already been delayed a fortnight with
making a rudder for the _Pinta_, stopping her leaks, and replacing the
lateen sails of the _Nina_ with square ones, that she might be able to
keep up with the others. Another week must pass before they could sail.
If they returned to Palos it was doubtful whether they could get any men
at all to replace the disloyal ones. Too much delay might cause the
withdrawal of Martin Pinzon and his brother Vicente, owners of the
_Nina_; and if they went, most of the seamen who were worth their salt
would go also. La Cosa himself in the Admiral's place would go on and
take the chance of mutiny, trusting in his own power to prevent or
subdue it.

"Pedro," he said, "have you told this to any one else?"

"Not a soul."

"Would you like to sail with us?"

"Will a wolf bite? Why do you suppose I told you all this?"

"Bite your tongue then, wolf-cub, until I have seen the Admiral. Where
shall I find you if I want you?"

"Tia Josefa over there lets me sleep in the courtyard."

"Very well--now, off with you."

The Admiral said exactly what the pilot had thought he would say. He
knew himself to be looked upon with envy and dislike, as a Genoese, and
the Spaniards who made up his three crews had been collected as with a
rake from the unwilling Andalusian seaports. It was decided that the
mutinous sailors should be scattered so that they could not easily act
together. Pedro was taken on as cabin-boy, for he was thirteen, and
wiser than his age.

On that May day when Christoval Colon,[1] the hare-brained foreigner
whom the King and Queen had made an Admiral, read the royal orders in
the Church of San Jorge in Palos, there was amazement, wrath and horror
in that small seaport. Queen Ysabel had indeed been so rash as to pledge
her jewels to meet the cost of this expedition; but the royal
treasurers, looking over their accounts, noted that Palos owed a fine to
the Crown which had never been paid. Very good; let Palos contribute the
use and maintenance of two ships for two months, and let the magistrates
of the Andalusian ports hunt up shipmasters and crews and supplies. The
officers of the government came with Colon to enforce this order.

In vain did the Pinzon brothers, who had really been convinced by the
arguments of Colon, use all their influence to secure him a proper
equipment. Even after they had themselves enlisted as captains, with
their own ship the _Nina_, they could not get men enough