On the fourth day out from Palos the Pinta's rudder became loose, and unless the damage could be speedily repaired the ship would soon be a prey to current and wind. The Pinta was the vessel whose owners repented having sold her. No wonder then that Columbus suspected the rascals of having bribed the crew to tamper with the rudder, in the hope of forcing their ship to put back into Palos. But he would not put back, he declared. Martin Pinzon was commanding the Pinta, and Martin knew what to do with perverse rudders and perverse men. He immediately set to work to have the damage repaired. The ship's carpenter must have done his work very badly, however, for the following day the rudder was again disabled. Still Columbus would not turn back and risk the chance of all his crew deserting him. Instead, he continued sailing southwest to the Canaries—the point from which the shipwrecked pilot was supposed to have started on his unexpected trip across the Atlantic. These beautiful islands, from which the imposing peak of Teneriffe rises, had been known to the ancients as "The Fortunate Isles"; Spain now owned them and had colonized them, and after the great discovery they became a regular stopping-place for western-bound vessels.

When Columbus came to repair the rudder, he found the entire ship to be in even worse order than he had supposed. She was full of leaks, and her poor sails were not of the right shape to respond to heavy ocean breezes. He would have given her up altogether could he have found another boat to take her place; but the sparsely settled Canaries of 1492 were not the much-visited winter resort that they are to-day; no big ships were then in the harbors; and so there was nothing to do but patch up the Pinta and change the shape of her sails.

While this was being done, Columbus's waiting crew became acquainted with the Spanish colonists, and with very good results; for these islanders had a curious delusion to the effect that every year, at a certain season, they saw land far off to the west. Men were very credulous in those days. It is probable that their "land" was nothing more than clouds which, owing to certain winds of that particular region, lie low on the horizon for a long time; but the people of the Canaries, and of the Madeiras too, all firmly believed they saw Antilla and the other "western lands" of legend; and Columbus, nodding his head wisely, told how the king of Portugal had shown him some reeds, as large as those of India, that had been washed up on the western shore of the Azores. "We shall find land seven hundred and fifty leagues from here," he repeated over and over, for that was the distance the pilot said he had gone. So sure was Columbus that, on leaving the islands, he handed each pilot sealed instructions to cease navigating during the night after they had gone seven hundred leagues.

The tales and delusions that flourished in the Canaries put heart into the crew, so when the little squadron again set forth on September 6 the men were less hostile to the expedition.

Some excitement was given to this fresh start by a rumor, brought from one of the islands, that Portuguese ships were seeking the Spanish fleet, in order to punish Columbus for having sailed in the service of Spain instead of Portugal. As the pursuers never were seen by the Spanish ships, that story, too, may have been some islander's delusion; but it made the crew believe that Columbus's undertaking must look promising to the great navigating Portuguese nation, or they would not be jealous of Spain's enterprise.

More than a month had now passed since Columbus had left Palos, and only a hundred miles out from the African coast were accomplished! Was ever a man subjected to more delays than our patient discoverer! And now, when at last he was ready to start due west, a strong head sea prevailed for two days and would not let them push forward. So that it was actually not until September 8 that the voyage toward the "western lands" may be said to have begun.

We have mentioned that Columbus kept a diary on this voyage. He was, in fact, a prodigious writer, having left behind him when he died a vast quantity of memoirs, letters, and even good verse; and besides these, maps and charts in great numbers. No matter how trying the day had been, with fractious crews and boisterous ocean, no matter how little sleep the anxious commander had had the night before, no matter how much the ill-smelling swinging lamp in his cabin rocked about, he never failed to write in his journal.

This precious manuscript was long in the possession of Columbus's friend Bartolome de las Casas, who borrowed it because he was writing a history of Columbus and wished to get all the information, possible in the navigator's own words.

Las Casas was a monk who spent his life in befriending the Indians. When quite old, he ceased journeying to the New World and stayed at home writing history. He copied a great deal of Columbus's diary word for word, and what he did not actually copy he put into other words. In this way, although the original log of the Santa Maria no longer exists, its contents have been saved for us, and we know the daily happenings on that first trip across the Atlantic.

Nearly every day some little phenomenon was observed which kept up the spirits of the crew. On September 13 one of them saw a bright-colored bird, and the sight encouraged everybody; for instead of thinking that it had flown unusually far out from its African home, they thought it belonged to the new land they were soon to see. Three days later they saw large patches of seaweed and judged they would soon see at least a tiny island. On the 18th the mended Pinta, which had run ahead of the other two boats, reported that a large flock of birds had flown past; next day two pelicans hovered around, and all the sailors declared that a pelican never flew more than sixty or seventy miles from home. On September 21 a whale was seen—"an indication of land," wrote the commander, "as whales always keep near the coast." The next day there was a strong head wind, and though it kept them back from the promised land, Columbus was glad it blew. "This head wind was very necessary for me," he wrote, "because the crew dreaded that they might never meet in these seas with a fair wind to drive them back to Spain."

Soon they were passing through the Sargasso Sea (named from the Portuguese word meaning "floating seaweed"). Its thick masses of drifting vegetation reassured them, for the silly legend that it could surround and embed a ship had not then found believers. Many years after it was discovered that several undercurrents met there and died down, leaving all their seaweed to linger on the calm, currentless surface. But back in 1492 the thicker the seaweed, the surer were those sailors that it indicated land.

Birds and seaweed, seaweed and birds, for over two weeks. Then on September 25 the monotony was broken. Captain Martin Pinzon called out from the Pinta that he saw land. Columbus says that when he heard this shout, he fell on his knees and thanked God. Scanning the horizon, he too thought he saw land; all of the next day they sailed with every eye fixed on a far-off line of mountains which never appeared any nearer. At last the supposed mountains literally rose and rolled away! It was nothing but low-lying clouds, such as those the Canary Islanders had mistaken for terra firma.

Christopher's heart must have sunk, for they had come over seven hundred leagues, and for two days he had supposed he was gazing on the island of his search.

In spite of this disappointment they kept on, for a plant floated by that had roots which had grown in the earth; also a piece of wood that had been rudely carved by man; and the number of birds kept increasing. One can readily see how even the most skeptical man on the expedition should have felt sure by this time that the man whom he used to consider a mild maniac was in truth a very wise person. And perhaps the crew did feel it; but also they felt angry at those signs that mocked them day after day by never coming true. They grumbled; and the more the signs increased the more they grumbled; till finally one morning Columbus came on deck and found that his own helmsman had turned the Santa Maria eastward, and all the crew were standing by in menacing attitudes.

The other two ships, as we have seen, were commanded by the Pinzon brothers; and they, being natives of Palos, had secured all the respectable Palos men who were willing to enlist; but Columbus had only the worst element—the jail-birds and loafers from other towns. And here they stood, saying plainly by their manner, "We are going back! What are you going to do about it?"

We don't know exactly what he did do about it; Martin Alonzo Pinzon sent him advice to "hang a few of the rebels; and if you can't manage to hang them, I and my brothers will row to your ship and do it." But Christopher appears to have handled the situation without their help, and without hanging any one; for soon the helmsman swung the Santa Maria around again. On October 10 trouble broke out afresh, and Columbus makes this entry in his diary:—

"The crew, not being able to stand the length of the voyage, complained to me, but I reanimated them."

By October 10 the voyage had lasted some seventy days! No wonder the crew needed to be "reanimated." Yet, there were the birds flying out to them, bringing their message of hope, if only the poor frightened men could have had more faith! The Pinzons meanwhile were having less trouble; for when their sailors wished to turn back because nothing had been found seven hundred and fifty leagues west of the Canaries, Martin Alonzo told them all the absurd tales he had read about Cipango, and promised them, if only they went ahead, that its wealth would make their fortune. This appears to have hushed their murmuring; but Christopher had no such flowery promises to hold forth.

Martin Pinzon, having observed a few days before that most of the birds flew from the southwest rather than the exact west, suggested to Columbus that land probably lay nearer in that direction; and Columbus, to please him, changed his course. It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened had Pinzon not interfered, for the fleet, by continuing due west, would have shortly entered the Gulf Stream, and this strong current would surely have borne them northward to a landing on the coast of the future United States. But this was not to be. On Pinzon's advice the rudders were set for the southwest, and nothing happened for several days except that same passing of birds. On October 11 a fresh green branch floated by; and Columbus, after dark had fallen, declared he saw a light moving at a distance.

Calling two of his sailors, he pointed it out to them. One agreed that there was certainly a light bobbing up and down, but the other insisted that he could see nothing. Columbus did not feel sure enough of his "light" to claim that it meant land, so he called the ships together and reminded the crews that their sovereigns had offered to the one who should first see the shore a pension of ten thousand maravedis (about twenty-five dollars) a year. In addition, he himself would give a further reward of a silk doublet. This caused them all to keep a sharp watch; but land it surely meant, that fitful light which Columbus saw, for that very night—or about two o'clock in the morning of October 12 —Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on the Pinta, shouted "Tierra! Tierra!" and sure enough, as the dawn grew brighter, there lay a lovely little green island stretched before their sea-weary eyes!

Who can imagine the tremendous emotions of that famous October morning! Here were a hundred men who had just demonstrated that the world was round; for by sailing west they had reached the east—if, as many were ready to believe, they had come to Martin Alonzo's Cipango! The world really was a sphere! and at no point in rounding it had they been in danger of falling off! Here they stood, that marvelous morning of October 12, on Cipango or some other island off Asia, as they supposed, with the soles of their feet against the feet of those back in Palos, and the fact did not even make them feel dizzy. We who have always known that the earth is a sphere with a marvelous force in its center drawing toward it all objects on the surface; we who have always known that ships by the thousands cross the great oceans from one continent to another; we who have always known that the whole inhabited earth has long since been explored,—we who were born to such an accumulation of knowledge can never realize what was the amazement, the joy, of that little handful of men who, after three lonely months on the unknown ocean, at last reached unsuspected land.

And the humble Genoese sailor man,—what were his emotions on the great morning that transformed him into Don Cristobal Colon, Admiral and Viceroy under their Highnesses, the king and queen of Spain. Let us hope that he did not think too much about these titles, for we ourselves don't think about them at all. We are only trying to grasp the joy it must have given him to know that he had been true to his grand purpose; that he had waited and suffered for it; and that now, after declaring he could find lands in the unknown ocean, he had found them. Quite right was he to put on his scarlet cloak for going ashore, for he had conquered the terrors of the deep!

How eagerly they all clambered into the small boats and rowed toward the shore, Columbus and the Pinzon brothers and the notary in the first boat load. The new Admiral carried the royal standard, and when they leaped ashore, he planted it in the ground and took possession of the island for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Then on a little hill they put up a wooden cross and all knelt before it and poured out their gratitude to God.