From Porto Santo, Columbus made a voyage to Guinea and back; and after
that he and his family went to live on the larger island of Madeira.
There, according to many men who knew Columbus well, the following event
happened.
One day a storm-tossed little caravel, holding four sick, battered,
Portuguese sailors and a Spanish pilot, all of them little more than
living skeletons, was blown on the Madeira shore near where Christopher
dwelt. Their tale was a harrowing one. They had started, they said,
months before from the Canaries for the Madeiras, but had been blown
far, far, far, to the west; and then, when the wind quieted down so that
they could try to get back, their ship became disabled and their food
gave out. Starvation and exposure had nearly finished them; four, in
fact, died within a day or two; but the Spanish pilot, the one who had
kept his strength long enough to steer toward Madeira, lived longer. The
kind-hearted Christopher, who was devoured with curiosity, had had the
poor fellow carried to his own home. He and Felipa did all they could
for him, but their nursing could not restore him. The pilot, seeing that
he would never be able to make another voyage, added a last detail to
the story he first told; namely, that his ship had actually visited a
new land hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean! A proof of
Christopher's own suspicions! Can you not see him, the evening after his
talk with the pilot, standing at sunset on some high point of Madeira,
and looking wistfully out over the western water, saying, "I _must_
sail out there and find those lands.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42