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!”