Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had in them as many as seven hundred passengers. They had a bad name. Few venturesome English traders would go near them. On one occasion some passengers belonging to such a ship fell sick, and were, to save their lives, compelled to land at the first Christian port they saw, and to seek for refuge there. The next time a small fleet of these miserable vessels came to the island of Tortuga, they were seized by the planters and the treasure carried away. A Frenchman, named Le Gros, who had himself been a pirate for some years, and was now living in New Orleans, bought one of them and sailed her back to France. This was the _Caron_. He would not have been allowed to do so, but one day when Captain Cox was sleeping at Tortuga, his ship was quietly brought in to the town, while he was ashore. The pirates took possession of it, picked the Captain up as a prisoner, with all his money, and, sending away his crew, sailed for Virginia, and the Mississippi River. The news of this outrage spread through the Spanish colonies in America, and other crews who had been out on similar enterprises, joined them. Then they went into a new business. [IMAGE] No. 31 From the French edition--The Pirates’ Den--Corsica. [IMAGE] CHAPTER IV. THE KNIGHTS OF THE SEA.—WARFARE AMONG THE FLEETS.—BATTLE OF MARATHON ROAD. A PIRATE KNIGHT.—THE WRETCHED CREW.—A FLOATING SCHOOL OF LITERATURE.—THE GALLANTRY OF COLUMBUS.—HIS SHAMEFUL SLAUGHTERING.—FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. Among the crew of the _Caron_ were a number of young French noblemen. These had all followed their calling from love of adventure, and for some time had been ready to engage in almost any deed of violence and violence on board the vessel. Their ship was now to be added to the fleet, but, before this, a strange adventure happened to them, which suffices to make their name celebrated forever. From the time when Columbus, with his two ships, the _Santa Maria_ and the _Pinta_, discovered the New World, the Spanish nation regarded him with mingled feelings of admiration and astonishment, curiosity and dread, in reference to the expedition he was about to undertake. Great dangers were to be encountered, of which there were only too many traditions. Columbus was no more to be trusted than the wild freebooters in the neighbouring seas. “Columbus,” says Mr. Prescott, “was in fact the first of a class of men that were afterwards very numerous—adventurers and navigators not distinguished by any remarkable mental or physical powers, but the reckless of all moral obligations, and the ready tool of the meanest or most designing in any scheme to achieve wealth or celebrity.” He became a tool of one Ferdinand, king of Naples, and of another, Louis, King of France, and of the pope, who gave him men and ships to enable him to carry out his designs. These plans were on a most gigantic scale. No means were to be left untried that might achieve an object. The success of such a plan was to be bought, not by craft or cunning or by ordinary human skill, but by fraud, violence, murder, piracy. One of the leading practices was to be to murder every inhabitant of the countries they came to. Columbus was willing to do all this in the cause of the king. He was to have all the benefits of discovery, was to govern the country at his pleasure, and was to take a tenth part of all he found, as the reward of his discovery. The only thing more cruel than these practices was the fraud to which Columbus had sworn the credulous King of Portugal, that he would go by the Cape Verde Islands, and that he would bring him a letter from the Great Khan or his ambassadors. [IMAGE] No. 32 From the French edition—Columbus’ Skeleton. The world saw no more of Columbus for some time. He was, in fact, among the number of the wretched men whom we have seen engaged in this pirate business, only as a volunteer. There were not wanting among the Spaniards more prudent men than he, who saw at a glance what these designs were, and felt that they could not approve of them. From the time that the voyage of Columbus was at length commenced, many adventurers and outlaws sought a passage in it to the New World. It was a desperate chance, even with the help of Providence, for these adventurers. They were unprotected by any treaty, and the more bold they were, the more carelessly they acted, the more they exposed themselves to the vengeance of the admiral, and the more their ships became the prizes of the captains of the ships they encountered. The names of some of these adventurers are known to us: there was Martin Alonzo Pinzon, a gentleman of Aragon, who was to be one of the great navigators and explorers of that day, and Luis de Mediana, a sailor from Valencia. Pinzon was at one time to be Admiral of the Indies, but he was killed in battle with the pirate crew of the _Caron_. Medina had been arrested in Spain for the part he had taken in a murder, and was just then on his way to be sold into slavery with the other prisoners in the slave-market at Constantinople. The expedition went on. Columbus had a letter from the king of Spain, dated at Valladolid, Jan. 31, 1494, which granted him unlimited authority, subject only to the commands of the high admiral of Castile. A large armament sailed from Spain. Pinzon and Medina, who had escaped the fate of their ship, were among the number. “When I saw the squadron go out,” says Columbus, “I felt confident that I should not return home, but should carry out my intention of finding a new world. I felt as if I had done wrong to give up the idea of finding the Indies, and had deceived the king, and so had found myself a deserter to my own country, a traitor to my sovereign, and a slanderer of the Holy Scriptures; but, on the other hand, I had a sense of the greatness of the discovery, and of the honour and profit which might result from it, in my sovereign’s hands. But most of all was I fired with an ardent love and devotion to Our Lord, who had not permitted me to find the Indies till I had been forty years a servant and worshipper of the devil, and I felt that, as this revelation was made to me, it was a blessing of His high will.” At the same time the other captains sent a letter to the king, asking that two ships might be put at their disposal, which he did. “But,” Columbus says, “I saw their design, and I did not think they should do anything by sea, for they had only a few men in their ships, and not even victuals. I knew, as I said, that they did not do this for love of the king, or for any belief they had in his skill or good intentions. They were a set of fellows eager for the spoil; as greedy as a nest of harpies; without any religion but that of the gold of the New World, without love of country, or of people, without fear of God or of His enemy, or of the other world.” What was there at first so very striking in the conduct of Columbus, after he had become possessed of so many means of gaining his end? He was simply to be himself the admiral of the fleet, and it was to be his business, as he has recorded in his journal, to choose between those who had been most faithful to him. If he thought they were likely to object to the other expeditions, he was to imprison them, to be himself their captain. The other captains were allowed to visit the ships of the expedition, where they might make their choice of men to serve them. One of them, the captain Pedro de Terreros, was appointed admiral of the fleet. At length the expedition reached the West Indies. There is a great deal to be seen, perhaps, in the first pages of the journal of Columbus, which is valuable, but is not, in a literary sense, remarkable for beauty of language. When Columbus sailed from Spain he was, as he says, the greatest philosopher of the age, because he was going beyond the ocean where the Portuguese had never been, to discover a continent, and found a way to