Still we sailed by the south coast of Hispaniola. We knew now that it was not Cipango. But it was a great island, natheless, and one day might be as Cipango. Beata, Soana, Mona were the little islands that we found. We sailed between them and our great island, and at last we came to the corner and turned northward, and again after days to another corner and sailed west once more, with hopes now of Isabella. It was the first week in September.
In a great red dawn, Roderigo, the Admiral’s servant, roused Juan Lepe. “Come—come—come, Doctor!”
I sprang from my bed and followed him. Christopherus Columbus lay in a deep swoon. Round he came from that and said, “Roderigo, tell them that I am perfectly well, but wish to see no one!” From that, he came to recognize me. “Doctor, I am tired. God and Our Lady only know how tired I am!”
His eyes shut, his head sank deep into the bed. He said not another word, that day nor the next nor the next. Roderigo and I forced him to swallow a little food and wine, and once he rose and made as if to go on deck. But we laid him down again and he sank into movelessness and a sleep of all the faculties. Juan de la Cosa took care of the Cordera. So we sighted Isabella and in the harbor four caravels that had not been there when we had sailed in April.
CHAPTER XXXII
TWO men came into the cabin, Don Diego Colon, left in charge of Hispaniola, and with him a tall, powerful, high-featured man, gray of eye and black and silver of hair and short beard. As he stood beside the bed, one saw that he must be kinsman to the man who lay upon it. “O Bartholomew! And is this the end?” cried Don Diego, and I knew that the stranger was that brother, Bartholomew, for whom the Admiral longed.
These three brothers! One lay like a figure upon a tomb save for the breathing that stirred his silver hair. One, Don Diego, tall, too, and strong, but all of a gentle, quiet mien sank on his knees and seemed to pray. One, Don Bartholomew, stood like rock or pine, but he slowly made the sign of the cross, and I saw his gray eyes fill. It seemed to me that the Admiral’s eyelids flickered. “Speak to him again,” I said. “Take his hand.”
Bartholomew Columbus, kneeling in the Cordera’s cabin, put his arm about his great brother. That is what he called him,—“Christopher, my great brother, it is Bartholomew! Don’t you know me? Don’t you remember? I must go to England, you said, to see King Henry. To tell him what you could do—what you have done, my great brother! Don’t you remember? I went, but I was poor like you who are now Viceroy of the Indies—and I was shipwrecked besides and lost the little that we had scraped—do you remember?—and must live like you by making maps and charts, and it was long before I saw King Henry!—Christopher, my great brother! He lies like death!”
I said, “He is returning, but he is yet a long way off. Keep speaking.”