died upon the voyage, and among them
Caonabo. In the harbor here we find Pedro Alonzo Nino who will bear my
letters.

"In Cadiz I discover both friends and not friends. The sovereigns are at
Burgos, and thither I travel. My fortunes are at ebb, yet will the flood
come again!"

Time passed. Hispaniola heard again from him and again. When ships
put forth from Cadiz--and now ships passed with sufficient regularity
between Spain in Europe and Spanish Land across Ocean-Sea--he wrote by
them. He believed in the letter. God only knows how many he wrote in his
lifetime! It was ease to him to tell out, to dream visibly, to argue his
case on fair paper. And those who came in the ships had stories about
him-El Almirante!

Were his fortunes at ebb, or were they still in flood? There might
be more views here than one. Some put in that he was done for, others
clamored that he was yet mounting.

But he wrote to the Adelantado and also to Juan Lepe that he sat between
good and bad at court. The Queen was ever the great head of the good.
We knew from him that Pedro Margarite and Father Buil and Juan Aguado
altered nothing there. But elsewhere now there were warm winds, and now
biting cold. And warm and cold, he could not get the winds that should
fill his sails. He begged for ships--eight he named--that he might now
find for the sovereigns main Asia--not touch here and there upon Cuba
shore, but find the Deep All. But forever promised, he was forever kept
from the ships! True it was that the sovereigns and the world beside
were busy folk! There were Royal Marriages and Naples to be reconquered
for its king.

We heard of confirmations of all his dignities and his tithes of wealth.
He was offered to be made Marquess, but that he would not have. "The
Admiral" was better title. But he sued for and obtained entail upon his
sons and their sons forever of his nobility and his great Estate in the
West. "Thus," he wrote, "have I made your fortunes, sons and brothers!
But truly not without you and your love and strengthening could I have
made aught! A brother indeed for my left hand and my right hand, and to
beckon me on, two dear sons!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

TWO years! It was March, 1496, when he sailed in the _Nina_. It was the
summer of 1498 when Juan Lepe was sent as physician with two ships
put forth from San Domingo by the Adelantado upon a rumor that the
Portuguese had trespassed, landing from a great carrack upon Guadaloupe.
Five