The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Shipmate--Columbus, by Stephen Wilder

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Title: My Shipmate--Columbus

Author: Stephen Wilder

Illustrator: Llewellyn

Release Date: October 24, 2008 [EBook #27019]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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My
Shipmate--
Columbus

By STEPHEN WILDER

_We've been taught from childhood that the earth is round and that
Columbus discovered America. But maybe we take too much on faith.
This first crossing for instance. Were you there? Did you see
Columbus land? Here's the story of a man who can give us the
straight facts._

The laughter brought spots of color to his cheeks. He stood there for a
while, taking it, and then decided he had had enough and would sit down.
A whisper of amusement still stirred the room as he returned to his seat
and the professor said,

"But just a moment, Mr. Jones. Won't you tell the class what makes you
think Columbus was not the 'bold skipper' the history books say he was.
After all, Mr. Jones, this is a history class. If you know more or
better history than the history books do, isn't it your duty to tell
us?"

[Illustration: He clutched at his slashed veins and snarled into the
face of death.]

"I didn't say he _wasn't_," Danny Jones said desperately as the laughter
started again. Some profs were like that, he thought. Picking on one
student and making the rest of the class laugh and think what a great
guy the prof was and what a prize dodo the hapless student was. "I
said," Danny went on doggedly, "Columbus might not have been--maybe
wasn't--the bold skipper the history books claim he was. I can't prove
it. No one can. I haven't a time machine."

Again it was the wrong thing to say. The professor wagged a finger in
front of his face and gave Danny a sly look. "Don't you," he said,
"don't you indeed? I was beginning to think you had been willed H. G.
Wells' famous literary invention, young man." That one had the class all
but rolling in the aisles.

Danny