om his marriage had brought
him acquainted, that you did not need to be born a Perestrello
--or Pallastrelli, as the name was in its original Italian form--to make
a name in the world. Donna Isabel, moreover, was never tired of talking
about Porto Santo and her dead husband, and of all the voyages and sea
adventures that had filled his life. She was obviously a good teller of
tales, and had all the old history and traditions of Madeira at her
fingers' ends; the story of Robert Machin and Anne Dorset; the story of
the isle of Seven Cities; and the black cloud on the horizon that turned
out in the end to be Madeira. She told Christopher how her husband, when
he had first gone to Porto Santo, had taken there a litter of rabbits,
and how the rabbits had so increased that in two seasons they had eaten
up everything on the island, and rendered it uninhabitable for some time.

She brought out her husband's sea-charts, memoranda, and log-books,
the sight of which still farther inflamed Christopher's curiosity and
ambition. The great thing in those days was to discover something, if it
was only a cape down the African coast or a rock in the Atlantic. The
key to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later
still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual
discovery of parts of the earth's surface. The thing was in the air;
news was coming in every day of something new seen, something new
charted. If others had done so much, and the field was still half
unexplored, could not he do something also? It was not an unlikely
thought to occur to the mind of a student of sea charts and horizons.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRE KINDLES

The next step in Columbus's career was a move to Porto Santo, which
probably took place very soon after his marriage--that is to say, in the
year 1479. It is likely that he had the chance of making a voyage there;
perhaps even of commanding a ship, for his experience of the sea and
skill as a navigator must by this time have raised him above the rank of
an ordinary seaman; and in that case nothing would be more natural than
that he should take his young wife with him to visit her brother
Bartolomeo, and to see the family property. It is one of the charms of
the seaman's profession that he travels free all over the world; and if
he has no house or other fixed possessions that need to be looked after
he has the freedom of the world, and can go where he