1
CHRIST-BEARER
Columbus. . . . We were familiar enough with the heroic figure described in the textbooks we grew up with (who is much reviled in many of them today). And our research had given us a new appreciation for his extraordinary seamanship and navigational abilities. But he was still an enigma, a bronze figure on horseback, his arm outstretched, pointing westward. Would this figure become real? What was he really like, this man who had written so passionately in his journal of his desire to serve Christ and carry His Light to heathen lands? Only God knew what had been locked away in the secret places of his heart; perhaps God would show us as He guided our research.
By His grace, as we became familiar with Columbus’s life, certain scenes began to come alive. We could feel the lift of the Santa Maria’s afterdeck beneath our feet, hear the groaning of the masts and yards far above, and taste the salt spray on our lips. Next to us stood a tall, lean man, deeply tanned, with squint lines etched at the corners of his clear blue eyes. The once-red hair was now almost white, but the hand on the taffrail was steady. The voice, issuing commands, had the timbre of authority.
We would see this man in his moments of supreme triumph and watch with him during the long nights of despair and bitterness. For in Columbus’s heart, he was a sinner like the rest of us. That was our point of entry into understanding him. To know Columbus was to know one’s own desire for the rewards of this world: fame and power and all manner of ego gratification. So we came to have compassion for him, and we came to wonder whether, if we had been tried and tempted as Columbus was, we would have fared half as well.
As the manuscript pages flowed from David’s typewriter, it seemed that rather than creating scenes, we were merely describing what we were seeing. This had begun one afternoon, months earlier, in the darkened stacks of Yale’s Sterling Library. There, in that mysterious, labyrinthine maze of tiered volumes, only the occasional echo of a distant footfall broke the silence. Peter stood in a yellow pool of light beneath an old metallic lampshade. Open in his hand was a translation of Columbus’s journal of his first voyage, undertaken in the year of our Lord 1492.
Tuesday, October 9—he sailed southwestward; he made five leagues. The wind changed, and he ran to the west, quarter northwest, and went four leagues. Afterwards, in all, he made 11 leagues in the day and 20½ leagues in the night; he reckoned 17 leagues for the men. All night they heard the birds passing.1
According to the accounts of others, something else happened on that day. It was something unprecedented, which Columbus apparently chose to leave out of the journal: an emergency conference at sea between Columbus and the captains of the Pinta and the Niña, Martin and Vicente Pinzόn.2 The three ships had hove to into the wind, and the smaller caravels had maneuvered into position on either side of the Santa Maria, enabling their captains to be rowed to the flagship over a calm sea. Under different circumstances the men aloft would have exchanged greetings as the ships came together. But now there was only silence as the grim-faced Pinzόn brothers strode across the Santa Maria’s deck.
Columbus alone seemed cheerful as he welcomed them, but in the privacy of his cabin, his smile vanished. The Pinzóns came right to the point: they had requested the meeting—no, demanded it—but Columbus, ever impatient at the least delay, had attempted to put them off. They were convinced that if they continued one day further on their present course, the sailors would take over their ships and turn back. After thirty-one straight days of heading almost due west from the Canaries, the crews were in an ugly mood, and no amount of cajoling or promising rewards for the first sighting or displays of confidence were going to make a difference.
More critically, Martin and Vicente Pinzón could no longer be certain of their officers if, God forbid, it came to mutiny. Their pilots and masters knew enough about dead reckoning (the art of estimating one’s position solely by compass and crude measurements of one’s speed through the water) to suspect that Columbus was deliberately shortening the daily estimates passed from the flagship.
When they told him this, Columbus must have reacted in great frustration and anger. They were not just asking him to cancel the voyage but to give up everything he had lived for—all his dreams, all his plans. Every maravedi he owned or could borrow had been invested in this venture, and he had suffered through eight long years of humiliation, being rejected by one royal court after another. Even Ferdinand and Isabella had been strongly advised against having anything to do with his wild scheme. If he turned back now, he—and they—would be the laughingstock of all Europe. Which meant that there would not be another chance—ever.
Columbus knew that the Pinzóns were not exaggerating. He had overheard the grumblings of his own crew. Once he had even heard one jokingly suggest that they throw their captain overboard and return with the story that he had lost his balance while taking a sight on the polestar. It was only a matter of time before it would cease to be a joke.
In anguish, he turned away from the Pinzóns. Striding to the aft window, he gazed at the dying rays of the sun on the endless expanse of sea behind them. All his dreams . . .
There was an even deeper reason for his despair, one that he had never divulged to anyone. He had long been convinced that God had given him a special, almost mystical mission: to carry the Light of Christ into the darkness of undiscovered heathen lands and to bring the inhabitants of those lands to the holy faith of Christianity. His own name, Christopher, which literally means Christ-bearer, was to him a clear indication that God had called him to do this. Indeed, he found confirmation of his call almost everywhere he looked. He would quote in his journal such lines of Scripture as those in Isaiah that meant so much to him:
Listen to me, O coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar.
The LORD called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name. . . .
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
Isaiah 49:1, 6
It was hard to say when his sense of mission had crystallized; it may have been while he was still a teenage boy in Genoa, working in the family wool shop, as his father and grandfather had before him, and going to sea at every opportunity. Or it could have come later, in Lisbon, the seafaring capital of the world, where the year 1484 found him and his brother Bartolomeo employed in the exclusive profession of mapmaking. He would have been just thirty-three then—the year Italians call Anno de Cristo, the Year of the Christ. According to folk tradition, this is a year especially reserved for spiritual revelation, being Christ’s age at his death.
As a mapmaker, Columbus was privy not only to the geographic knowledge of the ancients but also to the latest information being brought back from the ever-expanding limits of the known world. He would have studied the global projections of Eratosthenes, the Greek geographer who, two thousand years before, had calculated the circumference of the earth to within 10 percent of its actual dimension.
In Columbus’s time the newest world map was that of Toscanelli of Florence. Based on Marco Polo’s eyewitness account of Cathay (China), Chiambra (India), and the fabulous islands of Cipangu (Japan), it placed the latter only 4,700 miles west from Lisbon. But it was not until Columbus’s own navigational skills had become perfected—on voyages as far north as Thule (Iceland) and as far south as Guinea on the coast of Africa—that the dream finally came within reach. He made his own calculations and arrived at the conclusion that, traversing the 28th parallel, the distance from the Canary Islands to Cipangu was only 750 leagues, or approximately 2,760 miles. (No matter that Columbus had compounded the errors inherent in the accepted cosmography of his day with one or two of his own; God knew that there was something waiting out there—barely 150 leagues beyond Columbus’s estimate.)3
Now it was not a question of if but when, and Columbus’s sense of urgency was whetted by the Danish expedition that eight years earlier had rediscovered the barren Norse “islands” of Helluland or Markland (Labrador) far to the north. There were other tantalizing elements: pieces of carved driftwood found floating west of the Azores and the bodies of two Chinese-looking men that had washed up on Flores in the Azores. And on Corvo, the westernmost island, there was a natural rock formation resembling a horseman pointing west across the ocean.4 All that remained was to convince King John II of Portugal to send him.
The cost of even a modest expedition was so far beyond the reach of a private citizen, even a wealthy one, that Columbus’s only hope was to interest a reigning monarch. He had worked out the cost of outfitting three of the fast, light ships called cararvels, which were ideal for exploring, along with the cost of provisions for a year and wages for the ninety men required to sail them. The total came to two million maravedis (around 1.3 million 2009 dollars)—in those days, a breathtaking amount even for a king.
In 1484 Columbus presented his plan to John II. The King turned the proposal over to a royal commission of scholars for their study and recommendation. After long deliberation, they decided that the scheme was too costly and far too risky for the sailors and the ships. They also found Columbus to be arrogant and overbearing. Undaunted, Columbus dispatched his brother Bartolomeo to Henry VII of England to see if he would be interested. After brief consideration, it was the opinion of the English court that Bartolomeo and his brother were fools and their ideas were madness.5
Columbus now became convinced that God had reserved for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain the honor of sending forth the expedition that would bring the Gospel to undiscovered lands. Were they not renowned throughout Christendom for their devotion to the Savior? To Columbus, this explained why he had been turned down in Portugal and England, and at first he was not dismayed that he was having no success in gaining an audience with the Sovereigns of Castile and Aragon. After all, they were at Granada, preoccupied with directing the current holy war against the powerful Moors, who had invaded southern Spain more than seven centuries earlier and had held it ever since.
But weeks of delay became months. Finally, through the intercession of the Count of Medina Celi, his suit was brought to the attention of Their Catholic Majesties in May 1486. They were sufficiently interested to turn it over to their own royal commission, which took another four and a half years to reach conclusions similar to those of their Portuguese counterparts: Columbus’s scheme “rested on weak foundations,” so that its success seemed “uncertain and impossible to any educated person.”6
Ferdinand and Isabella did not close the door entirely, inviting him to resubmit his proposal when the Moors were finally vanquished, but for Columbus this was the end of hope. The only major monarch left to approach was the King of France. Yet his heart was not in it. He had been so sure that God had intended it to be Ferdinand and Isabella.
Now doubt assailed him. Could it be that he was also wrong about other things? For the first time since he had conceived of his venture—God’s venture—dark shadows of despair crept into the corners of his mind, while all his pride and self-esteem drained away. As he walked along the cold, deserted road that led to La Rábida, the Franciscan monastery on the Rio Tinto where he had left his young son Diego, he had probably never felt so alone or so empty.
The Abbot of the monastery was Father Juan Perez, a man of unusual wisdom. He was responsible for the spiritual well-being of the scores of monks whom God had gathered there and for transforming the little monastery into a center of learning that was gaining a reputation throughout Christian Europe.
Guiding the studies at La Rábida was Father Antonio de la Marchena, Vicar Provincial of Queen Isabella’s home province of Castile. It was Father Antonio who, as Queen Isabella’s confessor, had persuaded her to heed Medina Celi’s request and receive the visionary explorer from Genoa seven years before.
No record exists of what transpired that evening, but we can imagine the Abbot, the scholar, and the dejected sojourner talking far into the night. They had long been friends. Columbus regarded La Rábida as his spiritual home, and he took the things of God very seriously, to the extent that he had even taken lay orders in the Order of St. Francis. But on this occasion it seemed he could not access the solace of the Almighty, and his two friends did their best to help him.
Bit by bit Columbus unburdened himself of all the wounds, the years of snubs and dismissals that had hardened into a rock of bitterness in his chest. How many times had he visited the royal court only to hear taunts such as: “Ah, here comes our vagabond wool-carder again, with his pathetic prattling about spheres and parallels. Tell us, Cristoforo, does the world appear any rounder to you today?”
The three men walked together through the cool stone cloister of the monastery on their way to the refectory for a late supper. Entering the low-ceilinged room, they sat at the end of the long, narrow oak table, the Abbot at its head, the scholar on his left, the captain on his right. The room was dimly illuminated by wax candles in iron sconces. Nothing else adorned the walls except for a plain wooden cross to remind them of the ultimate sacrifice their Savior had made for them.
Served on pewter plates, their fare was simple—grilled halibut caught that afternoon in the Rio Tinto, a small loaf of rye bread, sliced tomatoes from the monastery’s garden, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with oregano. In the shifting shadows, the men spoke softly as the two monks in brown robes gently and patiently sought to lift the spirits of the tall, thin captain with the hawklike nose and angular features.
“Don Cristobál,” said Father Antonio in the Spanish rendering of the captain’s name, “Over the years you have told us about each step of your enterprise, and we have counseled you in all your delays and setbacks. We grasp your vision and affirm your sense of call. You are indeed called by God to this great undertaking.”
The captain just looked at him, hope gone from his eyes.
Now Father Juan spoke. “Read to us from your notes through the years.” He nodded to the thick leather-bound notebook on the table by the captain.
But instead of responding, Columbus stared down at his plate.
“Well then, allow me to read some of it to you.” The Abbot searched for a moment among the pages. “Ah, here it is: ‘All that is requested by anyone who has faith will be granted. Knock, and it will be opened unto you. No one should be afraid to take on any enterprise in the name of our Savior, if it is righteous, and if the purpose is purely for His holy service.’”7 He looked up at the captain. “Those are your words, Don Cristobál.” He paused. “Is your cause righteous? Is the purpose of it for His holy service?”
The captain raised his eyes and met his old friend’s gaze. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“Then,” declared Father Juan, “we have our Savior’s word: if we make our requests in faith, they will be granted.”
Nodding in agreement, Father Antonio put it in spiritual perspective. “There are two realities, Don Cristobál. There is the natural reality that the world knows: what we can see, touch, taste, hear, and feel. And there is the supernatural reality of God’s Kingdom, which we cannot see or touch. You have been privileged to experience the latter. God’s Spirit has opened to you the secrets of His Kingdom.”
The captain was listening intently now.
“You have studied the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, and especially the prophetic books of Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation. And that study has transformed you. You have always had a marked devotion to the Father. You have always regarded the Son as your Savior and Intercessor in the court of heaven. But you have also gained an intimacy with the Holy Spirit, of the sort that is even now transforming our order.”
Father Antonio smiled. “In fact, more than a few of my brother monks find it astonishing that a layman such as yourself is part of our movement, the recognimiento8 that is spiritually reforming the Order of St. Francis.”
Columbus’s eyes brightened. Now he paged through his notes himself until he found the letter he had drafted to the Sovereigns and read from it: “I prayed to the most merciful Lord concerning my desire, and He gave me the spirit and the intelligence for it. He gave me abundant skill in the mariner’s arts, an adequate understanding of the stars, and of geometry and arithmetic.”
He looked at his friends and lifted his hands, palms up. With a smile he simply said, “God has equipped me for this voyage.”
Turning back to the letter, he read further: “Who can doubt that this fire was not merely mine, but also of the Holy Spirit, who encouraged me with a radiance of marvelous illumination from His sacred Holy Scriptures!”
Father Juan beamed. “There! Do you hear what you wrote, Don Cristobál? Never again let the enemy of your soul convince you that you are alone, abandoned, without friends who believe in you and daily pray for you.”
Father Antonio stroked his chin. “You have shared with us your conviction that God has called you to bear the Light of Christ west to heathen people in undiscovered lands. What exactly do you anticipate finding once you get there?”
Columbus tapped his long fingers together. “If I have heard God correctly, the unimaginable wealth that Marco Polo saw with his own eyes. I am convinced that the source of that wealth is none other than the lost mines of King Solomon.”
The monks’ eyes widened. Neither of them spoke.
The captain went on. “If the Enterprise of the Indies succeeds—if I can find it for Their Majesties, then King Ferdinand will become a new King David. After all, Joachim de Fiore did say that the man who would recover the Holy Land for Christendom would come out of Spain.”
Father Antonio, familiar with the writings of the ancient sage who three centuries earlier had penned this prophecy, pursed his lips and slowly nodded.
“I believe King Ferdinand is that man,” the captain concluded, “and that he is to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem—and thereby fulfill the prophetic conditions for the return of our Lord.”9
With a crust of bread Father Juan swept up the last of the olive oil on his plate. “God is pleased with your humility,” he mused. “You see yourself as merely a forerunner, as the Baptizer was.”
The captain sighed and laughed wryly. “A forerunner of nothing, it would seem.”
The Abbot rose to his feet. “This matter is not closed.”
He turned to the other monk. “I, too, was once the Queen’s confessor. Now I will write to her and ask her before God to reconsider supporting what I believe to be a voyage of destiny.”
He looked at both men. “And who knows, perhaps now God will favor our request.”
The three men adjourned to the chapel, where the abbot, a shepherd of shepherds, restored this lost sheep to the fold. He gently led Columbus in an act of contrition, confessing his willfulness, pride, and unbelief.
When Father Juan pronounced absolution, the captain’s eyes brimmed. Then the three friends shared the Eucharist together, reuniting themselves with the One who had given His body and shed His blood for them.
Whatever did transpire that night at La Rábida, it marked a turning point in God’s plan to use Columbus to raise the curtain on his new Promised Land.
The following morning, Father Perez dispatched a messenger to the Queen, stating that he was convinced that God’s hand rested upon Christopher Columbus and urging Her Majesty to reconsider his proposal.
Columbus tarried at La Rábida, awaiting a reply, convinced that after his own arm of flesh had been exhausted and all his hope abandoned, God in his infinite mercy might yet intervene. Not only had God altered circumstances, but far more important, He had healed Columbus’s hard heart of bitterness.
The Queen’s answer came soon enough: Columbus was to return immediately to Santa Fé, the City of the Holy Faith, which the besieging Christian forces had raised up outside the massive walls of the Moorish fortress of Granada. There they were determined to conclude what everyone hoped would be the last crusade. What was more, in a singularly thoughtful gesture, the monarchs included with the letter a draft for personal funds. This meant that Columbus would be able to replace his worn attire and tattered cloak and could purchase a proper mount on which to return. Once again God was bestowing favor on him.
When Columbus arrived at Santa Fé at the end of 1491, there was tremendous excitement throughout the city: the Moors were about to surrender! Armor was being burnished, battle standards were being set up, women were stringing pennants and bunting from the tops of tents and houses. Finally, as the afternoon sun fired the walls of the Alhambra, the citadel at the heart of the walled city, the Moorish banner came down, and the huge gates of Granada slowly swung open. Out came the Moorish King at the head of a column of noblemen, while lining his path on either side were mounted crusaders in full armor, their white surplices with the red crosses blazing in the sun. They stood perfectly still, their lances upright. Not a sound was heard, save the hoofbeats of the Moorish horses.
At the end of the promenade, under a pavilion, waited Ferdinand and Isabella. The Moorish King dismounted, walked up to them, knelt, and kissed their hands. And the mightiest cheer ever heard in Andalusia erupted. The war was over! The last Moorish foothold in Europe had been dislodged, and Christ reigned supreme in Castile. Pandemonium broke out—as war-weary Christian soldiers wept and cried and gave thanks to God.
Full of joy himself, Columbus was nonetheless impatient to see the King and Queen. He may have been the only Christian in Granada that night not completely given over to the exhilaration of the moment. He was not kept waiting long. Exhausted as they were, Their Catholic Majesties listened attentively to Columbus. And as it turned out, there had never been a time and there would never be another time when they would have been more receptive to his proposals. God had granted them a tremendous victory, and they had not yet thought of how they might show Him their gratitude. Build a cathedral? Make a pilgrimage? Erect shelters for the poor?
And now a far more modest yet imaginative possibility presented itself. Here, back again, was the Genoese visionary, with his proposal for his own crusade: to discover new lands for the glory of God and His church, and to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.
What if he were God’s man, as Perez seemed to think that he was? Could this be how God would have them show their gratitude?
Turning it over in their minds, they decided that sending Columbus on this mission would be a fitting way to display their thankfulness. Promptly they summoned Columbus to tell him that they agreed to his plan.
In that moment of victory Columbus reverted to his old proud, untrusting, ambitious self. In return for his services he loftily stipulated the following demands: one tenth of all the riches that might be found in any of the lands he might discover; the unprecedented rank and title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea; and the positions of both viceroy and governor of all discovered lands.
The King and Queen were stunned. They dismissed him summarily. And were it not for the intervention of Luis de Santángel, the royal treasurer, that would have been the end of it. But this skilled diplomat, who had long been one of Columbus’s few supporters at court, now interceded for him with such clarity that the Queen was persuaded to change her mind. She even offered to pledge her personal jewelry as collateral to help finance the expedition, but Santángel assured her that this would not be necessary; they would raise the money through loans from regional governments. Thereupon, a messenger was sent at the gallop to bring Columbus back.
The next eight months were probably the happiest of Columbus’s life. As a result of his meticulous care in the fitting out of his three ships, the expedition would be ideally equipped—far better than many that would cross the Atlantic two centuries later. In Martin and Vicente Pinzón, he had two experienced mariners who shared his vision and his sense of urgency. Also, they were natives of the port of Palos on the Rio Tinto, less than an hour’s walk from La Rábida. As it turned out, Palos had somehow earlier offended Ferdinand and Isabella, and Their Majesties now decreed that as penance the town would furnish the ships and sailors for Columbus’s expedition. Many of the men of Palos were seafarers, so the Pinzóns were able to raise first-class crews. This was crucial, for if Columbus had found it necessary to raise the crews himself, he would probably have had to rely largely on convict labor.
Additionally, Martin Pinzón owned two vessels that were ideally suited for the voyage—fast, new caravels, at a time when good ships were extremely hard to come by because wealthy Jews were frantically buying up practically everything that was seaworthy. With the end of the holy war, the Spanish Inquisition, originally commissioned to seek out hidden heresy, now focused its attention increasingly on merranos—Jews who had “converted” to Christianity, perhaps to escape mounting persecution or to avoid having to leave their native soil. The Inquisition set out to test the faith of these converts, for now that the Moors had been banished, only the Jews remained to defile Spain’s “purity.”
It is ironic that Spain contained both the very best of fifteenth-century Christianity and the very worst. In monasteries like La Rábida, lives of true humility, service, and sacrifice were being lived. And some of the most revered missionaries in the history of the Christian faith—people who taught the life of Jesus not so much with words but by their own example—would come forth from these ancient walls. Similarly, Spain’s convents would produce saints like Teresa of Avila, whose inspiration would change thousands of lives through the ages.
The spirit of the Inquisition was the opposite. As Lord Acton once observed, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Inquisition’s power was absolute. Their final solution to the “Jewish problem” was disseminated by a royal decree issued in the spring of 1492: all Jews were given three months to get out of the country. It was one of the earliest examples of ethnic cleansing and one of the most effective.
So many ships were being used to remove the Jews that Columbus had to settle for a heavier, slower flagship than he would have desired. But then came news that cheered him immensely. His royal benefactors had acceded to yet a further request: he would be permitted to invest in the expedition to the extent of one-eighth of its total funding, and he would receive that percentage of any profits. His friends, presumably including the Duke of Medina Celi and Santángel, loaned him the funds to invest.
On the morning of August 3, 1492, as Columbus and his sailors knelt on the dock in the predawn half-light to receive Holy Communion, his heart must have been soaring. The Enterprise to the Indies was about to get under way. His dream had come true.
The tide began to turn, so they boarded the ship, and Columbus assumed command crisply and confidently. In moments the Santa Maria had cast off her lines, set sail, and was gliding down the river with the ebbing tide.
As Columbus’s ships reached the place where the Tinto joined the River Saltés, just before emptying into the ocean, a last shipload of Jews was also waiting for the tide. They too were leaving now, bound for the Mediterranean and the lands of Islam. It is doubtful that members of either expedition thought of the other beyond a routine log entry. None of that shipload of forlorn exiles could have dreamed that the other three ships on the river were leading the way to a land that would one day provide a welcome haven to their people.
Columbus’s journal also mentions that as they passed below La Rábida, they could hear the monks chanting the ancient verses for the first service of the day, with its haunting refrain that ends Et nunc et in perpetuum—“Now and forever.”10 As the sails began to fill with the sea breeze, the great red crusaders’ crosses on them were thrust forward, as if going on before. To the east, the great orb of the sun came up, seeming to ignite the surface of the water and turn it, for a moment, into a river of molten gold.
The first few days could not have gone more smoothly. Instead of heading due west as the crews might have expected, Columbus set a course of southwest by south, making for the Canaries. Therein lay the hidden key to the entire voyage. It was this inspiration—from God, Columbus would say—that would give him success where many others had failed. And some were still trying: word had reached him that John II, on the off chance the mad Genoan might have been onto something, had dispatched one of his own Portuguese mariners due west from the Azores. After days of battling incessant headwinds, the sailor had given up.
In all of Columbus’s previous extensive voyages north and south, he had noted that while the winds known as the Prevailing Westerlies were constant in the northern ocean, once one dropped below the Tropic of Cancer the air currents that prevailed there, known as the Trade Winds, were uniformly out of the northeast. Columbus concluded that by dropping down to take advantage of the trades, it would be possible to have winds behind them on the voyage out, and then on the return, they would sail north and ride the westerlies home. It was a simple and apparently obvious plan. But it had never occurred to anyone else.
They reached Grand Canary Island on August 9, where they reprovisioned and made repairs, and finally launched out into the unknown on September 8.
These were beautiful days—an expansive sea under azure skies, fresh winds billowing the white sails, flying fish and petrels skimming the waves. As the three small vessels sailed on, the succession of days settled into a familiar rhythm, with each new dawn being greeted by one of the grommets, or ship’s boys, singing:
Blessed be the light of day
and the Holy Cross, we say;
and the Lord of Veritie,
and the Holy Trinity.
Blessed be th’ immortal soul,
and the Lord who keeps it whole,
Blessed be the light of day,
and He who sends the night away.11
And yet, with the light of each new day, they sailed farther and farther out into unknown waters. And gradually fear began to dog their wake. None of them had ever been farther than three hundred miles offshore; now, even by Columbus’s diminished reckoning, they were well over two thousand, and they were still going.
Or maybe not. For now the Pinzón brothers, in the privacy of his cabin, had presented Columbus with an ultimatum.