hich he
was sailing had a desperate fight with another ship; both took fire and
were burned to the water's edge. Christopher Columbus, for that was his
full name, only escaped, as did the other sailors, by jumping into the
sea and swimming to the shore. Still this did not cure him of his love
for the ocean life.

We find after a time that he left Italy, his native country, and went to
live in Portugal, a land near the great sea, whose people were far more
venturesome than had been those of Genoa. Here he married a beautiful
maiden, whose father had collected a rich store of maps and charts,
which showed what was then supposed to be the shape of the earth and
told of strange and wonderful voyages which brave sailors had from time
to time dared to make out into the then unknown sea. Most people in
those days thought it was certain death to any one who ventured very far
out on the ocean.

There were all sorts of queer and absurd ideas afloat as to the shape of
the earth. Some people thought it was round like a pancake and that the
waters which surrounded the land gradually changed into mist and vapor
and that he who ventured out into these vapors fell through the mist and
clouds down into--they knew not where. Others believed that there were
huge monsters living in the distant waters ready to swallow any sailor
who was foolish enough to venture near them.

But Christopher Columbus had grown to be a very wise and thoughtful man
and from all he could learn from the maps of his father-in-law and the
books which he read, and from the long talks which he had with some
other learned men, he grew more and more certain that the world was
round like an orange, and that by sailing westward from the coast of
Portugal one could gradually go round the world and find at last the
wonderful land of _Cathay_, the strange country which lay far beyond the
sea, the accounts of which had so thrilled him as a boy.

We, of course, know that he was right in his belief concerning the shape
of the earth, but people in those days laughed him to scorn when he
spoke of making a voyage out on the vast and fearful ocean. In vain he
talked and reasoned and argued, and drew maps to explain matters. The
more he proved to his own satisfaction that this must be the shape of
the world, the more other people shook their heads and called him crazy.

He remembered in his readings of the book of Marco Polo's travels that
the people whom he had met were heath