When the two vessels became separated in the storm off the Azores, he
concluded just what the Admiral concluded--that the other ship had gone
down. He considered it a miracle that even one of those mere scraps of
wood, lashed about in a furious sea, should have stayed afloat; but both
of them,--no! two miracles could never happen in one night!
And so when he scanned the horizon next morning and saw no _Nina_,
and when he kept peering all that day through the storm and the little
_Nina_ never came in sight, a mean idea made its way into Captain
Pinzon's brain; and it grew and grew until it became a definite, well-
arranged plan.
"The Admiral has gone down with all aboard," he reasoned to himself.
"Now, if my ship ever reaches Spain, why shouldn't I say that when
Columbus failed to find land seven hundred leagues west of the Canaries,
where he expected to find it, I persuaded him to accompany me still
farther, and led him to Cipango."
Martin kept nursing this plan of robbing the dead Admiral of glory,
until one morning he found himself off the Spanish coast just north of
the Portuguese border. Into the little port of Bayona he put, and wrote
a letter, and hired a courier to deliver it; that done, he sailed south
along Portugal for Palos, probably passing the mouth of the Tagus only a
few hours after Columbus, bound for the same port, had turned out into
the Atlantic.
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