1492

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE caravel tossed in a heavy storm. Some of her mariners were old in these waters, but others, coming out with Bobadilla, had little knowledge of our breadths of Ocean-Sea. They had met naught like this rain, this shaken air, these thunders and lightnings. There rose a cry that the ship would split. All was because they had chained the Admiral!

Don Alonso de Villejo, the Captain taking Christopherus Columbus to Spain, called to him Juan Lepe. “Witness you, Doctor, I would have taken away the irons so soon as we were out of harbor! I would have done it on my own responsibility. But he would not have it!”

“Yes, I witness. In chains in Hispaniola, he will come to Spain in chains.”

“If the ship goes down every man must save himself. He must be free. I have sent for the smith. Come you with me!”

We went to that dusky cabin in the ship where he was prisoned. “It is a great storm, and we are in danger, senor!” said Villejo. “I will take away these irons so that if—”

The Admiral’s silver hair gleamed in the dusk. He moved and his gyves struck together. “Villejo!” he said, “if I lie to-night on the floor of Ocean-Sea, I will lie there in these chains! When the sea gives up its dead, I will rise in them!”

“I could force you, senor,” said Villejo.

The other answered, “Try it, and God will make your hands like a babe’s!”

Villejo and the smith did not try it. There was something around him like an invisible guard. I knew the feel of it, and that it was his will emerged at height.

“Remember then, senor, that I would have done it for you!” Villejo touched the door. The Admiral’s voice came after. “My brother, Don Bartholomew, he who was responsible to me and only through me to the Sovereigns, free him, Villejo, and you have all my thanks!”

We went to take the gyves from Don Bartholomew. It would have been comfort to these brothers to be together in prison—but that the Governor of Hispaniola straitly forbade. When Villejo had explained what he would do, the Adelantado asked, “What of the Admiral?”

“I wish to take them from him also. But he is obstinate in his pride and will not!”

“He will go as he is to the Queen and Spain and the world,” said Juan Lepe.

“That is enough for me,” answered the Adelantado. “I do not go down to-night a freed body while he goes down a chained.—Farewell, senor! I think I hear your sailors calling.”

Villejo hesitated. “Let them have their will, senor,” said Juan Lepe. “Their will is as good as ours.”

Don Bartholomew turned to me. “How fares my brother, Doctor? Is he ill?”

“He is better. Because he was ill I was let to come with him. But now he is better.”

“Give him my enduring love and constancy,” said the Adelantado. “Good night, Villejo!” and turned upon his side with a rattling of his chain.

Returning to the Admiral, Juan Lepe sat beside him through the night. The tempest continuing, there were moments when we thought, It may be the end of this life! We thought to hear the cry “She sinks!” and the rush of feet.

At times when there fell lulls we talked. He was calmly cheerful.

“It seems to me that the storm lessens. I have been penning in my mind, lying here, a letter to one who will show it to the Queen. Writing so, I can say with greater freedom that which should be said.”

“What do you say?”

He told me with energy. His letter related past events in Hispaniola and the arrival of Bobadilla and all that took place thereupon. He had an eloquence of the pen as of speech, and what he said to Dona Juana de la Torre moved. A high simplicity was his in such moment, an opening of the heart, such as only children and the very great attain. He told his wrongs, and he prayed for just judgment, “not as a ruler of an ordered land where obtain old, known, long-followed laws, and where indeed disorder might cry ‘Weakness and Ill-doing!’ But I should be judged rather as a general sent to bring under government an enemy people, numerous, heathen, living in a most difficult, unknown and pathless country. And to do this I had many good men, it is true, but also a host that was not good, but was factious, turbulent, sensual and idle. Yet have I brought these strange lands and naked peoples under the Sovereigns, giving them the lordship of a new world. What say my accusers? They say that I have taken great honors and wealth and nobility for myself and my house. Even they say, O my friend! that from the vast old-and-new and fairest land that I have lately found, I took and kept the pearls that those natives brought me, not rendering them to the Sovereigns. God judge me, it is not so! Spain becometh vastly rich, and the head of the world, and her Sovereigns, lest they should scant their own nobility, give nobility, place and wage to him who brought them Lordship here. It is all! And out of my gain am I not pledged to gather an army and set it forth to gain the Sepulchre? Have I fallen, now and again, in all these years in my Government, into some error? How should I not do so, being human? But never hath an error been meant, never have I wished but to deal honestly and mercifully with all, with Spaniards and with Indians, to serve well the Sovereigns and to advance the Cross. I call the saints to witness! All the way has been difficult, thorns of nature’s and my enemies’ planting, but God knoweth, I have trodden it steadily. I have given much to the Sovereigns, how much it is future days brighter than these will show! I have been true servant to them. If now, writing in chains, upon the caravel Santa, Marta, I cry to them for justice, it is because I do not fear justice!”

He ceased to speak, then presently, “I would that all might see the light that I see over the future!—Thou seest it, Juan Lepe.”

“Aye, I see light over the future.”

By littles the storm fell. Ere dawn we could say, “We shall outlive it!” He slept for an hour then waked. “I was dreaming of the Holy Land—but do you know, Juan Lepe, it was seated here in the lands we found!”

“Seated here and everywhere,” I said. “As soon as we see it so and make it so.”

“Aye, I know that the sea is holy, and so should be all the land! The prophet sees it so—”

The dawn came faintly in upon us. All was quieter, the footing overhead steady, not hasting, frightened. Light strengthened. A boy brought him breakfast. He ate with appetite. “You are better,” I said, “and younger.”

“It is a strange thing,” he answered, “but so it had been from my boyhood. Is the danger close and drear, is the ship upon the reef, then some one pours for me wine! Some one, do I say? I know Whom!”

I began to speak of the Adelantado. “Aye, there he is the same! ‘Peril—darkness? Well, let’s meet it!’ We are alike, we three brothers, alike and different. Diego serves God best in a monastery, and I serve best in a ship with a book and a map to be followed and bettered. Bartholomew serves best where he has been, Adelantado and Alcayde. He is powerful there, with judgment and action. But he is a sea master too, and he makes a good map.—I thank God who gave us good parents, and to us all three mind and a firm will! The inheritance passes to my sons. You have not seen them? They are youths of great promise! A family that is able and at one, loving and aiding each the other, honoring its past and providing for its future, becomes, I tell you, an Oak that cannot be felled—an Ark that rides the waters!”

As he moved, his chains made again their dull noise. “Do they greatly gall you?”

“Yes, they gall! Flesh and spirit. But I shall wear them until the Queen saith, ‘Away with them!’ But ever after I shall keep them by me! They shall hang in my house where forever men shall see them! In my son’s house after me, and in his son’s!”

Alonso de Villejo visited him. “The tempest is over, senor. I take it for good augury in your affair!”

Juan Lepe upon the deck found beside him a man whom he knew. “What d’ye think? At the worst, in the middle night, there came to Don Alonso and the master the old seamen and would have him freed so that he might save us! They said that they had seen his double upon the poop, looking at the sea and waving his arm. Then it vanished! They wanted the whole man, they wanted the Admiral! The master roared at them and sent them back, but if it had come to the worst—I don’t know!”

Cadiz—the Santa Marta came to Cadiz. Before us had arrived Bobadilla’s ships, one, two and three. What he found to say through his messengers of the Admiral and Viceroy was in the hands and eyes and ears of all. He said at the height of his voice, across the ocean from Hispaniola, violent and villainous things.

Cadiz—Spain. We crowded to look.. Down plunged anchor, down rattled sails, around us came the boats. The Admiral and the Adelantado rested in chains. The corregidor of Cadiz took them both thus ashore and to a house where they were kept, until the Sovereigns should say, “Bring them before us!”

Juan Lepe the physician was let to go in the boat with him. Juan Lepe—Jayme de Marchena. It was eight years since I had quitted Spain. I was older by that, grizzled, bearded and so bronzed by the Indies that I needed no Moorish stain. I trusted God that Don Pedro and the Holy Office had no longer claws for me.

Cadiz, and all the people out, pointing and staring. I remembered what I had been told of the return from his first voyage, and the second voyage. Then had been bells and trumpets, flowers, banners, grandees drawing him among them, shouts and shouts of welcome!

He walked in gyves, he and the Adelantado, to the house of his detention. Once only a single voice was raised in a shout, “El Almirante!” We came to the house, not a prison, though a prison for him. In a good enough room the corregidor sought to have the chains removed. The Admiral would not, keeping back with voice and eye the men who wished to part them from him. When the Sovereigns knew, and when the Sovereigns sent—then, but not before!

Seven days in this house. Then word from the Sovereigns, and it was here indignant, and here comforting. The best was the Queen’s word; I do not know if it was so wholly King Ferdinand’s. There were letters to the alcalde and corregidor. Release the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea! Don Francisco de Bobadilla had grossly misunderstood! Soothe the Admiral’s hurt. Show him trust and gratitude in Cadiz that was become through him a greater city! Fulfill his needs and further him upon the way to Granada. Put in his purse two thousand ducats. But the letter that counted most to Christopherus Columbus was one to himself from the Queen.

Juan Lepe found him with it in his hand. From the wrist yet hung the chain. Tears were running down his cheeks. “You see—you see!” he said. “I thank thee, Christ, who taketh care of us all!”

They came and took away his chains. But he claimed them from the corregidor and kept them to his death. Came hidalgos of Cadiz and entreated him away from this house to a better one. Outside the street was thronged. “The Admiral! The Admiral! Who gave to Spain the Indies!”

Don Bartholomew was by him, freed like him. And there too moved a slender young man who had come from Granada with the Queen’s letter, Don Fernando, his eldest son. A light seemed around them. Juan Lepe thought, “Surely they who serve large purposes are cared for. Even though they should die in prison, yet are they cared for!”