To many it was happiness enough. While we
stopped at Gornera we were at least not drifting upon lodestone,
equator fire and chaos!
Here on Gomera might be studied the three Pinzon brothers.
Vicente was a good, courageous captain, Francisco a
good pilot, and a courageous, seldom-speaking man. But
Martin Alonso, the eldest, was the prime mover in all their
affairs. He was skillful navigator like his brothers and
courageous like them, but not silent like Francisco, and
ambitious far above either. He would have said perhaps that
had he not been so, been both ambitious and shrewd, the
Pinzons would never have become principal ship-owning,
trading and maritime family of Palos and three leagues
around. He, too, had family fortunes and aggrandizement
at heart, though hardly on the grand, imperial scale of the
Admiral. He had much manly beauty, daring and strength.
His two brothers worshipped him, and in most places and
moments his crew would follow him with a cheer. The
Admiral was bound to him, not only in that he had volunteered
and made others to go willingly, but that he had
put in his ship, the _Nina_, and had furnished Master Christopherus
with monies. That eighth of the cost of the expedition,
whence else could it come? If it tied Martin Pinzon to
the Admiral, seeing that only through success could those
monies be repaid, it likewise made him feel that he, too, had
authority, was at liberty to advise, and at need to become
critical.
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