust constitution broke down, and he sank into a premature old age.
At Segovia, where the court was, he presented himself to Ferdinand, but obtained nothing but empty words. He actually lived on borrowed money until his death.
His son and heir commuted his claims, which were enormous and unreasonable, into a large grant of land and the title of Grandee of Spain.
CHAPTER XXVII
Death of Isabel
