'From Cadiz, but not from
Palos,' answers the Admiral."

"Ha! Easy 'tis when he has shown the way!" said Fray Juan Perez.

Don Bartholomew drew with the Prior's stick in the sand at our feet. "He
conceives it thus. Here to the north is Cuba, stretching westward how
far no man knoweth. Here to the south is Paria that he found--no matter
what Ojeda and Nino and Cabral have done since!--stretching westward how
far no man knoweth, and between is a great sea holding Jamaica and we do
not know what other islands. Cuba and Paria curving south and north and
between them where they shall come closest surely a strait into the sea
of Rich India!" He drew Cuba and Paria approaching each the other until
there was space between like the space from the horn of Spain to the
horn of Africa. "Rich India--now, now, now--gold on the wharves, canoes
of pearls, not cotton and cassava, is what we want in Spain! So the King
says, 'Very good, you shall have the ships,' and the Queen, 'Christ
have you in his keeping, Master Christopherus!' So we go. All his future
hangs, he knows, on finding Rich India."

"How soon do we go?"

"As soon as he can get the ships and the men and the supplies. He wants
only three or four and not great ones. Great ships for warships and
storeships, but little ships for discovery!"

"Aye, I hear him!" said Fray Juan Perez. "September--October."

But it was not until March that we sailed on his last voyage.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE ships were the _Consolacion_, the _Margarita_, the _Juana_ and the
_San Sebastian_, all caravels and small ones, the _Consolacion_ the
largest and the flagship. The _Margarita_, that was the Adelantado's
ship, sailed badly. There was something as wrong with her as had been
with the _Pinta_ when we started from Palos in '92.

The men all told, crews and officers and adventurers, were less than two
hundred.

Pedro de Terreros, Bartholomew Fiesco, Diego Tristan, Francisco de
Porras were the captains of the caravels Juan Sanchez and Pedro Ledesma
the chief pilots. Bartholomew Fiesco of the _Consolacion_ was a Genoese
and wholly devoted to the greater Genoese. We had for notary Diego
Mendez. There were good men upon this voyage, and very bold men.

The youth Fernando Colon sailed with his father. He was now fourteen,
Don Fernando, slim, intelligent, obedient and loving always to the
Admiral.

Days of bright weather, days and days of that marvelous favorable wind
that blows over Oce