no money to spare for anything but fighting
and killing.

Columbus stayed there for seven long years. He talked to the wise men,
but they made sport of him. "If the earth is round," they said, "and you
sail west, your ships will go down hill, and they will have to sail up
hill to come back. No ship that was ever made can do that. And you may
come to places where the waters boil with the great heat of the sun; and
frightful monsters may rise out of the sea and swallow your ships and
your men." Even the boys in the street got to laughing at him and
mocking him as a man who had lost his wits.

After these many years Columbus got tired of trying in Spain. He now set
out for France, to see what the king of that country would do. He sent
one of his brothers to England to see its king and ask him for aid.

He was now so poor that he had to travel along the dusty roads on foot,
his little son going with him. One day he stopped at a convent called La
Rabida, to beg some bread for his son, who was very hungry.

The good monks gave bread to the boy, and while he was eating it the
prior of the convent came out and talked with Columbus, asking him his
business. Columbus told him his story. He told it so well that the prior
believed in it. He asked him to stay there with his son, and said he
would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom he knew very well.

So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a letter to the queen, and in
the end the wandering sailor was sent for to come back to the king's
court.

Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of the discovery of America.
The king would not listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen
offered to pledge her jewels to raise the money which he needed for
ships and sailors.

Columbus had won. After years and years of toil and hunger and
disappointment, he was to have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be
given a chance to prove whether it was he or the wise men who were the
fools.

But such ships as they gave him! Why, you can see far better ones every
day, sailing down your rivers. Two of them did not even have decks, but
were like open boats. With this small fleet Columbus set sail from
Palos, a little port in Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the
most wonderful voyages that has ever been known.

Away they went far out into the "Sea of Darkness," as the Atlantic ocean
was then called. Mile after mile, day after day, on and on they went,
seeing nothing but t