es. He touched at Marigalante and at
Guadaloupe, where his people had an engagement with the natives, taking
several prisoners, but releasing them all again with the exception of one
woman, a handsome creature who had fallen in love with Caonabo and
refused to go. But for Caonabo the joys of life and love were at an end;
his heart and spirit were broken. He was not destined to be paraded as a
captive through the streets of Spain, and it was somewhere in the deep
Atlantic that he paid the last tribute to the power that had captured and
broken him. He died on the voyage, which was longer and much more full
of hardships than usual. For some reason or other Columbus did not take
the northerly route going home, but sailed east from Gaudaloupe,
encountering the easterly trade winds, which delayed him so much that the
voyage occupied three months instead of six weeks.

Once more he exhibited his easy mastery of the art of navigation and his
extraordinary gift for estimating dead-reckoning. After having been out
of sight of land for eight weeks, and while some of the sailors thought
they might be in the Bay of Biscay, and others that they were in the
English Channel, the Admiral suddenly announced that they were close to
Cape Saint Vincent.

No land was in sight, but he ordered that sail should be shortened that
evening; and sure enough the next morning they sighted the land close by
Cape Saint Vincent. Columbus managed his landfalls with a fine dramatic
sense as though they were conjuring tricks; and indeed they must have
seemed like conjuring tricks, except that they were almost always
successful.

CHAPTER IV

IN SPAIN AGAIN

The loiterers about the harbour of Cadiz saw a curious sight on June
11th, 1496, when the two battered ships, bearing back the voyagers from
the Eldorado of the West, disembarked their passengers. There were some
220 souls on board, including thirty Indians: and instead of leaping
ashore, flushed with health, and bringing the fortunes which they had
gone out to seek, they crawled miserably from the boats or were carried
ashore, emaciated by starvation, yellow with disease, ragged and unkempt
from poverty, and with practically no possessions other than the clothes
they stood up in. Even the Admiral, now in his forty-sixth year, hardly
had the appearance that one would expect in a Viceroy of the Indies. His
white hair and beard were rough and matted, his handsome face furrowed by
care