Christopher, with a saddened expression of face, replied:
“Father, I find it a matter of extreme difficulty to depart from the truth, even at this trying moment. Candor compels me to admit that I have spent the day in company with Michael and Patrick McGinnis, in studying the meteorological laws which affect the flight of kites. With the aid of the last number of the Wool-Combers’ Trade Review and a few sticks, I made a beautiful kite, and I can confidently say that—”
Here the old gentleman, exclaiming, “That will do! Your explanation is worse than your other crime,” applied a rattan cane to the future explorer, and afterwards sent him to bed supperless.
[Æt. 8; 1449]
There is not a word of truth in these two anecdotes, but they are introduced in order to afford the reader a slight glimpse of the boyhood of Columbus. They probably compare favorably, in point of veracity, with the average anecdotes of the boyhood of great men, and they show us that even while Columbus was only six and eight years old he was interested in scientific pursuits, and already gave promise of great tediousness. Still, it would be unwise for any one to believe them, and we will pass on to the more prosaic but truthful facts of Columbus’s life.
Young Christopher early conceived a prejudice against wool-combing, although it was his father’s earnest desire that he should adopt that profession. Fernando Columbus, the son of the admiral, evidently felt ashamed of his noble father’s early wool-combing exploits, and says that Domenico Colombo, so far from desiring his son to comb wool, sent him at the age of thirteen to the University of Pavia to study navigation, with a view of ultimately sending him to sea. Now, although the United States Government does undertake to teach seamanship with the aid of textbooks to young men at the Annapolis Naval Academy, the idea that a young man could become a sailor without going to sea had never occurred to the Genoese, and old Domenico never could have been stupid enough to send his son to the Pavia University with the expectation that he would graduate with the marine degree of “A. B.” Undoubtedly Christopher went to Pavia, but it is conceded that he remained there a very short time. If we suppose that, instead of studying his Livy, his Anabasis, and his Loomis’s Algebra, he spent his time in reading Marryat’s sea stories, and dime novels illustrative of piracy, we can understand why his university course came to a sudden end, and why Domenico remarked to his friends that Christopher studied navigation while at Pavia.
[Æt. 14; 1459]
We are told that from his earliest years Christopher desired to be a sailor. We also know that at that period the Mediterranean swarmed with pirates. From these two facts any modern boy with sufficient reasoning powers to be able to put a dog, a string, and a tin can together, will deduce the conclusion that Christopher Columbus must have wanted to be a pirate. As to this there can be but little doubt. When he left Pavia and returned home to comb the paternal wool, he was doubtless fully determined to run away at the earliest opportunity, and become a Red Revenger of the seas.
With this clue, we can readily find in the conduct of the astute Domenico a wise determination to effect a compromise with his adventurous son. He did not want to be the father of a Red Revenger, but he knew that he could not compel his son to comb wool. He therefore induced him to consent to go to sea as a scourge and enemy of pirates; and accordingly in his fourteenth year young Christopher went to sea on board a vessel commanded by a distant relative, who was at one time an admiral in the Genoese service. In what capacity he shipped, whether as a first-class or a second-class boy, or as an acting third assistant cook, or an ordinary cabin-boy, we do not know. Fernando Columbus preserves a discreet silence as to this matter, and as to the first voyage of his father generally. Of course this silence means something, and perhaps Christopher had good reasons for never speaking of the voyage even to his son. Probably he was deathly sea-sick, and in that condition was severely kicked for not being able to lay his hand at a moment’s warning upon the starboard main-top-gallant-studding-sail tripping-line, or other abstruse rope. At all events, he always abstained from telling stories beginning, “I reck’lect on my first v’yge;” and we may be sure that he would never have put such an unseamanlike constraint upon his tongue unless he knew that the less he said about that voyage the better.
[Æt. 23; 1459–70]