Silent and reserved among the rejoicing and shouting multitudes, sympathizing perhaps more keenly with the broken-hearted Boabdil than with his conquerors, Columbus still bided his time; and so soon as the excitement of victory had a little subsided, he was admitted to an audience with the sovereigns. It was now decided that Columbus should put his scheme to a practical test; but fresh difficulties arose in consequence of the “princely conditions” to which alone the humble and poorly-clad adventurer would agree. Not content with the tardy recognition given to the grandeur of his enterprise, he demanded that he should be “invested with the titles and privileges of Admiral and Viceroy over the countries he should discover, with one-tenth of all gains, either by trade or conquest.”
Once more the fate of the New World, which had been, so to speak, unconsciously waiting all this time for the arrival of its discoverer, hung in the balance. Courtiers clamored at the insolence of the sorry fellow who wished to be set above their illustrious heads; and the King looked coldly on, unwilling to break his word, yet anxious to get the matter settled or dropped, that he might give the attention so sorely needed to his kingdom, drained as were its resources by the long wars.
ISABELLA.
But now Isabella, true to the renown she had won by a long course of noble and disinterested conduct, seemed to have been suddenly inspired with a belief in the great mission of Columbus. That hero had again determined to leave Spain, and, as the story goes, was already on the way to Cordova, whence he intended embarking for France, when, at a meeting of the junto discussing the scheme, the Queen exclaimed—“I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.”
EMBARKATION OF COLUMBUS.
Columbus was at once recalled; and though the pledging of the Queen’s jewels was not found necessary, she aided him now with all the energy and enthusiasm of her character. On the 17th April, 1492, the stipulations granting full powers to Columbus, and conferring on him and his heirs the honors he had demanded, were signed at the city of Santa Fé, in the plain of Grenada: and on the 3rd August of the same year, eighteen years after he first conceived the idea of the voyage, our hero—all preliminary difficulties over—at last set sail from the bar of Saltos, near Palos (N. lat. 37° 11′, W. long. 6° 47′), in command of three vessels—the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niña, only one of which, the first, and that on which the Admiral himself embarked, was decked. He was leader of one hundred and twenty men; but the motley character of his crews, enlisted on compulsion, and thoroughly imbued with all the superstitions of the age with regard to the perils of the deep, caused Columbus much embarrassment from the very first, and he was detained for three weeks at the Canaries by an “accident”—supposed to have been purposely brought about—to the rudder of the Pinta. It was not until the 6th September that the actual voyage of discovery can be said to have commenced. Setting sail that day from the island of Gomera he passed Ferro, the last of the Canaries, on the 9th.
As the last traces of land faded from the sight of the untutored mariners, their hearts failed them, and with tears and groans they entreated their leader to turn back while there was yet time. The passing of a portion of a wreck on the 11th still further aroused their fears, and it was all that Columbus could do to induce them to obey his orders.
On the 13th September a slight but deeply significant incident occurred. Columbus, watching with eager interest the little compass—which, surrounded as he was by timid, vacillating spirits, must have seemed to him his one steadfast, unchangeable friend—noticed a variation in the needle. To quote the words of Washington Irving, “he perceived about nightfall that the needle, instead of pointing to the north star, varied about half a point, or between five and six degrees, to the north-west, and still more on the following morning.”