Chapter 34 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE HOMECOMING
It is perhaps one of the most tremendous coincidences in history that those two caravels, blown so far apart on a stormy night a month earlier, should by widely different courses and after incredible vicissitudes, have come to cast anchor on the same day in the home port of their destination.
The crazy Niña, guided by a master-hand, had brought her leaky timbers safely into the port of Santa Maria in the Azores on the 18th of February. Here there was trouble with the Portuguese Governor. A score of Colon’s men were arrested as they were going in pilgrimage, barefoot and in their shirts, to hear Mass, in fulfilment of the vow they had made when at the mercy of the tempest’s fury. Upon this arrest followed a comedy of threats and counter-threats passing between the Governor and Colon, in which at last Colon’s swagger and high tone prevailed. Once his men were restored to him he left that inhospitable shore, again to encounter foul weather. This drove him so far north that he was compelled to seek shelter in the Tagus.
Here at Lisbon there was yet another comedy to be played. Being challenged by the port authorities, he mantled himself once more in his awful dignity, proclaimed himself from the deck of his battered little caravel the Castilian Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy of the Indies, and announced the great discovery from which he was returning. He well knew that this would be reported to King John and would profoundly mortify him, and he cannot have been blind to the dangers that might follow; but these he joyfully incurred for the sake of taunting the King of Portugal with the glorious chance that he had missed. The magnitude of the discovery and the stupendous wealth to be derived from it were not diminished in the account he rendered.
The result, as he had expected, was a command to attend the Court. He went, bearing with him his Indians, his parrots and his lumps of gold; and his swaggering ostentation was so wounding to the Portuguese nobles that he was fortunate to depart again from Lisbon with a whole skin.
Before leaving he wrote a long letter to Luis de Santangel, for submission to the Sovereigns, in which he set forth in detail his discoveries from his first landing on Guanahani. He described Cuba, which he had re-named Juana, as of the extent of England and Scotland together, and Hispaniola, which he declared to be of an acreage equal to that of all Spain, besides the many lesser islands of which he had similarly taken possession in the name of the Sovereigns. All this he accounted merely a beginning of the vast dominions to be brought to the crown of Spain. The loss of the Santa Maria, he explained, had interrupted his exploration, and he had deemed it well to return and render an account of what so far he had achieved. He dwelt upon the wealth of the lands he had found, in gold without limit, in pearls and spices, cotton and many other inestimable products. He described the incredible fecundity of the soil, and the docility of the race of men who inhabited those regions, in whom their Highnesses would find ideal subjects ready for conversion to the Christian Faith. He spoke of the specimens he would lay before their Highnesses in some slight attestation of the marvels he reported.
For Don Luis alone he added that he would sail for Palos, where he would look for news of him, praying that there might also be some word of Beatriz, without which there would be little joy for him in his achievement.
Sailing from the Tagus on the 13th of March he reached the mouth of the Odiel on the morning of the 15th.
Until noon that day he stood off and on, waiting for the tide, so as to cross the bar of Saltes. As the little caravel rode there with the Admiral’s pennant trailing from her mizzen, she came inevitably to take the eye of folk ashore. At first they were merely the ordinary inquisitive idlers of the port, who stood shading their eyes from the morning sun, to scan the vessel. Soon, however, there was a seafaring man who recognized her for one of the ships of the squadron that had sailed thence seven months ago on a crazy voyage from which none was expected to return.
In excitement the fellow passed the word. It flew from mouth to mouth, from house to house, and the staring groups ashore increased until all Palos had emptied itself to crowd the quays, the beach and the dunes above them. In belfry after belfry the bells were set ringing.
At noon, on the full tide, the Niña crossed the bar to an excited clamour from the assembled multitude, and Colon received a foretaste of the sensation which his passage henceforth was to create.
As the helm was put over and they swung into the Tinto, he raised his proud eyes to the white walls of La Rabida, crowning its promontory, where this great adventure may be said to have begun. On the esplanade before the convent he made out a little group of men in monkish habits, and in the foreground a portly figure that stood waving frantically.
Erect on the poop, in his rich red cloak, which he had donned for this tremendous occasion, Colon joyously returned the greeting of his benefactor, Frey Juan Perez.
They let go the anchor and swung out the boat. Other boats came crowding about them, and presently Colon was standing on the quay with most of his crew, engulfed in a tumultuous, welcoming, questioning mob. There were men of the port, bare-legged sailors and fishermen, aproned carpenters and smiths, caulkers, coopers and the like, and mingling with them, no less thrilled and scarcely less vociferous, the shopkeepers, the ship-builders and some of the more affluent and normally sober merchants of the town. Noisiest of all were the women. Those who had discovered menfolk of their own among the Admiral’s following hung rapturously laughing and crying upon their necks, whilst others who sought in vain be it a husband, a lover, a son or a brother were shrill with anxious questions.
With difficulty the Admiral obtained a moment’s hearing. Reassuringly then he addressed them. So far as he could now say, all who had sailed with him were safe. Two score had remained in the lovely land of his discovery, so as to lay the foundations of a colony by which all Spain would prosper; two score were with him, as they saw; and two score were aboard the Pinta, from which he had been parted in a storm a month ago. But since the frail Niña had weathered it, there was no cause to fear that the stouter and more seaworthy Pinta would not have done the same, so that they might look for her arrival shortly. He was, as we know, to prove a truer prophet than he suspected.
Blessed, cheered, acclaimed, he won through the crowd, and took his way unescorted up by the path through the straggling pines that once he and his little son had trodden hand in hand to the Convent of La Rabida.
As he approached the esplanade Frey Juan, moving with all the speed his gown would permit, ran to meet him and embrace him, glowing with the pride and joy of a father in a victorious child.
“Come with God, my son! Here to my heart. We have heard the news already of how fully you have justified Spain’s hope in you.”
“Spain’s hope!” Colon laughed. “Faith, the fingers of one hand suffice to count the Spaniards who believed in me. The rest of Spain, including your junta of learned doctors, accounted me a madman.”
“My son,” Frey Juan protested, “is this an hour for bitterness?”
“Bitterness! I have none. That is for abashed unfortunates who are without retort. I come to cast a New World into the lap of Spain in answer to her scoffings. Should I, then, be bitter?”