The Boy's Book of Heroes

by Helena Peake

During the voyage Villejo and the captain of the vessel were very kind to him, and were grieved to see him in chains; they would have removed them, but Columbus would not let them do so, saying that they had been placed upon him by order of the King, and his younger son Fernando tells us that his father, stung at last by a sense of his wrongs, kept them ever after hung up in his room as a sign of the manner in which he had been rewarded for his services. Yet let us hope that when he looked at them he forgave his enemies, since there are no injuries too deep to be forgiven, if we ourselves would receive pardon of our heavenly Father for our many misdeeds.

When Columbus landed at Cadiz thus shackled, a murmur of shame and indignation was breathed throughout Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella ordered his fetters to be removed at once, and sent him a large sum of money to pay the expenses of a visit to court. And when he appeared in their presence, bowed down by illness and age, and worn out with the dangers and misfortunes he had gone through, and he saw tears in the eyes of Isabella, who had once been his kindest friend, he knelt down and burst into a flood of tears himself. The Queen consoled him with gentle words, and tried to atone by her kindness for the many affronts he had suffered. Ferdinand always maintained that he had never given orders for Columbus to be fettered, and that Bovadilla had acted rashly on his own authority. Be that as it may, the King was a stern and narrow-minded man; he did not like to see a foreigner filling the important office of Viceroy of the Indies, and he took care never to reinstate Columbus in his former dignity, whilst he sent out a man named Ovando to govern Hispaniola instead of Bovadilla.

Columbus now formed the project of finding a strait somewhere about the Isthmus of Darien, which should prove a shorter route to India than the voyage by the Cape of Good Hope. Although he was getting feeble and aged he had the same steadfast spirit which had enabled him to wait patiently all the best years of his life, and had helped him bravely through all his troubles, and he wanted yet to be of farther service to his fellow-men before he died. The Portuguese under Vasco de Gama had already anchored opposite Calcutta, and the trade with India was thus all their own, while the discovery of the West Indian islands seemed to be less important. If anything more were to be done by Columbus it must be begun at once, and the King and Queen granted him four caravels with which to set out on his fourth and last voyage. The crews of all amounted to four hundred and fifty men. His brother Bartholomew was with him and his younger son Fernando; the elder one, Diego, being left to manage his affairs in Spain.

The little fleet was to have gone straight to Jamaica, but the principal vessel sailed so badly that it hindered the others, and Columbus steered instead for Hispaniola, hoping to exchange it for one of the fleet that had carried out Ovando. He also asked to be allowed shelter in the harbour of San Domingo, as he believed from certain signs in the atmosphere which he knew only too well, that a very great storm was near; but Ovando would neither let him have a vessel nor take shelter. Just at that time, the fleet which had brought out Ovando was ready to sail, and was to convey to Spain, the rebel and conspirator Roldan, Bovadilla, who had treated Columbus so ill, and many persons who had led idle and wicked lives in the island. They had with them a great quantity of gold, some of which had been gained by the labour and miseries of the Indians. Amongst the gold that Roldan was going to take to the King and Queen was one enormous solid lump, which was said to have been found by an Indian woman in a brook.

Although Columbus was denied shelter himself he sent a message to the port, warning the men who were about to sail of the approaching storm, and entreating them to remain in the harbour until it was over. Well had it been for them if they had listened to his advice, but they only laughed at it and boldly put out to sea. Before two days had passed a terrible hurricane arose, the tempest burst over the ships, and all those men who had been the greatest enemies of Columbus were swallowed up with their gold by the foaming waves. The few vessels which were not entirely destroyed returned to Hispaniola in a shattered condition; only one was able to reach Spain, and that strangely enough had on board a large sum of money which belonged by right to Columbus, and had been despatched to Spain by his agent.

Columbus kept close to the shore that night, but the tempest was terrible for him too; the caravels were dispersed and every one on board expected death, or thought that the others were lost. At last all the vessels, more or less damaged, arrived safely at Port Hermoso on the west of the island, and Columbus stayed there some days to repair them. During an interval of calm he reached the Gardens of Cuba, but soon after this his troubles began afresh. For forty days he coasted along Honduras, while the most fearful storms prevailed, and the whole time he could enter no port. The sea was tremendously high, heavy rains fell continually, and the thunder and lightning were so terrific that the mariners thought that the end of the world was coming; added to this the sails and rigging of the caravels were torn, and the provisions were spoiled by the damp. Columbus grieved that his son Fernando should be exposed to all these misfortunes. He says of him in a letter, "God gave him so great courage that he sustained the others, and if he put his hand to work, he did it as if he had been at sea for eighty years. It was he who consoled me; I had fallen ill and many a time was near the gate of the tomb. From a little cabin which I had caused to be constructed on the stern I directed the voyage. My brother was on the most wretched and dangerous of the vessels; great was my sorrow because I had brought him against his will." Then he goes on to tell all his troubles; and laments that although he had served Castille for so many years, he had not really a roof in the land he could call his own. He thought tenderly, too, of his son Diego, in Spain, and pictured the sorrow he would feel if he heard that all the vessels had perished. In the forty days the fleet only made seventy leagues; but at least they reached a cape where the coast made an angle and turned southwards, and the admiral in his joy and gratitude gave it the name of "Gracias a Dios."[17]

Now he sailed along the Mosquito shore, the rivers of which abounded with tortoises and alligators, and in one of these rivers they lost some of their men who had gone in a boat to seek for provisions. This cast a great gloom over the rest, which had not passed away when they came to a beautiful island full of groves of cocoa nuts, bananas, and palms, and rested awhile between it and the main land. The Indians on shore were very proud, for when the admiral refused the gifts they brought to the ship, they tied all the toys and bells the Spaniards had given them together, and laid them on the sands. When Columbus quitted the spot, he took seven of these Indians with him as interpreters, and coasted along Costa Rica for several leagues, until he entered a great bay full of lovely islands. The natives here wore large plates of gold hanging from chains of cotton cord around their necks, and strange crowns made of the claws of beasts, and the quills of birds. They told the strangers that about seventy leagues off they would find Veragua, a country which abounded in gold. And it seemed, indeed, as if they spoke the truth, for the nearer they came to that country the more gold they saw. The natives wore crowns of it on their heads, and rings of it round their wrists and ancles; their garments were embroidered with it; their tables and seats were ornamented with it. But Columbus had not come out this time in search of gold, but to find the strait which should enable Spain to trade with India at ease, and he left the land of promised riches and went on the way he thought would lead to his discovery. Alas! it was soon found that the caravels were too leaky to sail with safety; they had been pierced through by a worm which infests the tropical seas, and can bore through the hardest wood;[18] and Columbus was obliged to give up sailing, for the present, in search of the strait, and returned to seek for the gold mines of Veragua.[19] It was now December, and again the caravels were overtaken by one of the terrible storms of the tropics. The poor mariners gave themselves up for lost; day and night they confessed their sins one to another, and made vows of what they would do if their lives were spared. The lightnings were so incessant that the sky glowed like "one vast furnace;" and they saw, too, for the first time a water-spout, which, advancing towards the caravels, threatened them with destruction; but the Lord heard the prayers the terrified seamen sent up at the strange sight, and the column of water passed by without doing them any injury.

In the midst of the storm there was an interval of calm, during which they saw many sharks; these fishes are supposed to scent dead bodies at a distance, and often draw near ships when danger is at hand. The sailors caught some of them, and took out of one a live tortoise, which lived some time on board one of the vessels; from another they took the head of a shark, which shows that these monsters sometimes eat one another. In the history which Fernando wrote of his father, he says that the sufferings of all on board were very great for want of food; the provisions being spoiled by the damp, and they had to eat their biscuit in the dark, because it was so full of worms that it was too dreadful to behold by clear daylight.

At last they entered a port which the Indians called Hueva, and went from thence along a canal for three days. When they landed they found the natives living in the trees like birds, their cabins being fastened to poles which were suspended from one tree to another. Perhaps they did this on account of the wild beasts, the forest being full of lions, bears, racoons, tiger-cats, and sajinos, a species of wild boar which attack men. After a while the caravels anchored in the mouth of a river which was really in the country of the gold mines. The admiral sent his brother on shore to explore the land; and as he soon satisfied himself that there was gold to be found there in plenty, Columbus at once began to form a settlement on the river, which he called Belen, or Bethlehem, after the star the wise men had seen in the east, because the caravels had arrived there on the Feast of the Epiphany. It was agreed that Bartholomew should remain here while the admiral returned to Spain to procure fresh vessels and supplies. So they built houses of wood, thatched with the leaves of palm trees, on a little hill not far from the mouth of the river, and eked out their scanty store of provisions with the pine-apples, bananas, and cocoanuts, which grew around them in plenty; and drank the wine the Indians made from the pine-apple, and a sort of beer prepared from maize, or Indian corn. When the rains ceased, however, Columbus found that the river was so shallow, his crazy and worm-eaten ships could not get out and cross the bar, so that he was obliged to wait patiently until the rains should swell the river again and set him free.