1492 Part 32

Seven days. I would not stay longer, but in that time the ancient trees waved green again.

Don Enrique had been recently to Granada. "King Ferdinand will change all matters in the West! Your islands shall have Governors, as many as necessary. They shall refer themselves to a High Governor at San Domingo, who in his turn shall closely listen to a Council here."

"Will the High Governor be Don Cristoval Colon?"

"No. I hear that he himself agrees to a suspension of his viceroyalty for two years, seeing well that in Hispaniola is naught but faction, everything torn into 'Friends of the Genoese' and 'Not friends!'.

Perhaps he sees that he cannot help himself and that he less parts with dignity by acceding. I do not know. There is talk of Don Nicholas de Ovanda, Commander of Lares. Your man will not, I think, be sent before a steady wind for Viceroy again--never again. If he presses too persistently, there can always be found one or more who will stand and cry, 'He did intend, O King--he doth intend--to make himself King of the Indies!' And King Ferdinand will say he does not believe, but it is manifest that that thought must first die from men's minds. The Queen fails fast. She has not the voice and the hand in all matters that once was so."

"He is one who dies for loyalties," I said. "He reverences all simply the crowns of Castile and Leon. For his own sake I am not truly so anxious to have him Viceroy again! They will give him s.h.i.+ps and let him discover until he dies?"

"Ah, I don't think there is any doubt about that!" he answered.

We talked somewhat of that great modern world, evident now over the horizon, bearing upon us like a tall, full-rigged s.h.i.+p. All things were changing, changing fast. We talked of commerce and inventions, of letters and of arts, of religion and the soul of man. Out of the soil were pus.h.i.+ng everywhere plants that the old called heretical.

Seven days. We were, as we shall be forever, friends.

But Juan Lepe would go back to La Rabida. He was, for this turn of life, man of the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea. So we said farewell, Enrique de Cerda and Jayme de Marchena.

Three leagues Seville side of Cordova I came at eve to a good inn known to me of old. Riding into its court I found two travelers entering just before me, one a well-formed hidalgo still at prime, and the other a young man evidently his son. The elder who had just dismounted turned and I recognized Don Francisco de Las Casas. At the same instant he saw me. "Ha, Friend! Ha, Doctor!"

We took our supper together in a wide, low room, looking out upon the road. Don Francisco and Juan Lepe talked and the young man listened.

Juan Lepe talked but his eyes truly were for this young man. It was not that he was of a striking aspect and better than handsome, though he was all that--but I do not know--it was the future in his countenance! His father addressed him as Bartolome. Once he said, "When my son was at the University at Salamanca," and again, "My son will go out with Don Nicholas de Ovando." Juan Lepe, sitting in a brown study, roused at that. "If you go, senor, you will find good memories around the name of Las Casas."

The young man said, "I will strive in no way to darken them, senor."

He might be a year or two the younger side of thirty. The father, it was evident, had great pride in him, and presently having sent him on some errand--sending him, I thought, in order to be able to speak of him--told me that he was very learned, a licentiate, having mastered law, theology and philosophy. He himself would not return to Hispaniola, but Bartolome wished to go. He sighed, "I do not know. Something makes me consent," and went on to enlist Doctor Juan Lepe's care if in the island ever arose any chance to aid--

The son returned. There was something--Juan Lepe knew it--something in the future.

Later, Don Francisco having gone to bed, the young man and I talked. I liked him extraordinarily. I was not far from twice his age, as little man counts age. But he had soul and mind, and while these count age it is not in the short, earthly way. He asked me about the Indians, and again and again we came back to that, pacing up and down in the moonlight before the Spanish inn.

The next morning parting. They were going to Cordova, I to the sea.

The doves flew over the cloister of La Rabida. The bells rang; in the small white church sang the brothers, then paced to their cells or away to their work among the vines. Prior had a garden, small, with a tree in each corner, with a stone bench in the sun and a stone bench in the shade, and the doves walked here all day long. And here I found the Adelantado with Fray Juan Perez.

The Admiral was well?

Aye, well, and next month would come to Seville. A new Voyage.

We sat under the grape arbor and he told me much, the Prior listening for the second time. The doves cooed and whirred and walked in the sun and shadow. According to Don Bartholomew, half in his pack was dark and half was light.

Ovando? We heard again of all that. He was going out, Don Nicholas de Ovando, with a great fleet.

The Adelantado possessed a deal of plain, strong sense. "I do not think that Cristoforo will ever rule again in Hispaniola! King Ferdinand has his own measure and goes about to apply it. The Queen flinches now from decisions.--Well, what of it? After all, we were bred to the sea, I have a notion that his son Diego--an able youth--may yet be Viceroy. He has established his family, if so be he does not bring down the structure by obstinating overmuch! He sees that, the Admiral, and nods his head and steps aside. As for native pride and its hurt he salves that with great enterprises. It is his way. Drouth? Frost? Out of both he rises, green and hopeful as gra.s.s in May!"

"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 s.p.a.ce between like the s.p.a.ce 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 ca.s.sava, is what we want in Spain! So the King says, 'Very good, you shall have the s.h.i.+ps,' 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 s.h.i.+ps and the men and the supplies. He wants only three or four and not great ones. Great s.h.i.+ps for wars.h.i.+ps and stores.h.i.+ps, but little s.h.i.+ps 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE s.h.i.+ps were the _Consolacion_, the _Margarita_, the _Juana_ and the _San Sebastian_, all caravels and small ones, the _Consolacion_ the largest and the flags.h.i.+p. The _Margarita_, that was the Adelantado's s.h.i.+p, 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.

The youth Fernando Colon sailed with his father. He was now fourteen, Don Fernando, slim, intelligent, obedient and loving always to the Admiral.

Days of bright weather, days and days of that marvelous favorable wind that blows over Ocean-Sea. The twenty-fifth of May the Canaries sank behind us. On and on, all the sails steady.

We were not first for Hispaniola. All must be strange, this voyage!

Jamaica, not San Domingo, was our star. Rest there a moment, take food and water, then forth and away. West again, west by south. He was straitly forbidden to drop anchor in any water of Hispaniola. "For why?"

said they. "Because the very sight of his s.h.i.+ps will tear asunder again that which Don Nicholas de Ovando is healing!"

The _Margarita_, that was next to the _Consolacion_ in greatness, sailed so infirmly that mercy 'twas the seas were smooth. It was true accident.

She had been known at Palos, Cadiz and San Lucar for good s.h.i.+p. But at Ercilla where we must stop on the Sovereigns' business, a storm had beaten her upon the sh.o.r.e where she got a great wound in her side. That was staunched, but all her frame was wrenched and she never did well thereafter. In mid-June we came to an island of the Caribs which they called Mantineo. Here we rested the better part of a week, keeping good guard against the Caribs, then sailed, and now north by west, along a vast curve, within a world of islands. They are great, they are small, they are of the extremest beauty! San Martin, Dominica, Guadaloupe, San Juan--the Boriquen whence had come, long ago, that Catalina whom Guacanagari aided--and untouched at, or under the horizon, many another that the Admiral had named; _Santa Maria_ la Antigua, Santa Cruz, Santa Ursula, Montserrat, Eleven Thousand Virgins, Marigalante and all beside.

What a world! Plato his Atlantis. How truly old we are G.o.d only knows!

The _Margarita_ sailed most badly. At San Juan that is the neighbor great island to Hispaniola, council, two councils, one following the other. Then said the Admiral, "We are to find the Strait that shall at last carry us to clothed Asia of all the echoes, and to find we have but four small s.h.i.+ps and one of them evidently doomed. And in that one sails my brother. What is the Sovereigns' command? 'Touch not on your outward way at Hispaniola!' What is in their mind here? 'Hale and faring well, you have no need.'--But if we are not hale and faring well by a fourth of our enterprise? They never meant it to a drowning man, or one whose water cask was empty! Being Christian, no! We will put into San Domingo and ask of Don Nicholas de Ovando a s.h.i.+p in place of the _Margarita_."

Whereat all cheered. We were gathered under palms, upon a fair point of land in San Juan le Bautista. Next day we weighed anchor, and in picture San Domingo rose before us.

He felt no doubt of decent welcome, of getting his s.h.i.+p. Fifteen sail had gone out with Ovando. Turn the cases around, and he would have given Ovando welcome, he would give him a good s.h.i.+p. How much more then Christopherus Columbus! The enterprise was common in that all stood to profit. It was royal errand, world service! So he thought and sailed in some tranquillity of mind for San Domingo.

But the Adelantado said in my ear. "There will be a vast to-do! Maybe I'll sail the _Margarita_ to the end." He was the prophet!

It was late June. Hispaniola rose, faint, faint, upon the horizon.

All crowded to look. There, there before us dwelled countrymen, fellow mariners, fellow adventurers forth from the Old into the New! It was haven; it was Spain in the West; it was Our Colony.