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Christopherus Columbus lay in a deep swoon. Round he came from that and said, "Roderigo, tell them that I am perfectly well, but wish to see no one!" From that, he came to recognize me. "Doctor, I am tired. God and Our Lady only know how tired I am!" His eyes shut, his head sank deep into the bed. He said not another word, that day nor the next nor the next.
It involved several hundred men and was no less a thing than the seizure in the dark night of the ships and the setting sail for Spain, there to wreck the fame of Christopherus Columbus and if possible obtain the sending out of some prince over him, who would beam kindly on all hidalgos and never put them to vulgar work.
Suddenly I knew him to be that Master Christopherus who had entered the wedge of shadow yesterday in the palace court. He was out of it now, in the broad light, on the white road on the way to France. He approached. The ocean before Palos came and stood again before me, salt and powerful. The keen, far, sky line of it awoke and drew! Christopherus Columbus came up with me.
It was happiness to him when the simple came crowding, or when in some halt he talked with two or three or with a solitary. The New Lands and the Vast Change, and it would affect all our life, this way, that way and the other way. But when we came to Segovia, the King was dead, not alive, to Christopherus Columbus. Not dead to the Indies, no! But dead to their old discoverer.
"But King Henry said at last, 'Go bring us that brother of yours, and we think it may be done! And he gave me gold. So I would come back to Spain for you, and I reached Paris, and it was the summer of 1493. Christopher, my great brother, don't you hear me? For it was at Paris that I heard, and it came like a flood of glory, fallen in one moment from Heaven! I heard, 'Christopherus Columbus!
How much more then Christopherus Columbus! The enterprise was common in that all stood to profit. It was royal errand, world service! So he thought and sailed in some tranquillity of mind for San Domingo. But the Adelantado said in my ear. "There will be a vast to-do! Maybe I'll sail the Margarita to the end." He was the prophet! It was late June. Hispaniola rose, faint, faint, upon the horizon.
Holy Church with another cubit to her stature. Christopherus Columbus, the Discoverer, the Enricher, the Deliverer! Queen Isabella, and on her cheeks a flush of gratitude; all the Spanish court bowing low. All the friends, the kindred, all so blessed! Sons, brothers; Genoa, and Domenico Colombo clad in velvet, dining with the Doge.
The Indians Christopherus Columbus called them "Indians" pointed from ships to cloud. They spoke with movements of reverence. "You have come down you have come down!" We understood them, though their words were not ours. Now the greenwood rose close at hand. The trees differed, the woven thickness of it, the color and blossom, from any wood at home.
Jaurez piloted me to where just under pulpit were ranged my fellow mariners, a hundred plain sailormen, no great number with which to widen the world! A score or so of better station were grouped at the head of these, and in front of all stood Christopherus Columbus. I saw again Martin Alonso Pinzon who had entered the Prior's room at La Rabida, and with him his two brothers Francisco and Vicente.
His two brothers worshipped him, and in most places and moments his crew would follow him with a cheer. The Admiral was bound to him, not only in that he had volunteered and made others to go willingly, but that he had put in his ship, the Nina, and had furnished Master Christopherus with monies. That eighth of the cost of the expedition, whence else could it come?
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