worth sailing out there to find which was the truth."

"Where would be the good of finding that if you never came back, boy?"

Christopher shrugged his shoulders. "Just for the fun of finding out,
perhaps," he said.

* * * * *

A month later Christopher saw a galley flying the flag of Genoa enter
the harbor. When the captain came on shore the boy went to him, and
telling him who he was, asked for a chance to go as sailor back to
Genoa. The captain knew the boy's father, Domenico Colombo, and gave
Christopher a place on the galley. She was sailing north, homeward
bound, and a few days later, having safely avoided all hostile ships and
storms, the galley came into sight of the beautiful white city in its
nest against the hills.

It was a happy day when the young sailor landed and surprised his father
and mother by walking in upon them. News of Colombo's defeat by the ship
of Naples had come to Genoa, and Christopher's family had given him up
as lost.

But narrow as his escape on that voyage had been, such chances were part
of the sailor's life in that age, and Christopher was quite ready to
take his share of privation and danger with his mates. It was only by
weathering such storms that he could ever hope to be put in charge of
rich merchantmen or to command his own vessel in his city's defense. So
he sailed again soon after, and in a year or two had come to know the
Mediterranean Sea as well as the back of his hand.

Captains found he was good at making maps, and paid him to draw them,
and when he was on shore he spent all his time studying charts and
plans, and soon became so expert that he could support himself by
preparing new charts. Yet, in spite of all his study, he found that the
maps covered only a small part of the sea, and gave him no knowledge of
the waters to the west. There he now began to believe the
long-looked-for sea passage to the East Indies must lie.

Christopher grew to manhood, and then a chance shipwreck threw him in
Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The Portuguese were the great sailors
of the age, and the young man met many famous captains who were planning
trips to the western coast of Africa and about the Cape of Good Hope.

Some of the captains took an interest in the sailor who made such
splendid maps and was so eager to go on dangerous exploring trips, and
they brought him to the notice of the King of Portugal. One of them,
Toscanelli, wrote of the y