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Christopherus Columbus dreamed again, or had a vision again. "I was hopeless. I wept alone on a desert shore. My name had faded, and all that I had done was broken into sand and swept away. I repined, and cried, 'Why is it thus? Then came a ship not like ours, and One stepped from it in light and thunder. 'O man of little faith, I will cover thy eyes of to-day! He covered them, and I saw.
We had left a village yet dancing and feasting. The night was a miracle of silver. Again I stood beside Christopherus Columbus; from land streamed their singing and their thin, drumming and clashing music. At hand it is rather harsh than sweet, but distance sweetened it.
Or King Henry will say, 'Christopher the Englishman' or King Charles, to whom verily I see that I may go, shall say, 'Frenchman, to whom all owe the marriage of East and West, but France owes Empire!" The King said, "It may be so, or it may not be so, Master Christopherus. Read!"
There came an officer with a sword, behind him a dozen men. "Senor, in the name of the Sovereigns, I arrest you!" Christopherus Columbus gazed upon him. "For what, senor?" The other, an arrogant, ill-tempered man, answered loudly so that all around could hear, "For ill-service to our lord the King and Queen, and to their subjects here in the Indies, and to God!"
She spoke earnestly, a Queen, but with much about her of womanly, motherly sweetness. I saw that she greatly liked the man and somewhere met his spirit. But the King was gathering hardness. He spoke to a secretary standing behind him. "Have you it there written down, the Italian's demand?" The man produced a paper. "Read!" But before it could be unfolded, Master Christopherus spoke.
After mass one day, as I remember it was the patron saint's day of His Majesty Tsar Alexandr Pavlovitch of blessed memory, he unrobed at the altar, looked kindly at me and asked, 'Puer bone, quam appelaris? And I answered, 'Christopherus sum; and he said, 'Ergo connominati sumus' that is, that we were namesakes. . . Then he asked in Latin, 'Whose son are you? To which I answered, also in Latin, that I was the son of deacon Sireysky of the village of Lebedinskoe.
His face was the face of a man who sees the Beloved after long and sorrowful absence. So did thought and passion and vision charge his frame and his countenance, that for a moment truly there was effulgence. It startled. Don Luis held his speech suspended, in his eyes wonder. Master Christopherus let fall his arm. He sighed. The out-pushing light faltered, vanished.
The fourth day after his return, Don Francisco de Las Casas, Don Juan Ponce de Leon, and others told to the Viceroy, lying upon his bed in his house, much what Luis Torres told Juan Lepe. "Sirs," he said, when they had done, "here is my brother, Don Bartholomew, who will take order. He is as myself. For Christopherus Columbus, he is ill, and must be ill awhile."
At last the Queen and I say 'We agree' to this enterprise, which may bring forth fruit or may not, or may mean mere empty loss of ships and men and of our monies! Yet we say 'yea. But we do not say 'yea , Master Christopherus, to the too great ferry fee which you ask! I say 'ask', but verily the tone is of command!"
And if the Sovereigns saw fit to send out some just and lofty mind to take evidence from all as to their servant Christopherus Columbus's deeds and public acts and care of their Majesties' New Lands and all the souls therein, such an one would be welcomed by their Graces' true servant. So he himself asked for a commissioner but he never thought of such an one as Francisco de Bobadilla!
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