The good monks gave bread to the boy, and while he was eating it the prior of the convent came out and talked with Columbus, asking him his business. Columbus told him his story. He told it so well that the prior believed in it. He asked him to stay there with his son, and said he would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom he knew very well.
So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a letter to the queen, and in the end the wandering sailor was sent for to come back to the king's court.
Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of the discovery of America. The king would not listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen offered to pledge her jewels to raise the money which he needed for ships and sailors.
Columbus had won. After years and years of toil and hunger and disappointment, he was to have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be given a chance to prove whether it was he or the wise men who were the fools.
But such ships as they gave him! Why, you can see far better ones every day, sailing down your rivers. Two of them did not even have decks, but were like open boats. With this small fleet Columbus set sail from Palos, a little port in Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the most wonderful voyages that has ever been known.
Away they went far out into the "Sea of Darkness," as the Atlantic ocean was then called. Mile after mile, day after day, on and on they went, seeing nothing but the endless waves, while the wind drove them steadily into the unknown west.
The sailors never expected to see their wives and children again. They were frightened when they started, and every day they grew more scared. They looked with staring eyes for the bleak fogs or the frightful monsters of which they had been told. At one place they came upon great tracts of seaweed, and thought they were in shallow water and would be wrecked on banks of mud. Then the compass, to which they trusted, ceased to point due north and they were more frightened than ever. Soon there was hardly a stout heart in the fleet except that of Columbus.
The time came when the sailors grew half mad with fear. Some of them made a plot to throw Columbus overboard and sail home again. They would tell the people there that he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.
It was a terrible thing to do, was it not? But desperate men will do dreadful things. They thought one man had better die than all of them. Only good fortune saved the life of the great navigator.
One day a glad sailor called his comrades and pointed over the side. A branch of a green bush was floating by with fresh berries on it. It looked as if it had just been broken off a bush. Another day one of them picked from the water a stick which had been carved with a knife. Land birds were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back to their hearts. They were sure now that land must be near.