In a great red dawn, Roderigo, the Admiral’s
servant,
roused Juan Lepe. “Come—come—come,
Doctor!”
I sprang from my bed and followed him. 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. Roderigo and I forced him to swallow
a little food and wine, and once he rose and made
as if to go on deck. But we laid him down again
and he sank into movelessness and a sleep of all the
faculties. Juan de la Cosa took care of the Cordera.
So we sighted Isabella and in the harbor four caravels
that had not been there when we had sailed in April.
TWO men came into the cabin, Don Diego Colon, left
in charge of Hispaniola, and with him a tall, powerful,
high-featured man, gray of eye and black and silver
of hair and short beard. As he stood beside the
bed, one saw that he must be kinsman to the man who
lay upon it. “O Bartholomew! And is
this the end?” cried Don Diego, and I knew that
the stranger was that brother, Bartholomew, for whom
the Admiral longed.
These three brothers! One lay like a figure upon
a tomb save for the breathing that stirred his silver
hair. One, Don Diego, tall, too, and strong,
but all of a gentle, quiet mien sank on his knees
and seemed to pray. One, Don Bartholomew, stood
like rock or pine, but he slowly made the sign of
the cross, and I saw his gray eyes fill. It seemed
to me that the Admiral’s eyelids flickered.
“Speak to him again,” I said. “Take
his hand.”
Bartholomew Columbus, kneeling in the Cordera’s
cabin, put his arm about his great brother. That
is what he called him,—“Christopher,
my great brother, it is Bartholomew! Don’t
you know me? Don’t you remember? I
must go to England, you said, to see King Henry.
To tell him what you could do—what you
have done, my great brother! Don’t you
remember? I went, but I was poor like you who
are now Viceroy of the Indies—and I was
shipwrecked besides and lost the little that we had
scraped—do you remember?—and
must live like you by making maps and charts, and
it was long before I saw King Henry!— Christopher,
my great brother! He lies like death!”
I said, “He is returning, but he is yet a long
way off. Keep speaking.”
“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! He has found the Indies for King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella!’—Don’t
you hear, Christopher? All the world admiring—all
the world saying, `Nothing will ever go just the same
way again!’ You have done the greatest thing,
my great brother! Doctor, is he dying?”
