One day a storm-tossed little caravel, holding four sick, battered,
Portuguese sailors and a Spanish pilot, all of them little more than
living skeletons, was blown on the Madeira shore near where Christopher
dwelt. Their tale was a harrowing one. They had started, they said,
months before from the Canaries for the Madeiras, but had been blown
far, far, far, to the west; and then, when the wind quieted down so that
they could try to get back, their ship became disabled and their food
gave out. Starvation and exposure had nearly finished them; four, in
fact, died within a day or two; but the Spanish pilot, the one who had
kept his strength long enough to steer toward Madeira, lived longer. The
kind-hearted Christopher, who was devoured with curiosity, had had the
poor fellow carried to his own home. He and Felipa did all they could
for him, but their nursing could not restore him. The pilot, seeing that
he would never be able to make another voyage, added a last detail to
the story he first told; namely, that his ship had actually visited a
new land hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean! A proof of
Christopher's own suspicions! Can you not see him, the evening after his
talk with the pilot, standing at sunset on some high point of Madeira,
and looking wistfully out over the western water, saying, "I _must_
sail out there and find those lands. I know I can do it!" So he went
back to Lisbon to try.

Certain it is that Columbus's absorbing interest in the unknown,
mysterious west dates from his returning to Lisbon to live. Not only did
he talk earnestly with men who had interests in the Atlantic isles, he
studied all the available geographical works. Before the time came to
leave for Spain he had read the wonderful "Relation" (or Narrative) of
Marco Polo; the "Imago Mundi" (Image of the World) by Cardinal d'Ailly;
the "Historia Rerum" (History of Things) by Pope Pius II.; and he had