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By Root 618 0

and embarrassed the ship that she couldn’t make headway or get out from between them, and they broke over her.” Even for an experienced sailor, few spectacles are as intimidating, or predictive of drowning, as the sight of towering waves breaking overhead, as if the turbulent sea were engulfing the ship. In response, Columbus ordered the mainsail’s yardarm lowered as far as it could go without its sail being shredded or carried away by seawater roaring across the deck. When that strategy failed, and the seas became even more formidable, Columbus “began to scud”—that is, to run before the storm with practically no sail—“since there was nothing else to be done. Then the caravel Pinta, in which Martín Alonso [Pinzón] went, also began to scud before it, and disappeared, although all night the Admiral made flares, and the other replied, until it appeared that he could do no more from the force of the tempest, and because he found himself very far from the Admiral’s course.” That was Columbus’s last sight of Pinta. Ships disappeared all the time in violent storms such as these, among surging seas and stinging rain, blown sideways between tall waves, and disappearing into a watery trench.

Oblivious to Pinta’s destiny, the Admiral’s main concern was to survive the night. “At sunrise the wind and sea made up more, sea crossing more terribly,” and proceeded with the “main course only, and low, to enable her to rise above the cross-swell, that it might not swamp her.” He headed northeast by east for six exhausting hours, traversing seven and a half leagues, or about thirty miles. Columbus vowed that if they survived the ordeal, they would make a grateful pilgrimage to Santa María de Guadalupe, the renowned, inaccessible shrine in Extremadura, Spain, known as the Powerful Lady of Silence, fashioned of wood from Asia. They would “carry a candle of five pounds of wax and . . . all vow that on whomever fell the lot should fulfill the pilgrimage.” For them, the ritual was a matter of life and death.

In the midst of the endless storm, Columbus, driven by piety, and possibly driven mad, said that he “ordered as many chickpeas,” or garbanzo beans, “to be brought as were people in the ship, and that one [chickpea] should be marked with a knife, making a cross, and placed in a cap, wellshaken.” Columbus, ever the child of destiny, went first, placing his hand in the cap, and he “drew the chickpea with the cross, and so the lot fell on him, and henceforth he regarded himself as a pilgrim and bound to go to fulfill the vow.” The terrified sailors devised still more schemes to perform acts of religious devotion as a way of improving their chances of survival, their reception in the afterlife, or as distraction from their plight, which became more grave by the hour.

“After that, the Admiral and all the people made a vow that, upon reaching the first land, they would all go in their shirts in procession to make a prayer in a church that was dedicated to Our Lady. Beside the general or common vows, everyone made his special vow, because nobody expected to escape, holding themselves all for lost, owing to the terrible tempest that they were experiencing.” Second-guessing himself, Columbus wished, too late, that he had stowed more provisions, more water and wine, if only to have the benefit of their weight on tiny Niña at this moment, but he had been distracted by his quest for the Isle of Women, where he had persuaded himself he could take on those precious items. “The remedy that he found for this necessity was, when they were able, to fill with seawater the pipes that were found empty with water and wine; and with this they supplied the need.”

Columbus became convinced that “Our Lord wished him to perish.” At the same time, he reminded himself of his mission and the news of his exploits that he was bringing to Ferdinand and Isabella. The more important the news became in his mind, the more fearful he became that he would not be able to deliver it, and that all his discoveries and sacrifices would be for naught, “and that every mosquito might