Time passed. Hispaniola heard again from him
and again. When ships put forth from Cadiz -and
now ships passed with sufficient regularity between
Spain in Europe and Spanish Land across Ocean-Sea-he
wrote by them. He believed in the letter.
God only knows how many he wrote in his lifetime!
It was ease to him to tell out, to dream visibly,
to argue his case on fair paper. And those who
came in the ships had stories about him-El Almirante!
Were his fortunes at ebb, or were they still in flood?
There might be more views here than one. Some
put in that he was done for, others clamored that
he was yet mounting.
But he wrote to the Adelantado and also to Juan Lepe
that he sat between good and bad at court. The
Queen was ever the great head of the good. We
knew from him that Pedro Margarite and Father Buil
and Juan Aguado altered nothing there. But elsewhere
now there were warm winds, and now biting cold.
And warm and cold, he could not get the winds that
should fill his sails. He begged for ships—eight
he named—that he might now find for the
sovereigns main Asia—not touch here and
there upon Cuba shore, but find the Deep All.
But forever promised, he was forever kept from the
ships! True it was that the sovereigns and the
world beside were busy folk! There were Royal
Marriages and Naples to be reconquered for its king.
We heard of confirmations of all his dignities and
his tithes of wealth. He was offered to be made
Marquess, but that he would not have. “The
Admiral” was better title. But he sued
for and obtained entail upon his sons and their sons
forever of his nobility and his great Estate in the
West. “Thus,” he wrote, “have
I made your fortunes, sons and brothers! But
truly not without you and your love and strengthening
could I have made aught! A brother indeed for
my left hand and my right hand, and to beckon me on,
two dear sons!”
TWO years! It was March, 1496, when he sailed
in the Nina. It was the summer of 1498
when Juan Lepe was sent as physician with two ships
put forth from San Domingo by the Adelantado upon
a rumor that the Portuguese had trespassed, landing
from a great carrack upon Guadaloupe. Five days
from Hispaniola we met a hurricane that carried us
out of all reckoning. When stillness came again
we were far south. No islands were in sight;
there was only the sea vast and blue. There seemed
to breathe from it a strangeness. We were away
and away, said our pilots, from the curve, like a
bent bow, of the Indian islands. A day and a
night we hung in a dead calm. Dawn broke.
“Sail, ho! Sail, ho!”
We thought that it might be the Portuguese and made
preparation. Three ships lifted over the blue
rim. There was now a light wind; it brought them
nearer, they being better sailers than the Santa
Cruz and the Santa Clara. We saw the
banner. “Castile!” and a lesser one.
“El Almirante!”
