"The Madeiras!" cried some, just as they had cried before when off the
Azores.
"Spain!" cried others, more hopefully.
"The Rock of Cintra, near Lisbon!" cried their Admiral, whose power of gauging distances, considering his lack of instruments, was little short of marvelous. And Cintra it was. Again chance brought him to an unfriendly coast, and gave him no choice but to run into the mouth of the Portuguese river Tagus for shelter.
Like wildfire the report ran up and down the coast that a ship had just returned across the Atlantic from the Indies (for the Spanish sailors called the new islands the Indies of Antilla) and of course the ship was full of treasure! In command of this ship was Christopher Columbus, the very man whom King John of Portugal had refused to aid years before! Hundreds of small boats surrounded the little caravel, and the curious Portuguese clambered aboard and asked, among their many eager questions, to be shown the treasures and "Los Indios." The commander of a Portuguese man-of-war anchored near assumed a bullying attitude and ordered Columbus to come aboard the warship and explain why he had dared to cruise among Portugal's possessions. Columbus, more tactful than usual, replied that, being now an Admiral of Spain, it was his duty to remain on his vessel. Meanwhile, he dispatched a courier to the monarchs of Spain with the great tidings; while from the king of Portugal he begged permission to land, and sent word, not that he had, as people were saying, discovered an Atlantic route to the Indies, but that he had sailed to the fabled islands of Antilla in the far Atlantic.
In answer, the king gave permission to land at Lisbon, and invited Columbus to court. Columbus may not have wished to go there, but a royal invitation was a command. On entering the king's presence, the great explorer saw many of the noblemen who, years before, had advised their monarch not to aid him. Our Admiral is not to be blamed, therefore, if he took a deep delight in painting his new world in the rosiest colors possible. His story made king and courtiers feel uncomfortably foolish for not having been willing to take the risk Spain had taken. It was a bitter pill for poor King John to swallow, and straightway his scheming old brain began to hatch a pretext for getting the new lands for himself.
"Pope Martin V.," he reminded his visitor, "conceded to the Crown of
Portugal all lands that might be discovered between Cape Bojador and the
Indies, and your new discovery therefore belongs to me rather than to
Spain."
"Quite right," murmured his courtiers. Then, when Columbus declared he had sailed west and not south, that Spain herself had warned him to keep clear of Portugal's possessions, and that the lands he had discovered were merely Atlantic islands, they all insisted that "the Indies were the Indies, and belonged by papal authority to Portugal!"
Oh, those shifting, indiscriminate, fifteenth-century Indies which Europe invented to explain the unknown world! What misunderstandings resulted from the vague term! Columbus, again tactful, stopped boasting now, and merely observed that he had never heard of this papal treaty, and that the monarchs would have to settle it between themselves. Then he took his departure, with every show of kindliness from the king, including a royal escort. The minute he was gone those courtly, crafty heads all got together and told the king that most likely the man was merely a boaster, but, lest he might have discovered territory for Spain, why not hurriedly send out a Portuguese fleet to seize the new islands ere Spain could make good her claim? Some even whispered something about assassination.
Let us hope that King John turned a deaf ear to them. At any rate,
Columbus was not assassinated, perhaps because he thought it safer to
trust to his battered little Nina than to cross Portugal by land.
Hurrying aboard, he hoisted anchor and started for Palos.
It was on a Friday that Columbus had left Palos; it was likewise on Friday that he had left the Canaries after mending the Pinta's rudder; on Friday he had taken leave of the little settlement of La Navidad away back in Haiti, and now it was on Friday, the 15th of March, that he dropped anchor in the friendly port of Palos.