After such manifestations of ferocious determination, Columbus began to be further alarmed for the safety of his brother's companions and of Tristan's. For days a tossing surf had made an impassable barrier between him and the shore. He had but one boat, and he did not dare to risk it in an attempt to land. Finally, his Sevillian pilot, Pedro Ledesma, offered to brave the dangers by swimming, if the boat would take him close to the surf. The trial was made; the man committed himself to the surf, and by his strength and skill so surmounted wave after wave that he at length reached stiller water, and was seen to mount the shore. In due time he was again seen on the beach, and plunging in once more, was equally successful in passing the raging waters, and was picked up by the boat. He had a sad tale to tell the Admiral. It was a story of insubordination, a powerless Adelantado, and a frantic eagerness to escape somehow. Ledesma said that the men were preparing canoes to come off to the ships, since their caravel was unable to pass the bar.
Resolve to abandon the region.
There was long consideration in these hours of disheartenment; but the end of it was a decision to rescue the colony and abandon the coast. The winds never ceased to be high, and Columbus's ships, in their weakened condition, were only kept afloat by care and vigilance. The loss of the boat's crew threw greater burdens and strains upon those who were left. It was impossible while the surf lasted to send in his only boat, and quite as impossible for the fragile canoes of his colony to brave the dangers of the bar in coming out. There was nothing for Columbus to do but to hold to his anchor as long as he could, and wait.
Columbus in delirium hears a voice.
Our pity for the man is sometimes likely to unfit us to judge his own record. Let us try to believe what he says of himself, and watch him in his delirium. "Groaning with exhaustion," he says, "I fell asleep in the highest part of the ship, and heard a compassionate voice address me." It bade him be of good cheer, and take courage in the service of God! What the God of all had done for Moses and David would be done for him! As we read the long report of this divine utterance, as Columbus is careful to record it, we learn that the Creator was aware of his servant's name resounding marvelously throughout the earth. We find, however, that the divine belief curiously reflected the confidence of Columbus that it was India, and not America, that had been revealed. "Remember David," said the Voice, "how he was a shepherd, and was made a king. Remember Abraham, how he was a hundred when he begat Isaac, and that there is youth still for the aged." Columbus adds that when the Voice chided him he wept for his errors, and that he heard it all as in a trance.
The obvious interpretation of all this is either that by the record Columbus intended a fable to impress the sovereigns, for whom he was writing, or that he was so moved to hallucinations that he believed what he wrote. The hero worship of Irving decides the question easily. "Such an idea," says Irving, referring to the argument of deceit, and forgetting the Admiral's partiality for such practices, "is inconsistent with the character of Columbus. In recalling a dream, one is unconsciously apt to give it a little coherency." Irving's plea is that it was a mere dream, which was mistaken by Columbus, in his feverish excitement, for a revelation. "The artless manner," adds that biographer, "in which he mingles the rhapsodies and dreams of his imagination with simple facts and sound practical observations, pouring them forth with a kind of Scriptural solemnity and poetry of language, is one of the most striking illustrations of a character richly compounded of extraordinary and apparently contradictory elements." We may perhaps ask, Was Irving's hero a deceiver, or was he mad? The chances seem to be that the whole vision was simply the product of one of those fits of aberration which in these later years were no strangers to Columbus's existence. His mind was not infrequently, amid disappointments and distractions, in no fit condition to ward off hallucination.
Humboldt speaks of Columbus's letter describing this vision as showing the disordered mind of a proud soul weighed down with dead hopes. He has no fear that the strange mixture of force and weakness, of pride and touching humility, which accompanies these secret contortions will ever impress the world with other feelings than those of commiseration.
It is a hard thing for any one, seeking to do justice to the agonies of such spirits, to measure them in the calmness of better days. "Let those who are accustomed to slander and aspersion ask, while they sit in security at home, Why dost thou not do so and so under such circumstances?" says Columbus himself. It is far easier to let one's self loose into the vortex and be tossed with sympathy. But if four centuries have done anything for us, they ought to have cleared the air of its mirages. What is pitiable may not be noble.
The colony embark.