It was very well known, however, that the Pinzons were bold, reckless sailors, who feared naught and would dare anything, and all that the people of Palos had to say as to that was that they wished them luck, and hoped they would come back alive. It was no secret, moreover, that more than one Pinzon wished himself well out of the affair, and would have taken himself incontinently out, had it not been that the present fear of the wrath of Martin Alonzo Pinzon was far greater than the fear of the more remote perils that threatened them on the trackless wastes of that ocean which, somewhere in the far western distance, poured over the edge of the earth into the bottomless abyss beyond. Martin Alonzo Pinzon was a difficult man to gainsay, and those of his poorer kinsmen who could not take comfort in the logic of the Italian must set themselves up against the will of the bluff sailor, who had a voice in which thunder rumbled and an eye in which the storm-lightning played.
Martin Alonzo had furnished one vessel in joint account with the foreigner, and as Palos owed, as a sort of forfeit, the service of two vessels for a year to the sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, two vessels had been forcibly distrained for the benefit of the foreigner.
As for the crews, Pinzon had haled a goodly number of his kinsmen into service, and cajoled a few of his townsmen; but there was no inducement that could make any others stir a step towards such certain destruction until a royal ordinance was issued, offering freedom to such convicts as would venture their lives rather than remain in durance.
But even with that the crews did not fill up to the required number, and the mortal terror that was on those who had agreed to go caused them to desert at every opportunity; and the consequent wrath of Martin Alonzo Pinzon was a thing to be shunned carefully.
And, as may be seen, all this disturbance and turmoil naturally created the bitterest feeling; and for the weeks that the foreigner rested at Palos the talk of his insane folly—to call it no worse—ran high, indeed. Well it was for him that he had the good-will of the prior, Juan Perez, and the endorsement of the burly sailor.
Chapter II.
While the little fleet destined for the mad enterprise lay in port, it was considered advisable to restrain the boys of the convent school within the walls. So it came about that the gardener was driven almost distracted by the peril of his choicest vegetables and flowers; for the boys had not the same passionate regard for the growing things that he had.
“See there, now!” said Fray Antonio, angrily, as he held one of the boys by the collar of his jacket, “you have planted your clumsy foot on the stem of my choicest melon, and it lacked a day of perfect ripening. Think twice”—he cuffed him heartily as many times—”ere ever you set foot to ground again.”