Let us hope that King John turned a deaf ear to them. At any rate,
Columbus was not assassinated, perhaps because he thought it safer to
trust to his battered little _Nina_ than to cross Portugal by land.
Hurrying aboard, he hoisted anchor and started for Palos.
It was on a Friday that Columbus had left Palos; it was likewise on
Friday that he had left the Canaries after mending the _Pinta's_
rudder; on Friday he had taken leave of the little settlement of La
Navidad away back in Haiti, and now it was on Friday, the 15th of March,
that he dropped anchor in the friendly port of Palos.
For the astounded population it was as if the dead had come to life.
Every family whose relations had accompanied the expedition had given
the sailors up for lost; and lo! here was the man who had led them to
their death, bringing a caravel into port. True, forty of the men had
been left across the water, and as many more perhaps were under it. Only
one ship had come back; but it brought with it the amazing proof that
the Atlantic could be crossed! Shops were closed, everybody went to
church and rendered praise; bells pealed forth, and the "mad Genoese"
was the greatest hero that ever lived; then, as if to give the scene a
happy ending, just before sunset of that same famous day, the
_Pinta_, which had _not_ been shipwrecked off the Azores at
all, also sailed into the Rio Tinto.
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