Lest the crew should be alarmed at the distance they were rapidly putting between themselves and the spirituous liquors of Spain, Columbus now adopted the plan of daily falsifying his reckoning. Thus if the fleet had sailed one hundred miles in any given twenty-four hours, he would announce that the distance sailed was only sixty miles. Meanwhile he kept a private log-book, in which he set down the true courses and distances sailed. This system may have answered its purpose, but had the fleet been wrecked, and had the false and the true log-books both fallen into the hands of the underwriters, Columbus would not have recovered a dollar of insurance, and would probably have been indicted for forgery with attempt to lie. The lawyer for the insurance company would have put in evidence the two entries for, let us say, the 10th of September; the one reading, “Wind E.S.E., light and variable; course W. by N.; distance by observation since noon yesterday, 61 miles;” and the other, or true entry, reading, “Wind E.S.E.; course W. by N.; distance by observation since noon yesterday, 117 miles. At seven bells in the morning watch, furled main-top-gallant sails, and put a single reef in all three topsails. This day ends with a strong easterly gale.” With such evidence as this, he would easily have proved that Columbus was a desperate villain, who had wrecked his vessels solely to swindle the insurance companies. Thus we see that dishonesty will vitiate the best policy, provided the underwriters can prove it.
It was perhaps this same desire to lead his crew into the belief that the voyage would not be very long, which led Columbus to insert in the sailing directions given to the two Pinzons an order to heave-to every night as soon as they should have sailed seven hundred leagues west of the Canaries. He explained that unless this precaution were taken they would be liable to run foul of China in the night, in case the latter should not happen to have lights properly displayed. This was very thoughtful, but there is no reason to think that it deceived the Pinzons. They knew perfectly well that Columbus had not the least idea of the distance across the Atlantic, and they probably made remarks to one another in regard to the difficulty of catching old birds with chaff, which the Admiral would not have enjoyed had he heard them.
Thus cheerfully cheating his sailors, and conversing with his pilots, Columbus entered upon his voyage. A great many meritorious emotions are ascribed to him by his biographers, and perhaps he felt several of them. We have, however, no evidence on this point, and the probability is that he would not have expressed any feeling but confidence in his success to any person. He had long wanted to sail in quest of new continents, and his wish was now gratified. He ought to have been contented, and it is quite possible that he was.
CHAPTER VI.
THE VOYAGE.
[Æt. 56; 1492]
In those days everybody supposed that the needle always pointed due north. Great was the astonishment of Columbus when, a few days after leaving the Canaries, he noticed what is now called the variation of the compass. Instead of pointing to the north, the needle began to point somewhat to the west of north; and the farther the fleet sailed to the west, the greater became the needle’s variation from the hitherto uniform direction of all respectable needles. Of course Columbus at first supposed that his compass was out of order, but he soon found that every compass in the fleet was conducting itself in the same disreputable way. The pilots also noticed the startling phenomenon, and said it was just what they had expected. In seas so remote from the jurisdiction of Spain, who could expect that the laws of Nature would be observed? They did not like to grumble, but still they must say that it was simply impious to sail in regions where even the compass could not tell the truth. But Columbus was not the man to be put to confusion by remarks of this kind. He calmly told the pilots that the compass was all right; it was the North Star that was wrong, and he never had felt much confidence in that star, anyway. Then inviting the pilots to come down into his cabin and take a little—well, lunch, he explained to them with such profound unintelligibility the astronomical habits and customs of the North Star, that they actually believed his explanation of the variation of the compass. There are those who hold that Columbus really believed the North Star was leaving its proper place; but the theory does gross injustice to the splendid mendacity of the Admiral. The man who could coolly assert that if his compass differed from the stars the latter were at fault, deserves the wonder and admiration of even the most skilful editor of a campaign edition of an American party organ.
The sailors would probably have grumbled a good deal about the conduct of the compass had they noticed it; but it does not appear that they had any suspicion that it had become untrustworthy. Besides, the fleet was now fairly in the trade-wind, and very little labor was required in the management of the vessels. The sailors, having little to do, were in good spirits, and began to see signs of land. A large meteor was seen to fall into the sea, and soon after a great quantity of sea-weed was met, among which tunny-fish made their home. The Admiral also caught a small crab. Crabs, tunny-fish, sea-weed, and meteors must have been, in those days, exclusively products of the land; otherwise, there was no reason why Columbus and his men should have regarded them as proofs of the vicinity of land. They did, however, meet with a bird of a variety—so the oldest mariners asserted—that never sleeps except on a good substantial roosting-place. This really did give them some reason to imagine that land was not very far off; but as the result showed, the bird was painfully untrustworthy.
Day after day the so-called signs of land were seen. A large reward was offered to the first person who should see the sought-for continent, and consequently everybody was constantly pretending that a distant cloud or fog-bank was land, and then finding fault with the Admiral because he would not change his course. One day a pair of boobies—a bird singularly misnamed, in view of the fact that it rarely flies out of sight of land—rested in the rigging. Another day three birds of a kind—which, every one knows, were even better than two pairs—came on board one of the ships in the morning, and flew away again at night, and it was the universal opinion that they sang altogether too sweetly for sea-birds; the voices of the gull, the stormy petrel, and the albatross being notoriously far from musical.
After a time these signs ceased to give the crews any comfort. As they forcibly observed, “What is the use of all your signs of land, so long as you don’t fetch on your land?” They became convinced that the sea was gradually becoming choked up with sea-weed, and that the fact that the surface of the water remained unruffled, although there was a steady breeze from the east, was proof that something was seriously wrong. We now know that the expedition was in the Sargasso Sea, a region of sea-weed and calms, and that in point of fact Columbus was lucky in not being becalmed for a year or two without any means of bringing his vessels to a more breezy region. This, however, he did not know, and he explained the quiet of the sea by asserting that the fleet was already in the lee of the unseen land.
The men nevertheless continued to be discontented, and declined any longer to believe that land was near. Even the sight of a whale—which, as every one knows, is a land animal—failed to raise their spirits, although Columbus told them that, now that he had seen a whale, he knew they must be very near the shore. The sailors would not listen to his argument, and openly insulted his whale. They said he had brought them to a region where the wind either blew steadily from the east or scarcely blew at all; in either case opposing an insuperable obstacle to sailing back to Spain, for which reason, with the charming consistency of sailors, they wanted to turn back immediately and steer for Palos. Still, they did not break into open mutiny, but confined themselves to discussing the propriety of seizing the vessels, throwing Columbus overboard, and returning to Spain, where they could account for the disappearance of the Admiral by asserting that he had been pushed overboard by the cat, or had been waylaid, robbed, and murdered by the James boys; or by inventing some other equally plausible story. Happily, the wind finally sprang up again, and the sailors, becoming more cheerful, postponed their mutiny.