For the astounded population it was as if the dead had come to life. Every family whose relations had accompanied the expedition had given the sailors up for lost; and lo! here was the man who had led them to their death, bringing a caravel into port. True, forty of the men had been left across the water, and as many more perhaps were under it. Only one ship had come back; but it brought with it the amazing proof that the Atlantic could be crossed! Shops were closed, everybody went to church and rendered praise; bells pealed forth, and the "mad Genoese" was the greatest hero that ever lived; then, as if to give the scene a happy ending, just before sunset of that same famous day, the Pinta, which had not been shipwrecked off the Azores at all, also sailed into the Rio Tinto. Thus did the punishment of Palos end in her witnessing the greatest day of the fifteenth century.
CHAPTER XII
DAYS OF TRIUMPH
Before following our happy Admiral into the presence of the king and queen, let us remain in Palos a little moment with that other courageous navigator, Martin Alonzo Pinzon. Poor Martin was not happy; in fact, he was very miserable. He had slunk from his storm-battered caravel and into his house without saying a word to any one. His wife, overjoyed at seeing him, threw her arms around him.
"Oh, my good Martin!" she exclaimed, "we were mourning you as dead! Cristobal Colon believed that you and your Pinta had gone to the bottom off the Azores!"
"I only wish I had!" groaned Martin, dejectedly. "I only wish I had!"
Perhaps you think he was repenting too deeply of that insubordination off the coast of Cuba, 'way back in November. No, it was not that; Martin had another matter to regret now, more's the pity; for he was a good sailor and a brave, energetic man, ready to risk his life and his money in the discovery. He knew that, next to Columbus, he had played the most important part in the discovery, and he now realized that he was not to share the honor in what he considered the right proportion. He felt ill-used; moreover his health was shattered.
When the two vessels became separated in the storm off the Azores, he concluded just what the Admiral concluded—that the other ship had gone down. He considered it a miracle that even one of those mere scraps of wood, lashed about in a furious sea, should have stayed afloat; but both of them,—no! two miracles could never happen in one night!
And so when he scanned the horizon next morning and saw no Nina, and when he kept peering all that day through the storm and the little Nina never came in sight, a mean idea made its way into Captain Pinzon's brain; and it grew and grew until it became a definite, well- arranged plan.
"The Admiral has gone down with all aboard," he reasoned to himself. "Now, if my ship ever reaches Spain, why shouldn't I say that when Columbus failed to find land seven hundred leagues west of the Canaries, where he expected to find it, I persuaded him to accompany me still farther, and led him to Cipango."