who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled together under the
forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making vows
upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by
their offers of candles and pilgrimages. Poor Christopher, standing in
his drenched oilskins and clinging to a piece of rigging, had his own
searching of heart and examining of conscience. He was aware of the
feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been
successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits
of it; his desire to prove true what he had promised was so great that,
in his own graphic phrase, "it seemed to him that every gnat could
disturb and impede it"; and he attributed this anxiety to his lack of
faith in God. He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar
extremity, by considering on the other hand what favours God had shown
him, and by remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits
of his discovery were to be dedicated. But in the meantime here he was
in a ship insufficiently ballasted (for she was now practically empty of
provisions, and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and water
casks with salt water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest
such as he had never experienced in his life. As a last resource, and in
order to give his wonderful news a chance of reaching Spain in case the
ship were lost, he went into his cabin and somehow or other managed to
write on a piece of parchment a brief account of his discoveries, begging
any one who might find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns. He tied
up the parchment in a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without
any one seeing him, and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the
sea, which the crew took to be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion.
Then he went back on deck and watched the last of the daylight going and
the green seas swelling and thundering about his little ship, and thought
anxiously of his two little boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what
would become of them if he were lost. The next morning the wind had