But the Admiral being an excellent swimmer, and seeing himself two leagues or a little farther from land, laying hold of an oar, which good fortune offered him, and, sometimes resting upon it, sometimes swimming, it pleased God, who had preserved him for greater ends, to give him strength to get to shore, but so tired and spent with the water that he had much ado to recover himself. And because it was not far from Lisbon, where he knew there were many Genoeses, his countrymen, he went away thither as fast as he could, where, being known by them, he was so courteously received and entertained that he set up house and married a wife in that city. And forasmuch as he behaved himself honorably, and was a man of comely presence, and did nothing but what was just, it happened that a lady whose name was Dona Felipa Moñiz, of a good family, and pensioner in the Monastery of All Saints, whither the Admiral used to go to mass, was so taken with him that she became his wife.
PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN PRINCES.
From a letter of Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella:
Such is my fate that twenty years of service, through which I passed with so much toil and danger, have profited me nothing; and at this day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep, I have nowhere to go but to the inn or tavern, and I seldom have wherewith to pay the bill. I have not a hair upon me that is not gray; my body is infirm; and all that was left me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I implore your Highnesses to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in as ruined a condition as I have related. Hitherto I have wept over others; may Heaven now have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep for me.
THE SELF-SACRIFICE AND DEVOTION OF COLUMBUS.
From Columbus' own account of his discovery:
Such is my plan; if it be dangerous to execute, I am no mere theorist who would leave to another the prospect of perishing in carrying it out, but am ready to sacrifice my life as an example to the world in doing so. If I do not reach the shores of Asia by sea, it will be because the Atlantic has other boundaries in the west, and these boundaries I will discover.
THE TRUST OF COLUMBUS.
From a letter of Columbus to a friend:
For me to contend for the contrary, would be to contend with the wind. I have done all that I could do. I leave the rest to God, whom I have ever found propitious to me in my necessities.