the elusive
phenomena surrounding him the fevered brain of the Admiral discerned
evidence that he was really upon the coast of Asia, although there was no
method by which he could place the matter beyond a doubt. The word Asia
was not printed upon the sands of Cuba, as it might be upon a map; the
lines of longitude did not lie visibly across the surface of the sea;
there was nothing but sea and land, the Admiral's charts, and his own
conviction. Therefore Columbus decided to "make it so." If there was no
other way of being sure that this was the coast of Cathay, he would
decree it to be the coast of Cathay by a legal document and by oaths and
affidavits. He would force upon the members of his expedition a
conviction at least equal to his own; and instead of pursuing any further
the coast that stretched interminably west and south-west, he decided to
say, in effect, and once and for all, "Let this be the mainland of Asia."

He called his secretary to him and made him draw up a form of oath or
testament, to which every member of the expedition was required to
subscribe, affirming that the land off which they were then lying (12th
June 1494), was the mainland of the Indies and that it was possible to
return to Spain by land from that place; and every officer who should
ever deny it in the future was laid under a penalty of ten thousand
maravedis, and every ship's boy or seaman under a penalty of one hundred
lashes; and in addition, any member of the expedition denying it in the
future was to have his tongue cut out.

No one will pretend that this was the action of a sane man; neither will
any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he
had gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in
his blood. His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not
been found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was
his instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba. He
thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again
in such a place. He wished his journey, theref