"Ah," thought he, "if only I had had decent men, instead of jail- birds and loafers!" and he pondered sadly on his many misfortunes.
And still the monarchs kept him waiting and would not furnish him with a fleet. While he was waiting came the bitter and disquieting news that Portuguese explorers were returning in a stream from the Indian Ocean with exceedingly rich cargoes, all justly traded for in the markets of Calcutta. Why, he groaned, had his India been so barren of riches?
He began to ponder over all the theories he had read concerning the geography of the world, and to wonder what his discoveries might really be. If it dawned upon him that he had struck islands fringing on absolutely new, unsuspected land, he appears to have dismissed the extraordinary idea, and to have come back to Martin Alonzo Pinzon's theory that he, by sailing west over the globe, had come to Asiatic regions. It must be so, he argued. Marco Polo had made known the fact that an ocean bounded Asia on the east, and that ocean must be the Atlantic, which continued across to Europe. The Indian Ocean which the Portuguese had crossed must be the southern part of the Atlantic, where it curved around Asia's southern shores. Ah, if only he could reach it! If only he had sailed straight for the rich mainland, instead of wasting his time on those pretty islands, inhabited only by a "poor people"!
He began to recall how the land north of the Gulf of Paria stretched far west; how the southern shore of Cuba stretched far west; how the currents of the Caribbean Sea indicated, by the fact that they had washed Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico into their long narrow east-and-west shape that somewhere in the west they passed through a strait which separated some large island from southeastern Asia; and that strait must lead into the Indian Ocean—the very ocean the Portuguese were now sailing so profitably! He wisely resolved to linger no longer in Spain, importuning for his lost governorship, but to undertake a fourth voyage and find this passage.
Good reasoning, all this about "the strait," if only facts had been geographically correct; and a brave determination, too, for an old man afflicted with rheumatism and fever and bad sight to resolve to put out once more on that boisterous ocean. We salute you, Don Cristobal! You are a true navigator, never afraid of hardships and labor and perplexing problems. Even had you not discovered America for us, we still would salute you, because you were a tremendous worker!
Full of his new plan, Columbus left beautiful Granada where he had spent two empty years and went to Sevilla. King Ferdinand readily granted him four ships, for the Admiral Cristobal Colon, off on a voyage of discovery, was not nearly so troublesome as the deposed governor and viceroy, lingering around the court to obtain his lost title and revenues.
The fitting out of the ships restored his spirits considerably. Whenever Christopher had to do with boats and sea preparations he was in his element. He now grew optimistic, and, with his usual fatal habit of promising great results, he told his Sevilla acquaintances that he expected to circumnavigate the world. Fatal habit, yes; but it meant that he still kept that rich imagination, without which he never would have made his first voyage.
Meanwhile, he realized that he was getting old, and that he might never come back from this trip. His thoughts often turned to his native Genoa, where he had played so happily as a child in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; so, one day he sat down and generously wrote to the authorities of Genoa that, should his claims against the Spanish Crown ever be settled, a part of his money was to be used in paying the Genoese tax on wheat and wine, so that the poor might buy these two staples at a lower price.
Finally all was ready; four small, weather-beaten ships; a crew of one hundred and fifty men and boys; a few months' provisions. His brother Bartholomew, not very willingly, and his son Fernando, almost too eagerly, accompanied him. This, his fourth and last voyage, started from Cadiz on May 9, 1502.