1492

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER VIII

  JUAN LEPE, quitting the Vega of Granada, recrossed the mountains. I wasat wander. I did not go to Malaga. I did not then go to Palos. I went toSan Lucar. I had adventures, but I will not draw them here. The ocean byPalos continued with me in sight and sound and movement. But I did notgo to Palos. I went to the strand of San Lucar, and there I found asmall bark trading not to Genoa but to Marseilles. Seamen lacked, andthe master took me gladly. I freshened knowledge upon this voyage.

  The master was a dour, quiet Catalan; his three sons favored him andtheir six sailors more or less took the note. The sea ran quiet and blueunder a quiet blue heaven. At night all the stars shone, or only lightclouds went overhead. It was a restful boat and Jayme de Marchenarested. Even while his body labored he rested. The sense of Danger inevery room, walking on every road, took leave. Yet was there throughoutthat insistent sight of Palos beach and the gray and wild Atlantic. Allthe birds cried from the west; the salt, stinging wind flung itself uponme from the west. Once a voice, faint and silvery, made itself heard."Were it not well to know those other, those mightier waters, and findthe strange lands, the new lands?" I answered myself, "They are the oldlands taken a new way." But still the voice said, "The new lands!"

  We made Marseilles and unladed, and were held there a fortnight. I mighthave left the bark and found work and maybe safety in France, or I mighthave taken another ship for Italy. I did neither. I clung to this barkand my Cata-lans. We took our lading and quitted Marseilles, and cameafter a tranquil voyage to San Lucar. Again we unladed and laded, andagain voyaged to Marseilles. Spring became summer; young summer, summerin prime. We left Marseilles and voyaged once more San Lucar-ward.There rushed up a fearful storm and we were wrecked off Almeria. One laddrowned. The rest of us somehow made shore. A boat took us to Algeciras,and thence we trudged it to San Lucar.

  My Catalans were not wholly depressed. Behind their wrecked ship stoodmerchants who would furnish another bark. The master would have had mewait at San Lucar until he went forth again. But I was bound for thestrand by Palos and the gray, piling Atlantic.

  August was the month and the day warm. The first of August in the year1492. Two leagues east of Palos I overtook three men trudging thatway, and talking now loudly and angrily and now in a sullen, draggingfashion. I had seen between this road and ocean a fishing hamlet and Imade out that they were from this place. They were men of smallboats, men who fished, but who now and again were gathered in by someshipmaster, when they became sailors.

  In me they saw only a poorly clad, sea-going person. When I gavegreeting they greeted me in return. "For Palos?" I asked, and the onewho talked the most and the loudest gave groaning assent. "Aye, forPalos. You too, brother, are flopping in the net?"

  I did not understand and said as much. He gave an angry laugh andexplained his figure. "Why, the Queen and the King and the law andMartin Pinzon, to whom we, are bound for a year, are pressing us! Whichis to say they've cast a net and here we are, good fish, beating againstthe meshes and finding none big enough to slip through! Haven't you beenpressed too, scooped in without a 'By your leave, Palos fish!' A hundredfish and more in this net and one by one the giant will take us out andbroil us!"

  The second man spoke with a whine. "I had rather a Barbary pirate werecoming aboard! I had rather be took slave and row a galley!"

  The third, a young man, had a whimsical, dark, fearless face. "But we begoing to see strange things and serve the Queen! That's something!"

  "The Queen is just a lady. She don't know anything about deep andfearful seas!"

  "Where are you going," I asked, "and with whom?"

  The angry man answered, "The last of that is the easiest, mate! With anItalian sorcerer who has bewitched the great! He ought to be burned, sayI, with the Jews and heretics! We are going with him, and we are goingwith Captain Martin Pinzon, whom he hath bewitched with the rest! And weare going with three ships, the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina."

  The third said, "The Santa Maria's a good boat."

  "There isn't any boat, good or bad," the first answered him, "that canhold together when you come to heat that'll melt pitch and set woodafire! There isn't any boat, good or bad, that can stand it when alodestone as big as Gibraltar begins to draw iron!"

  The second, whose element was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north ofIreland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the_Infanta Isabella_ was dashed on the rocks and something laughed at usall night!"

  "Ireland's nothing at all to it!" answered the angry man, whose name wasPedro. "I've heard men that know talk! The Portuguese going down Africacoast got to Cape Bojador, but they've never truly gotten any further,though I hear them say they have! They sent a little carrack furtherdown, and it had to come back because the water fell to boiling! Therewasn't any land and there wasn't any true sea, but it was all melted uptogether in fervent heat! Like hot mud, so to speak. It's hell, that'swhat I say; it's hell down there! Moreover, there ain't any heavenstretched over it."

  "What does it mean by that?" asked the second.

  "It means, Fernando, that there wouldn't be any sky, blue nor gray norblack, nor clouds, nor air to breathe! There wouldn't be any thunder andlightning nor rain nor wind, and at night there wouldn't be stars, nonorth star, nor any! It would just be--I don't know what! Fray Ignatiotold me, and he said the name was 'chaos'."

  "That was south. That wasn't west."

  "West is just as bad!"

  Fernando also addressed the young man, the third, calling him Sancho."If there were anything west for Christian men, wouldn't the Holy Fatherat Rome have sent long ago? We are all going to die!"

  "But they didn't know it was round," said Sancho. "Now we do, and that'sthe difference! If you started a little manikin just here on an orangeand told him to go straight ahead, he'd come around home, wouldn't he?"

  "You weary me, Sancho!" cried the first. "And what if you did thatand it took so long that you come back to Fishertown old and bald anddriveling, and your wife is dead and all the neighbors! Much good you'dhave from knowing it was round!"

  "When you got right underfoot wouldn't you fall; that's what I want toknow?"

  "Fall! Fall where?"

  "Into the sky! My God, it's deep! And there wouldn't be any boat to pickyou up nor any floating oar to catch by--"

  The vision seemed to appall them. Fernando drew back of hand acrosseyes.

  I came in. "You wouldn't do that any more than the ant falls off theorange! Men have come back who have been almost underfoot, so far to theeast had they traveled. They found there men and kingdoms and ways notso mightily unlike ours."

  "They went that way," answered Pedro, jerking his hand eastward, "overgood land! And maybe, whatever they said, they were lying to us! I'mthinking most of the learned do that all the time!"

  "Well," said Sancho, "if we do come back, we'll have some rare goodtales to tell!"

  There fell a pause at that, a pause of dissent and exasperation, butalso one of caught fancy. It would undoubtedly be a glory to tell thosetales to a listening, fascinated Fishertown!

  Juan Lepe said, "For months I've been with a trader running from SanLucar to Marseilles. I've had no news this long while! What's doing atPalos?"

  They were ready for an audience, any audience, and forthwith I had thestory of the Admiral fairly straight--or I could make it straight--fromthat day when we parted on the Cordova road. These men did not know whathad happened in March or in April, but they knew something of May. InMay he came to Palos and settled down with Fray Juan Perez in La Rabida,and to see him went Captain Martin Pinzon who knew him already, and thephysician Garcia Fernandez and others, and they all talked togetherfor a day and a night. After that the alcalde of Palos and others inauthority had letters and warrants from the Queen and the King, and theyoverbore everything, calling him Don and _El Almirante_ and saying thathe must be furnished forth. Then came a day when everybody was gatheredin the square before the church of Saint George, and th
e alcalde thathad a great voice read the letters.

  "I was there!" said Fernando. "I brought in fish that morning."

  "I, too!" quoth Sancho. "I had to buy sailcloth."

  It was Pedro chiefly who talked. "They were from the King and Queen, andthe moral was that Palos must furnish Don Cristoval Colon, Admiral ofthe Ocean-Sea--and we thought that was a curious thing to be admiralof!--two ships and all seamen needed and all supplies. A third shipcould be enterprised, and any in and around Palos was to be encouragedto put in fortune and help. Ships and those who went in them were toobey the said Don Cristoval Colon or Columbus as though he were theQueen and the King, the Bishop of Seville and the Marquis of Cadiz!It didn't say it just that way but that was what it meant. We were tofollow him and do as he told us, or it would be much the worse for us!We weren't to put in at St. George la Mina on the coast of Africa, nortouch at the King of Portugal's islands, and that was the whole of it!"

  "All seamen were to be given good pay," said Sancho. "And if anybodygoing was in debt, or even if he had done a crime--so that it wasn'ttreason or anything the Holy Office handles--he couldn't be troubledor held back, seeing it was royal errand. That is very convenient forsome."

  Pedro lost patience. "You'd make the best of Hell itself!"

  "He'd deny," put in Fernando, "Holy Writ that says there shall besorrows!"

  They embarked upon loud blame of Sancho, instance after instance. Atlast I cut them across. "What further happened at Palos?"

  They put back to that port. "Oh, it didn't seem so bad that day! One andanother thought, 'Perhaps I'll go!' Him they call The Admiral is a bigfigure of a man, and of course we that use the sea get to know how agood captain looks. We knew that he had sailed and sailed, and had hadhis own ship, maybe two or three of them! Then too the Pinzons and thePrior of La Rabida answered for him. A lot of us almost belong to thePinzons, having signed to fish and voyage for them, and the Prior isa well-liked man. The alcalde folds up the letter as though he were inchurch, and they all come down the steps and go away to the alcalde'shouse which is around the corner. It wasn't until they were gone thatPalos began to ask, 'Where were three ships and maybe a hundred andfifty men _going_?'"

  "We found out next day," said Fernando. "The tide went out, but it cameback bearing the sound of where we were going!"

  "Then what happened in Palos?"

  "What happened was that they couldn't get the ships and they couldn'tget the men! Palos wouldn't listen. It was too wild, what they wantedto do! It wouldn't listen to the Prior and it wouldn't listen to DoctorGarcia Fernandez, and it wouldn't even listen to Captain Martin AlonsoPinzon. And when that happens--! So for a long time there was a kindof angry calm. And then, lo you! we find that they have written to theQueen and the King. There come letters to Palos, and they are harshones!"

  "I never heard harsher from any King and Queen!" said Fernando.

  "There weren't only the letters, but they'd sent also a great man, SenorJuan de Penelosa, to see that they got obedience. Upshot is we've got togo, ships and men, or else be laid by the heels! As for Palos, her oldsea privileges would be taken from her, and she couldn't face that. Getthose ships ready and stock them and pipe sailors aboard, or there'd beour kind Queen and King to deal with!"

  "Wherever it is, we're going. Great folk are too tall and broad for us!"

  "So there comes another crowd in the square, before the church. Outsteps Captain Martin Pinzon, and he cries, 'Men of Palos, for all youdoubt it, 'tis a glorious thing that's doing! Here is the _Nina_ that mybrothers and I own. She's going with Don Cristoval the Admiral, and themen who are bound to me for fishing and voyaging are going, and morethan that, there is going Martin Alonso Pinzon, for I'll ask no man togo where I will not go!'

  "Then up beside him starts his brothers Vicente and Francisco, and theysay they are going too. Fray Ignatio stands on the church steps andcries that there are idolaters there, and he will go to tell themabout our Lord Jesus Christ! Then the alcalde gets up and says thatthe Sovereigns must be obeyed, and that the _Santa Maria_ and the Pintashall be made ready. Then the pilots Sancho Ruiz and Pedro Nino andBartolomeo Roldan push out together and say they'll go, and othersfollow, seeing they'll have to anyhow! So it went that day and the nextand the next, until now they've pressed all they need. So I say, we arehere, brother, flopping in the net!"

  "When does he sail?"

  "Day after to-morrow, 'tis said. But we who don't live in Palos have ourorders to be there to-night. Aren't you going too, mate?"

  I answered that I hadn't thought of it, and immediately, out of thewhole, there rose and faced me, "You have thought of it all the time!"

  Sancho spoke. "If you'll go with us to Captain Martin Pinzon, he'llenter you. He'd like to get another strong man."

  I said, "I don't know. I'll have to think of it. Here is Palos, andyonder the headland with La Rabida."

  We entered the town. They would have had me go with them wherever theymust report themselves. But I said that I could not then, and at themouth of their street managed to leave them. I passed through Palos andbeyond its western limit came again to that house of the poorest whereI had lodged six months before and waking all night had heard the Tintoflowing by like the life of a man. Long ago I had had some training inmedicine, and in mind's medicine, and three years past I had brought ayoung working man living then in Marchena out of illness and melancholy.His parents dwelled here in this house by the Tinto and they gave meshelter.