an entire community, and was looked up to accordingly; and so Friar Juan
was able to persuade several respectable men to enter Columbus's
service. As for Pinzon, both his moral and his practical support were so
great that it is doubtful whether the expedition could have been
arranged without him. Long before, at the Rabida conference, he had
offered to go as captain; now he induced his two brothers to sign also.
Palos, seeing three members of its most important family ready to go,
took heart. Pinzon next helped to find the three vessels needed, and put
them in order. One of these ships belonged to Juan de la Cosa, a well-
known pilot, and Juan himself was prevailed upon to sail with it. (Later
this Juan became a great explorer and made the first map of the New
World.) Another and less fortunate purchase was of a vessel whose owners
regretted the sale the moment they had parted with her; so down they
went to where the calkers and painters were making her seaworthy for the
voyage, and tried to persuade them to do everything just as badly as it
could be done. One can readily see that these were hard days for
Christopher Columbus. The preparations that Queen Isabella expected
would take only ten days took ten long weeks.

[Illustration: THE THREE CARAVELS OF COLUMBUS.]

When finally ready, Columbus's little fleet consisted of three caravels
--the _Santa Maria_, the _Pinta_, and the _Nina_
(pronounced Neen'ya). A caravel was a small, roundish, stubby sort of
craft, galley-rigged, with a double tower at the stern and a single one
in the bow. It was much used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
for the herring fisheries which took men far from the coast; and when
the Portuguese tried to find far-off India, they too used the caravel
form of vessel.