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King, Madam, I thought were in Granada. Not finding him in his own lodging, I made bold to come here. Then at once! before I could hasten away, you returned!" 

   The true nature of this Queen was to think no evil. Her countenance remained mild. He had done valiant service, and she was sisterly-minded toward the greater part of the world. Now she said with serenity, "There is no fault, Don Enrique. Stay with us now that you are here." 

   Bowing deeply, he joined a brother-in-arms, Don Miguel de Silva. His squire stood in the shadow behind him, but found a chance-left lane of vision down which much might be seen. 

   The Queen composed herself , in her chair. "This is the position, Master Manuel?" The fair man, so fine and quick that I loved to look at him, bowed and stepped back to his canvas, where he took up his brush and fell to work. The Queen and the Archbishop began to speak earnestly together. Words and sentences floated to Juan Lepe standing by the arras. The Queen made thoughtful pauses, looking before her with steady blue eyes and a somewhat lifted face. I noted that when she did this Manuel Rodriguez painted fast. 

   There fell a pause in their talk. Something differing from the subject of discourse, whatever in its fullness that might be, seemed to come into her mind. She sent her glance across the room. 

   "Don Enrique de Cerda -- " 

   The tone summoned. When he was before her, "It was in my mind," said the Queen, "to send for you within a day or two. But now you are here, and this moment while we await the King is as good as another. We have had letters from the Bishop of Seville whom we reverence, and from Don Pedro Enriquez to whom we owe much. They have to do with Jayme de Marchena who has long been suspect by the Holy Office. He has fled Seville, gone none know where! Don Pedro informs us, Don Enrique, that years ago this man stood among your friends. He does not 



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think it probable that this is yet so -- nor do I, Don Enrique, knowing that you must hold in abhorrence the heretic!" She looked mildly upon him. "In youth we make chance friendships thick as May, but manhood weeds the garden! And yet we think it possible that this man may in his heart trade on old things and make his way to you or send you appeal." She paused, then said in a quiet voice, "Should that happen, Don Enrique, on your allegiance, and as a good Christian, you will do all that you can to put him in the hands of the Holy Office." 

   She waited with her blue eyes upon him. He said, and said quietly, "It was long ago, Madam, when I was a young man and careless. I will do all that lies in me to do. But Spain is wide and there are ships to Africa and other shores." 

   She said, "Yes, I do not see such an one daring to come to Santa Fé! But they say that ten demons possess a heretic, and that he crosses streams upon a hair or walks edges of high walls." 

   With her ringed hand she made gesture of dismissal. He bowed low and stepped back to his former place. 

   The sun flooded in at window. Manuel Rodriguez painted steadily. The Queen sat still, with lifted face and eyes strained into distance. She sighed and came back from wastes where she would be Christian, oh, where she would be Christian! and began with a tender, maternal look to talk with her daughter.



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Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI 
    THE door giving upon the great corridor opened. One said, "The King, Madam!" King Ferdinand entered quietly, in the sober fashion of a sober and able man. He was cool and balanced, true always to his own conception of his own dues. The Queen rose and stepped to meet him. They spoke, standing together, after which he handed her to her chair and took beside her the other great chair which the pages had swiftly placed. After greeting his daughter and the Archbishop he looked across to the painter. "Master Manuel Rodriguez, good day!" 

   There fell a moment of sun-drenched quiet in which they all sat for their picture. Then said the King, "Madam, we are together, and here are those who have been our chief advisers in this affair of discoveries. Master Christopherus is below. We noted him in the court. Let us have him here and see this too-long-dragging matter finished! Once for all abate his demands, or once for all let him go!" 

   They sent a page. Again there was sunny silence, then in at the door came the tall, muscular, gray-eyed, silver-haired man whom I had met the day King Boabdil surrendered Granada. 

   He made reverence to the Queen and the King and to the Archbishop. It was the Queen who spoke to him and that gently. 

   "Master Christopherus, we have had a thousand businesses, and so our matter here has waited and waited. Today comes unaware this quiet hour and we will give it to you. Here with us are the Archbishop and others who have been our counsellors, and here is Don Alonzo de Quintantella 



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who hath always stood your friend. In all the hurly-burly we yet took time, two days ago, to sit in council and come to conclusion. And now we give you our determination. In all reason it should give you joy!" She smiled upon him. "How many years since first you laid your plan before us?" 

   He answered her in a deep voice, thrilling and crowded with feeling. "Seven years, Madam your Highness! Like an infant laid at your feet. And winter has blown upon it, and sunshine carrying hope has walked around it, and then again the cold wind rises -- " 

   The King spoke. "Master Christopherus, in war much else has to cease! In much we have had to find patience, and you have to find it." 

   "My lord King, yes!" replied the tall man. "It is eighteen years since in Lisbon, looking upon the sea one day, I said to myself, `Is there a question that is not to be answered? This ocean is to be crossed. Then why do not I cross it? There is Cipango, Cathay and India! Gold and spices are there, and here lie ships, and between, when all is said, is only sea! God made the sea to be sailed! Yonder they worship idols, here we worship Christ. There are idols, here is Christ. Once a Christopherus carried Christ across water!' Eighteen years ago. I said, `I can do it!' I say it to-day, my lord and my lady. I can do it!" 

   Of the seated great ones only the Queen's spirit appeared to answer his. He seemed to enchant her, to take her with him. But the King's cool face regarded him with something like dislike. He spoke in an edged voice. "Saint Christopher asked no great wage. That is the point, Master Christopherus, so let us to it! At last the Queen and I say `We agree' to this enterprise, which may bring forth fruit or may not, or may mean mere empty loss of ships and men and of our monies! Yet we say `yea.' But we do not say `yea ', Master Christopherus, to the too great ferry fee which you ask! I say `ask', but verily the tone is of command!" 



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   The man whom they called Master Christopherus made a slow, wide gesture of deprecation. The Archbishop took the word. "Too much! You ask a hundred times too much! I must say to you that it is unchristianly arrogance. You talk like a soldan!" An assenting murmur came from the other ecclesiastics. 

   The Queen spoke. "Master Christopherus, if it be a great thing to do, is not the doing it and thereby blessing yourself no less than others -- is not that reward? Not that Castile shall deny you reward, no! Trust me that if you bring us the key of India you shall not find us niggardly! But we and they who advise us stumble at your prescribing wealth, honors and gifts that they say truly are better fitting a great prince! Trust us for enrichment and for honor do you come back with the great thing done! Leave it all now to Time that brings to pass. So you will be clearer to go forth to the blessed carrying of Christ!" 

   She spoke earnestly, a Queen, but with much about her of womanly, motherly sweetness. I saw that she greatly liked the man and somewhere met his spirit. But the King was gathering hardness. He spoke to a secretary standing behind him. "Have you it there written down, the Italian's demand?" 

   The man produced a paper. "Read!" But before it could be unfolded, Master Christopherus spoke. 

   " `Italian!' Seven years in Spain and ten in Portugal, and a good while in Porto Santo that belongs to Portugal, a little in England and in Ultima Thule or Iceland, and long, long years upon ships decked and undecked in all the seas that are known -- fourteen years, childhood and boyhood, in Genoa and at Pavia where I went to school, and all my years of hope in Christ's Kingdom, and in the uplands of great doers-and your Highness says to me for a slighting word, `Italian!' I was born in Italy, but to-day, for this turn, King Ferdinand, you should call me `Spaniard'! As, if King John sends me forth be will call me Portuguese! Or King Henry will say, `Christopher the Englishman' 



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or King Charles, to whom verily I see that I may go, shall say, `Frenchman, to whom all owe the marriage of East and West, but France owes Empire!"' 

   The King said, "It may be so, or it may not be so, Master Christopherus. -- Read!" 

   The secretary read: The Genoese, Cristoforo Colombo, called in Spain Cristobal Colon, and in the Latin Christopherus Columbus, states and demands in substance as follows: Sailing westward he will discover for the King and Queen of the Spains the Indies and Cathay and Cipango, to the great glory and enrichment of these Sovereigns and the passing thereby of Spain ahead of Portugal, and likewise and above all to the great glory of Christ and of Holy Church. He will do this, having seen it clear for many years that it is to be done, and he the instrument. And for the finding by going westward of the said India and all the gain of the world and the Kingdom of God and of our Sovereigns the King Don Ferdinand and the Queen Doña Isabella, he bargaineth thus: 

   "He shall be named Admiral of the Ocean-Sea, whereby he means the whole water west of the line drawn by the Holy Father for the King of Portugal. He shall be made Viceroy and Governor of all continents and islands that he may discover, claim and occupy for the Sovereigns. And the said Christopherus Columbus's eldest son shall hold these offices after him, and the heir of his son, and his heir, down time. He shall be granted one tenth of all gold, pearls, precious stones, spices, or other merchandise found or bought or exchanged within his admiralty and viceroyship, and this tithe is likewise to be taken by his heirs from generation to generation. He or one that he shall name shall be judge in all disputes that arise in these continents and islands, so be it that the honor of the Sovereigns of Spain is not touched. He shall have the salary that hath the High Admiral of Castile. He and his family shall be ennobled and henceforth be called Don and Doña. And for the immediate sailing of ships he may, if he so desire, be at an eighth of the 



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expense of outfitting, for which he shall be returned an eighth of all the profit of this the first voyage." 

   The secretary did not make the terms less sounding by his reading. Wind in leaves, went a stir through the room. I heard a page near me whispering, "O Sancta Maria! The hanger-on, the needy one! Since the beginning of time I've seen him at doors, sunny and cloudy days, the big, droning bee!" Manuel Rodriguez painted on. I felt his thought. "I should like to paint you, Admiral of the Ocean-Sea!" 

   The room recomposed itself. Out of silence came the King's voice, chill and dry. "We abate so vast a claim for so vast reward! But we would be naught else but just, and in our ability lavish. Read now what we will do!" 

   The secretary read. It had a certain largeness and goodliness, as go rewards for adventure, even for great adventure, what the sovereigns would do. The room thought it should answer. The King spoke, "We can promise no more nor other than this. It contents you, Master Christopherus?" 

   The long-faced, high-nosed, gray-eyed man answered, "No, my lord King." 

   "Your own terms or none?" 

   "Mine or none, your Highness." 

   The King's voice grew a cutting wind. "To that the Queen and I answer, `Ours or none!' " Pushing back his chair, he glanced at sun out of window. "It is over. I incline to think that it was at best but an empty vision. You are dismissed, Master Christopherus!" 

   The Genoese, bowing, stepped backward from the table. In his face and carriage was nothing broken. He kept color. The Queen's glance went after him, "What will you do now, Master Christopherus?" 

   He answered, "My lady, your Highness, I shall take horse to-morrow for France." 

   The King said, "France? -- King Charles buys ever low, not high!" 

   The Sovereigns and the great churchmen and the less 



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great went away together. After them flowed the high attendance. All went, Don Enrique among the last. Following him, I turned head, for I wished to observe again two persons, the painter Manuel Rodriguez and the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea. The former painted on. The latter walked forth quite alone, coming behind the grinning pages. 

   In the court below I saw him again. The archway to street sent toward us a deep wedge of shadow. He had a cloak which he wrapped around him and a large round bat which he drew low over his gray-blue eyes. With a firm step he crossed to the archway where the purple shadow took him. 

   Juan Lepe must turn to his own part which now must be decided. I walked behind Don Enrique de Cerda through Santa Fé. With him kept Don Miguel de Silva, who loved Don Enrique's sister and would still talk of devoir and of plans, now that the war was ended. When the house was reached he would enter with us and still adhere to Don Enrique. But at the stair foot the latter spoke to the squire. "Find me in an hour, Juan Lepe. I have something to say to thee!" His tone carried, "Do you think the place there makes any difference? No, by the god of friends!" 

   I let him go thinking that I would come to him presently. But I, too, had to act under the god of friends. In Diego Lopez's room I found quill and ink and paper, and there I wrote a letter to Don Enrique, and finding Diego gave it to him to be given in two hours into Don Enrique's hand. Then Juan Lepe the squire changed in his own room, narrow and bare as a cell, to the clothing of Juan Lepe the sailor. 



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Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII 
    DUSK was drawing down as I stole with little trouble out of the house into the street and thence into the maze of Santa Fé. That night I slept with minstrels and jugglers, and at sunrise slipped out of Cordova gate with muleteers. They were for Cordova and I meant to go to Malaga. I meant to find there a ship, maybe for Africa, maybe for Italy, though in Italy, too, sits the Inquisition. But who knows what it is that turns a man, unless we call it his Genius, unless we call it God? I let the muleteers pass me on the road to Cordova, let them dwindle in the distance. And still I walked and did not turn back and find the Malaga road. It was as though I were on the sea, and my bark, was hanging in a calm, waiting for a wind to blow. A man mounted on a horse was coming toward me from Santa Fé. Watching the small figure grow larger, I said, "When he is even with me and has passed and is a little figure again in the distance, I will turn south." 

   He came nearer. Suddenly I knew him to be that Master Christopherus who had entered the wedge of shadow yesterday in the palace court. He was out of it now, in the broad light, on the white road -- on the way to France. He approached. The ocean before Palos came and stood again before me, salt and powerful. The keen, far, sky line of it awoke and drew! 

   Christopherus Columbus came up with me. I said, "A Palos sailor gives you good morning!" 

   Checking the horse, he sat looking at me out of blue-gray eyes. I saw him recollecting. "Dress is different and 



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poorer, but you are the squire in the crowd! `Sailor Palos sailor' -- There's some meaning there too!" 

   He seemed to ponder it, then asked if I was for Cordova. 

   "No. I am going to Malaga where I take ship." 

   "This is not the Malaga road." 

   "No. But I am in no hurry! I should like to walk a mile with you." 

   "Then do it," he answered. "Something tells me that we shall not be ill travelers together." 

   I felt that also and no more than he could explain it. But the reason, I know, stands in the forest behind the seedling. 

   He walked his horse, and I strode beside. He asked my name and I gave it. Juan Lepe. We traveled Cordova road together. Presently he said, "I leave Spain for France, and do you know why?" 

   Said Juan Lepe, "I have been told something, and I have gathered something with my own eyes and ears. You would reach Asia by going west." 

   He spoke in the measured tone of a recital often made alike to himself and to others. "I hold that the voyage from Palos, say, first south to the Canaries and then due west would not exceed three months. Yet I began to go west to India full eighteen years ago! I have voyaged eighteen years, with dead calms and head winds, with storms and back-puttings, with pirates and mutinies, with food and water lacking, with only God and my purpose for friend! I have touched at the court of Portugal and at the court of Spain, and, roundabout way, at the court of England, and at the houses of the Doges of Venice and of Genoa. They all kept me swinging long at anchor, but they have never given me a furthering wind. Eighteen years going to India! But why do I say eighteen? The Lord put me forth from landside the day I was born. Before I was fourteen, at the school in Pavia, He said, `Go to sea. Sail under thy cousin Colombo and learn through long years all the inches of salt water.' Later He said, one day when we were swinging 



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off Alexandria, `Study! Teach thyself! Buy books, not wine nor fine clothes nor favor of women. Study on land and study at sea. Look at every map that comes before you. Learn to make maps. When a world map comes before you, look at the western side of it and think how to fill it out knowingly. Listen to seamen's tales. Learn to view the invisible and to feel under foot the roundness of my earth!' 

   "And He said that same year off Aleppo, `Learn to command ships. Learn in King Reinier's war and in what other war Genoa makes. Learn to direct men and patiently to hear them, winding in and out of their counsels, keeping thyself always wiser than they.' Well, I studied, and learned, and can command a ship or ships, and know navigation, and can make maps and charts with the best, and can rule seamen, loving them the while. Long ago, I went to that school which He set, and came forth magister! Long after His first speaking, I was at Porto Santo, well named, and there He said, `Seek India, going westward.' " He turned his face to the sun. "I have been going to India fifty-six years." 

   Juan Lepe asked, "Why, on yesterday, were you not content with the King and Queen's terms? They granted honor and competence. It was the estate of a prince that you asked." 

   Some moments passed before he answered. The sun was shining, the road white and dusty, the mountains of Elvira purple to the tops and there splashed with silver. When he spoke, his voice was changed. Neither now nor hereafter did he discourse of money-gold and nobility flowing from earthly kings with that impersonal exaltation with which he talked of his errand from God to link together east and west. But he drew them somehow in train from the last, hiding here I thought, an earthly weakness from himself, and the weakness so intertwined with strength that it was hard to divide parasite from oak. 

   "Did you see," he asked, "a boy with me? That was my son Diego whom I have left with a friend in Santa Fé. 



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Fernando, his half-brother, is but a child. I shall see him in Cordova. I have two brothers, dear to me both of them, Diego and Bartholomew. My old father, Dominico Colombo, still lives in Genoa. He lives in poverty, as I have lived in poverty these many years. And there is Pedro Correo, to whom I owe much, husband of my wife's sister. My wife is dead. The mother of Fernando is not my wife, but I love her, and she is poor though beautiful and good. I would have her less poor; I would give her beautiful things. I have love for my kindred, -- love and yearning and care and desire to do them good, alike those who trust me and those who think that I had failed them. I do not fail them!" 

   We padded on upon the dusty road. I felt his inner warmth, divined his life. But at last I said, "What the Queen and King promise would give rich care -- " 

   "I have friends too, for all that I ride out of Spain and seem so poor and desolate! I would repay -- ay, ten times over -- their faith and their help." 

   "Still -- " 

   "There are moreover the poor, and those who study and need books and maps that they cannot purchase. There are convents -- one convent especially -- that befriended me when I was alone and nigh hopeless and furthered my cause. I would give that convent great gifts." Turning in the saddle he looked southwest. "Fray Juan Perez -- " 

   Palos shore spread about me, and rose La Rabida, white among vineyards and pines. Doves flew over cloister. But I did not say all I knew. 

   "There are other things that I would do. I do not speak of them to many! They would say that I was mad. But great things that in this age none else seems inclined to do!" 

   "As what?" I asked. "I have been called mad myself. I am not apt to think you so." 

   He began to speak of a mighty crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre. 

   The road to Cordova stretched sunny and dusty. Above 



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the mountains of Elvira the sky stood keen blue. Juan Lepe said slowly, "Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor of continents and islands in perpetuity, sons and sons' sons after you, and gilded deep with a tenth of all the wealth that flows forever from Asia over Ocean-Sea to Spain, and you and all after you made nobles, grandees and wealthy from generation to generation! Kings almost of the west, and donors to the cast, arousers of crusades and freers of the Sepulchre! You build a high tower!" 

   Carters and carts going by pushed us to the edge of road and covered all with dust. He waited until the cloud sank, then he said, "Do you know -- but you cannot know what it is to be sent from pillar to post and wait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap -- who have been captain of ships! -- to chamberlain, page and lackey? To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low -- to beg year in and year out, cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon and sunset, calm and storm, beg of galleon and beg of carrack, yea, beg of cockboat! To see your family go needy, to be doubted by wife and child and brethren and friends and acquaintance! To have them say, `While you dream we go hungry!' and `What good will it do us if there is India, while we famish in Spain?' and `You love us not, or you would become a prosperous sea captain!' -- Not one year but eighteen, eighteen, since I saw in vision the sun set not behind water but behind vale and hill and mountain and cities rich beyond counting, and smelled the spice draught from the land!" 

   I saw that he must count upon huge indemnity. We all dream indemnity. But still I thought and think that there was here a weakness in him. Far inward he may have known it himself, the outer self was so busy finding grounds! After a moment he spoke again, "Little things bring little reward. But to keep proportion and harmony, great thing must bring great things! You do not know what it is to 



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cross where no man hath crossed and to find what no man hath found!" 

   "Yes, it is a great thing!" 

   "Then," said he, "what is it, that which I ask, to the grandeur of time!" 

   He spoke with a lifted face, eyes upon the mountain crests and the blue they touched. They were nearer us than they had been; the Pass of Elvira was at hand. Yet on I walked, and before me still hung the far ocean west of Palos. I said, "I know something of the guesses, the chances and the dangers, but I have not spent there years of study -- " 

   He kindled, having an auditor whom he chose to think intelligent. He checked his horse, that fell to grazing the bit of green by the way. "As though," he said, "I stood in Cipango beneath a golden roof, I know that it can be done! Twelve hundred leagues at the most. Look!" he said. "You are not an ignoramus like some I have met; nor if I read you right are you like others who not knowing that True Religion is True Wonder up with hands and cry, `Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!' Earth and water make an orb. Place ant on apple and see that orbs may be gone around! Travel far enough and east and west change names! Straight through, beneath us, are other men." 

   "Feet against feet. Antipodes," I said. "All the life of man is taking Wonder in and making Her at home!" 

   "So!" he answered. "Now look! The largeness of our globe is at the equator. The great Ptolemy worked out our reckoning. Twenty-four hours, fifteen degrees to each, in all three hundred and sixty degrees. It is held that the Greeks and the Romans knew fifteen of these hours. They stretched their hand from Gibraltar and Tangier, calling them Pillars of Hercules, to mid-India. Now in our time we have the Canaries and the King of Portugal's new islands -- another hour, mark you! Sixteen from twenty-four leaves eight hours empty. How much of that is water and how much is earth? Where ends Ocean-Sea and where begins India and Cathay, of which the ancients knew only a 


