“What of the Voyage?” asked Juan Lepe.
“That’s the enterprise that will go through.
Now that Portugal and Vasco da Gama are actually in
at the door, it behooves us—more and more
it behooves us,” said Bartolomeo Colombo, “to
find India of All the Wealth! Spain no less than
Portugal wants the gold and diamonds, the drugs and
spices, the fine, thin, painted cloths, the carved
ivory and silver and amber. `Land, land, so much land!’
says King Ferdinand. `But wealth? It is
all out-go! Even your Crusade were a beggarly
Crusade!’ "
“Ha! That hurt him!” quoth Fray Juan
Perez.
“Says the King. `Pedro Alonso Nino has made
for us
the most profitable voyage of any who have sailed
from
Cadiz.’ `From Cadiz, but not from Palos,’
answers the
Admiral.”
“Ha! Easy ’tis when he has shown
the way!” said
Fray Juan Perez.
Don Bartholomew drew with the Prior’s stick
in the sand at our feet. “He conceives
it thus. Here to the north is Cuba, stretching
westward how far no man knoweth. Here to the
south is Paria that he found—no matter what
Ojeda and Nino and Cabral have done since!—stretching
westward how far no man knoweth, and between is a great
sea holding Jamaica and we do not know what other islands.
Cuba and Paria curving south and north and between
them where they shall come closest surely a strait
into the sea of Rich India!” He drew Cuba and
Paria approaching each the other until there was space
between like the space from the horn of Spain to the
horn of Africa. “Rich India—now,
now, now—gold on the wharves, canoes of
pearls, not cotton and cassava, is what we want in
Spain! So the King says, `Very good, you shall
have the ships,’ and the Queen, `Christ have
you in his keeping, Master Christopherus!’ So
we go. All his future hangs, he knows, on finding
Rich India.”
“How soon do we go?”
“As soon as he can get the ships and the men
and the supplies. He wants only three or four
and not great ones. Great ships for warships
and storeships, but little ships for discovery!”
“Aye, I hear him!” said Fray Juan Perez.
“September
—October.”
But it was not until March that we sailed on his last
voyage.
THE ships were the Consolacion, the Margarita,
the Juana and the San Sebastian, all
caravels and small ones, the Consolacion the
largest and the flagship. The Margarita,
that was the Adelantado’s ship, sailed badly.
There was something as wrong with her as had been with
the Pinta when we started from Palos in ’92.
The men all told, crews and officers and adventurers,
were less than two hundred.
Pedro de Terreros, Bartholomew Fiesco, Diego Tristan,
Francisco de Porras were the captains of the caravels
Juan Sanchez and Pedro Ledesma the chief pilots.
Bartholomew Fiesco of the Consolacion was a
Genoese and wholly devoted to the greater Genoese.
We had for notary Diego Mendez. There were good
men upon this voyage, and very bold men.
