It was middle night. The Santa Maria swung
at anchor and the whole world seemed a just-breathing
stillness. There was the watch, but all else
slept. The watch, looking at Cuba and the moon
on the water, did not observe Felipe when he crept
from forecastle with a long, sharp two-edged knife
such as they sell in Toledo.
Juan Lepe woke from first sleep and could not recover
it. He found Bernardo Nunez’s small, small
cabin stifling, and at last he got up, put on garments,
and slipped forth and through great cabin to outer
air. He might have found the Admiral there before
him, for he slept little and was about the ship at
all hours, but to-night he did sleep.
I spoke to the watch, then set myself down at break
of poop to breathe the splendor of the night.
The moon bathed Alpha and Omega, and the two ships,
the Nina and the Santa Maria. It washed
the Pinta but we saw it not, not knowing where rode
the Pinta and Martin Alonzo Pinzon. So bright,
so pleasureable, was the night!
An hour passed. My body was cooled and refreshed,
my spirit quiet. Rising, I entered great cabin
on my way to bed and sleep. I felt that the cabin
was not empty, and then, there being moonlight enough,
I saw the figure by the Admiral’s door.
“Who is it?” I demanded, but the unbolted
door gave to the man’s push, and he disappeared.
I knew it was not the Admiral and I followed at a
bound. The cabin had a window and the moonbeams
came in. They showed Felipe and his knife and
the great Genoese asleep. The madman laughed
and crooned, then lifted that Toledo dagger and lunged
downward with a sinewy arm. But I was upon him.
The blow fell, but a foot wide of mark. There
was a struggle, a shout. The Admiral, opening
eyes, sprang from bed.
He was a powerful man, and I, too, had strength, but
Felipe fought and struggled like a desert lion.
He kept crying, “I am the King! I will
send him to discover Heaven! I will send him
to join the prophets!” At last we had him down
and bound him. By now the noise had brought the
watch and others. A dozen men came crowding in,
in the moonlight. We took the madman away and
kept him fast, and Juan Lepe tried to cure him but
could not. In three days he died and we buried
him at sea. And Fernando, creeping to me, asked,
“senor, don’t you feel at times that there
is madness over all this ship and this voyage and him
—the Admiral, I mean?”
I answered him that it was a pity there were so few
madmen, and that Felipe must have been quite sane.
“Then what do you think was the matter with
Felipe, Senor?”
I said, “Did it ever occur to you, Fernando,
that you had too much courage and saw too far?”
At which he looked frightened, and said that at times
he had felt those symptoms.
MARTIN PINZON did not return to us. That tall,
blond sea captain was gone we knew not where.
The Santa Maria and the Nina sailed south along
the foot of Cuba. But now rose out of ocean on
our southeast quarter a great island with fair mountain
shapes. We asked our Indians—we had
five aboard beside Diego Colon— what it
was. “Bohio! Bohio!” But when
we came there, its own inhabitants called it Hayti
and Quisquaya.
