Chapter 27 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
DEPARTURE
If the good-natured prior of La Rabida could not at once agree to the obliquity of Pinzon’s courses, yet in the sequel, and with reluctance, he formed the opinion that Colon had correctly read the wealthy merchant-mariner.
Martin Alonso came punctually back upon the morrow to seal the contract. He did not come alone. He brought with him his two brothers, Vicente and Francisco, both ready to share the venture with him, and he made bold to assert that with this powerful support of the Pinzon family, of admittedly unrivalled influence in Palos, it would be odd, indeed, if all difficulties did not vanish and all superstitious obstacles melt away.
From the moment the bargain was concluded matters began to move. The powerful drive of Martin Alonso achieved with the Alcalde and the regidores what Colon had found impossible. Stirred out of their lethargy, they went ruthlessly about the execution of the royal mandate, and it was only a matter of days before two ships had been impounded, to add to the Pinta, which Pinzon had brought as his share into the partnership.
The work of fitting them and equipping them for sea was briskly in hand, and Aranda no longer wandered from one quayside tavern to another seeking to enlist a crew. In his own words, a mysterious breath had breathed over Palos. Where all had hung back with jeers and curses, so many hard-bitten seamen clamoured now to be taken, that Aranda found himself under the necessity of choosing from amongst them. As the days passed there was a cooling of this enthusiasm which the Pinzons had whipped up. The women of Palos may have started the process, reluctant to let their menfolk sail on a voyage so dark and perilous. There was a defection that began to spread. Some of those who had definitely enlisted and could now be claimed were found to have disappeared. In the end, however, some ninety resolute fellows, enough to man the three ships, stood firm, and lent their labours to speed the preparations.
Vasco Aranda, now appointed to the responsible position of Alguazil-Mayor of the expedition, was again sent off, in July, to Santa Fé, with letters reporting progress, and at the same time to escort little Diego Colon to Court, so that he might take up his duties there.
The caulking, fitting and equipping of the ship’s went on apace. For his flagship Colon had taken the largest of the three, a rather tubby three-masted caravel of some two hundred tons, ninety feet in length, built for the Flanders trade, and named the Mariagalante. She was so high in fore and stern castles as to appear top-heavy, a vessel that might pitch badly in a heavy sea, yet nevertheless preferred by him on the score of her comparative roominess.
Her frivolous name was distasteful to him. Having decided to re-name her, he hovered between his loves sacred and profane, between his deep adoration of the Virgin and his passionate devotion to Beatriz. He wavered long, the while praying Our Lady to forgive this hesitation, trusting confidently in Her infinite mercy and compassion for a man distraught by heartache. The impulse was strong within him to give his ship the name of the beloved woman whom he accounted lost to him, whose dear image haunted him, whose flowing grace was ever before his eyes. But in the end his piety conquered, or perhaps it may have been the belief that his ship would more surely prosper and more safely ride the unknown ocean if placed under the protection of Our Lady, whose very name, the Maris Stella, made her the natural guardian of all those who sail the seas. And so in the conviction that Beatriz, herself, would not resent the preference were she ever made aware of it, the Mariagalante was re-named the Santa Maria.
On the more practical side, he jealously supervised the equipping, the arming with bombards and falconets, whose projectiles of stone and iron went to serve as ballast. Side by side with this there was the care of the victualling: barrels of biscuit, of salted meat and fish, bacon and cheese and beans, ropes of onions, kegs of olives, casks of wine, of oil and of vinegar. Then there was the provision of spares: sails, ropes, tow, pitch, and all other supplies necessary to ships that might have to keep the seas for six months or longer.
The purchasing of all this was mainly left to the Pinzons, whose maritime experience knew what to seek, and whose trading relations in the port told them where to find it. Colon’s knowledge of the currency employed by the Portuguese in Africa for the purchase of gold and ivory made him see to it that a goodly store of such trumperies as glass beads, hawk-bells, mirrors and the like were also shipped.
By the end of July, at long last, they were all but ready to take aboard wood and water, and put to sea.
With his brother Francisco to act as pilot, Martin Alonso took command of the Pinta, a vessel half the length of the Santa Maria and with one castle only, in the stern, but of lines that proclaimed her the better sailer. Like the Santa Maria she was square rigged, whilst the third and slightly smaller vessel of the squadron, the Niña, in charge of Vicente Pinzon, was rigged with lateen sails, upon which Colon looked without favour.
Of the crews it was quite evident that the more staid and trustworthy were aboard the two ships commanded by the Pinzons. They had been picked, too, for their competence as seamen, all of them lads who had sailed before with the Pinzons, which gave the latter a certain prior right to them. The hands of the Santa Maria were not only generally rougher and less experienced as sailors, but they included a fair sprinkling of gaol-birds, who belatedly had availed themselves of the amnesty. Colon, however, as he raked them with a masterful, scornful eye was not at all perturbed by their quality. Their toughness he took to promise endurance in the trials that might lie before them. Their unruliness he would know how to govern should they display it once he had them under his hand on the high seas.
Besides the men of the crews, a few adventurers had come at the last moment to swell their numbers, so that in all some hundred and twenty souls were ready to embark in those three frail vessels. They were shipping a couple of barber-surgeons, and an interpreter in the shape of a Marrano named Torres, who because of his knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and Arabic it was ingenuously thought might prove useful when they came to Zipangu. Against the possibility of reaching the mainland beyond it, and the realm of Marco Polo’s Grand Khan, Colon bore a letter from the Sovereigns to that potentate.
The last of the stores were being stowed in the hold when towards evening of the last day of July the town of Palos was flung into excitement by the arrival of a cavalcade such as was rarely seen in that simple stronghold of mariners and traders.
With the approach of the hour of the squadron’s sailing an air of gloom had been settling upon the seaport. Forebodings dejected those with kinsfolk committed to the adventure, whilst others, from sympathy with them, were reprobating it and coming to regard as doomed those who were about to sail. Out of this dejection the town was momentarily lifted by the arrival of that glittering train. Word flew that the puissant lord, the Escribano de la Racion of Aragon, Don Luis de Santangel, was coming to utter in the name of the Sovereigns God-speed to Don Cristobal Colon, and in holiday mood the people turned out to line the narrow unpaved streets and see the show.
The Chancellor rode into Palos on a white Arab, portly, serene, imposing in his damask surcoat edged with a silvery fur, and across his breast a chain of heavy links of gold that would have kept a Palos mariner at ease for a lifetime. He was attended by an armed escort of a half-score riders, glittering in back-and-breasts and caps of polished steel. With him came the returning Vasco Aranda, and a royal notary, named Escobar, who was to accompany the expedition.
The cavalcade clattered and jangled through the town without drawing rein, and breasted the sandy slope through the pinewoods to La Rabida.
Colon was absent from the convent at the time. He had gone aboard the Santa Maria with some effects that were to furnish his cabin, and to make a survey of the stowage which was now complete. Coming ashore he learnt of the passage of the train on its way to the convent, and he followed at speed on foot. Reaching La Rabida heated and a little out of breath, he was met in the courtyard by Santangel, who engulfed him in an embrace.
“Don Luis!” had been his glad, astonished cry. And then a sudden excitement turned him pale. As he stepped back, it was to inquire breathlessly: “What brings you?”
“Did you really suppose that I should allow you to sail without coming to utter a God-speed? Should I let you go without a word on this great expedition which I have done my little to promote?”
“Little? It is the little without which I should be much where I was when last I landed in Spain.” After a pause, he added: “But . . . Is that all?”
“All?” Taken aback, the Chancellor looked at him, and became aware of his pallid air of disappointment. “Why, what’s amiss? You are not pleased to see me.”
“How could I not be?” Colon began a protest. But he went no further with it. He passed a hand wearily across his brow. “You are keen-eyed, Don Luis. It is not that I am not pleased to see you. It is that your coming raised a sudden hope. Forgive it. There is no reason in it. I have prayed so hard that I might have word of Beatriz before I sail. And seeing you, I thought, I hoped, that you brought me news that she has been found.”
Santangel shook his head, sighing. “Ah, my son, if she had been found, it would not have been word of her I should have brought you. I should have brought Beatriz herself. But don’t imagine that I have forgotten. I saw Don Xavier in Cordoba, and urged him to continue the search. We shall find her in the end.”
Colon accounted them words uttered merely to hearten him. They drew from him no more than a sigh, and there for the moment he left the subject. But late that night, when the convent slept and Santangel sat alone with him in his cell, other matters being disposed of, he came back to this.
“You have been so good a friend to me, Don Luis, and I owe you so much that I make bold to ask you something more. If Beatriz is found, let her know of my feelings for her, of my penitence for my hasty judgment; and if it should happen that my voyage prospers and yet I should lose my life in it, then I beg you to see that a full provision is made for her out of what will then be Diego’s heritage. I should wish, too, that she should have the care of Diego; that for my sake she will regard him as a son, just as I hope that in her he will find a mother. I have set it all down in this letter, which is by way of a testament. I leave it in your charge, Don Luis, if you will bear this burden for me.”
“Depend upon me,” Don Luis assured him. “But depend upon me, too, to pursue the search, so that we may have her waiting for you on your return.”
Two days later, on the following Thursday, Colon sailed.
On the night of Wednesday Frey Juan heard him in confession, and before daybreak next morning he set out alone with Aranda for Palos, which was already astir, with lights gleaming from its windows, to hear Mass and receive the Sacrament with his crews in the Church of St. George.
At the mole, after that, he came upon just such a scene as he had expected. The women of Palos and some of its men and children were filling the air with their lamentations as they took leave of the departing sailors. Upon Colon, as he came striding amongst them, they looked without affection, and if they did not openly curse him, it was from a fear lest, by harm to him, the curses should recoil upon those whose slender chance of returning depended upon his survival and his skill.
As the sun came up over the hills of Almonte, he entered the waiting boat, and was pulled out to the Santa Maria, where she rode at her moorings, with the other two ships of the squadron, over against the sandbar of Saltes, which there divides the Tinto from the Odiel.
From the break of the high poop he issued his first command. The trumpeter below him conveyed it in a flourish, which was the signal of departure. The boatswain’s whistle shrilled, and the clank of the capstan followed. As the anchor came above water, other hands, at the halyards, were heaving to a melancholy chant, inarticulate yet suggestive of the “La illaha illa Allah!” from which it was inherited.
The blocks creaked, the yards were braced, the sails slatted for a moment, then bellied to the morning breeze, and the Santa Maria quickened on the bosom of the ebbing tide.
She moved in stateliness through those calm waters under a full spread of canvas above her black hull with its towering castles at stem and stern. The Papal cross spread its arms on her foresheet, and the heavier cross of Malta on the square mainsail, with the flag of Ferdinand and Isabel, quartering in red and gold the castles with the lions, flowing from the maintruck above the crucifix. Colon’s long pennon fluttered aft from the mizzen which was rigged with a high sweeping lateen.
The men in the waist below, a motley assortment that included a few pretentiously full-coated adventurers among a bare-legged majority in shirt and breeches, were crowding the larboard bulwarks, silent and awed now that they were launched upon this voyage into the unknown, in quest of lands that might have no existence outside of the mind of that tall fanatic on the poop. Thence they waved in response to the mournful wavings from the crowded quays from which they were receding ever more swiftly as the vessel gathered way, or to the stragglers who raced along the shore, so as to keep in touch with them up to the last moment.
Thus, with the Pinta and the Niña following in her swirling wake, the Santa Maria came abreast of La Rabida, and Colon, too, moved to the larboard rail, and lifted his eyes to the heights. On the promontory’s edge, clear against the morning sky, in the golden light of the new-risen sun, stood the figures of Santangel and Frey Juan, the two men to whom perhaps more than to any others in all Spain he owed it that he was sailing at last upon this great adventure.
He raised his hand and held it high in a last salute to those good friends. Santangel waved his bonnet in response, and from Frey Juan’s hand a scarf fluttered and was agitated with a rhythm long and slow as the tolling of a passing bell.
Thus Colon stood until the ship swung round the point at the mouth of the Domingo Rubio, and the two figures were lost to his view. Then, at last, he faced ahead, his eyes stern with resolve, and went down to the long quarter-deck, where those who composed his officers stood grouped. The deck was heaving gently now under his feet as they went through the choppy water over the bar of Saltes and took the open sea.
With Juan de la Cosa, who was part-owner of the Santa Maria and sailed as pilot, a squarely built, sandy-haired man with a good-humoured freckled face, Colon conned the ship. A southerly course was laid and the watch set, whereafter Colon went into the cabin that for months was to be his home. Neither cramped nor spacious, it was all plain and yellow varnished without any carving or decoration on bulkheads or stanchions. It contained his bed, which was draped in red, a small table of plain deal, with a stool and a couple of gothic chairs, a clothes-press set against the starboard bulkhead, a locker under the windows astern, on one side a shelf holding a few books and on the other his astrolabe and cross-staff. An hour-glass surmounted the clothes-press, and on the opposite bulkhead hung the oval brass panel with the little painting of Our Lady that once had hung in Colon’s room in Cordoba.