TWO men came into the cabin, Don Diego Colon, left in charge of Hispaniola, and with him a tall, powerful, high-featured man, gray of eye and black and silver of hair and short beard. As he stood beside the bed, one saw that he must be kinsman to the man who lay upon it. "O Bartholomew! And is this the end?" cried Don Diego, and I knew that the stranger was that brother, Bartholomew, for whom the Admiral longed.

These three brothers! One lay like a figure upon a tomb save for the breathing that stirred his silver hair. One, Don Diego, tall, too, and strong, but all of a gentle, quiet mien sank on his knees and seemed to pray. One, Don Bartholomew, stood like rock or pine, but he slowly made the sign of the cross, and I saw his gray eyes fill. It seemed to me that the Admiral's eyelids flickered. "Speak to him again," I said. "Take his hand."

Bartholomew Columbus, kneeling in the Cordera's cabin, put his arm about his great brother. That is what he called him,—"Christopher, my great brother, it is Bartholomew! Don't you know me? Don't you remember? I must go to England, you said, to see King Henry. To tell him what you could do—what you have done, my great brother! Don't you remember? I went, but I was poor like you who are now Viceroy of the Indies—and I was shipwrecked besides and lost the little that we had scraped—do you remember?—and must live like you by making maps and charts, and it was long before I saw King Henry!—Christopher, my great brother! He lies like death!"

I said, "He is returning, but he is yet a long way off. Keep speaking."

"But King Henry said at last, 'Go bring us that brother of yours, and we think it may be done!' And he gave me gold. So I would come back to Spain for you, and I reached Paris, and it was the summer of 1493. Christopher, my great brother, don't you hear me? For it was at Paris that I heard, and it came like a flood of glory, fallen in one moment from Heaven! I heard, 'Christopherus Columbus! He has found the Indies for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!'—Don't you hear, Christopher? All the world admiring—all the world saying, 'Nothing will ever go just the same way again!' You have done the greatest thing, my great brother! Doctor, is he dying?"

"He will not die," I said. "You are cordial to him, though he hears you yet from leagues and leagues away. Go on!"

"Christopher, from Paris I got slowly, slowly, so slowly I thought it!—to Seville. But I was not poor. They gave me gold, the French King gave it, their nobles, their bishops. I walked in that glory; it flooded me from you! All your people, Christopher, your sons and your brothers and our old father. You build us again, you are our castle and great ship and Admiral! When I came to Barcelona, how they praised you! When I came to Toledo, how they praised you! When I came to Seville, how they praised you! But at Seville I learned that I was too late, and you were gone upon your second voyage. Then I went to Valladolid and the Queen and the King were there, and they said, 'He has just sailed, Don Bartholomew, from Cadiz with sixteen ships—your great brother who hath crossed Ocean-Sea and bound to us Asia!'—But, sweet Jesu, what entertainment they gave me, all because I had lain in our old wooden cradle at Genoa a couple of years or so after you!—Genoa!—They say Genoa aches because she did not send you. Christopher, do you remember the old rock by the sea—and you begged colors from Messer Ludovico and painted upon it a ship and we called it the Great Doge—"

The Admiral's eyes opened slowly like a gray dawn; he moved ever so slightly in the bed, and his lips parted. "Brother," he whispered.

We got him from the Cordera to Hispaniola shore, and so in a litter to his own house in Isabella. All our town was gathered to see him carried there. He began to improve. The second day he said to Don Bartholomew, "You shall be my lieutenant and deputy. Adelantado—I name you Adelantado."

Don Bartholomew said bluntly, "Is not that hard upon Diego?"

"No, no, Bartholomew!" answered Don Diego, who was present. "If it were question of a prior of Franciscans, now! But Christopher knows and I know that I took this stormy world but for lack of any other in blood to serve him. Our Lady knows that I never held myself to be the man for the place! Be Adelantado and never think of me!"

The Admiral upon his bed spoke. "We have always worked together, we Colombos. When it is done for the whole there is no jealousy among the parts. I love Diego, and I think he did well, constraining his nature to it, here among the selfish, the dangerous and factious! And others know that he did well. I love him and praise him. But Bartholomew, thou art the man for this!"

Accordingly, the next noontide, trumpets, and a proclamation made before the great cross in the middle of our town. The Viceroy's new-come brother had every lieutenant power.

I do not know if he ever disappointed or abused it. He became great helper to his great brother.

These three! They were a lesson in what brothers might be, one to the other, making as it were a threefold being. Power was in this family, power of frame and constitution, with vital spirit in abundance; power of will, power of mind, and a good power of heart. Their will was good toward mankind.

They had floods to surmount and many a howling tempest to out-endure. By and large they did well with life,—very well. There was alloy, base metal of course, even in the greatest of the three. They were still men. But they were such men as Nature might put forward among her goodly fruit.

The Viceroy lay still in his bed, for each time he would rise came faintness and old fatigue. The Adelantado acted.

There was storm in Hispaniola, storm of human passions. I found Luis Torres, and he put me within leg-stride of the present.

Margarite! It seemed to begin with Don Pedro Margarite.

He and his men had early made choice between the rich, the fruitful, easy Vega and the mountains they were to pierce for gold and hunt over for a fierce mountain chief. In the Vega they established themselves. The Indians brought them "tribute", and they exacted over-tribute, and reviled and slew when it pleased them, and they took the Indian women, and if it pleased them they burned a village. "Sorry tale," said Luis. "Old, sorry tale!"

Indians came to Isabella and with fierce gesture and eyes that cast lances talked to Don Diego. Don Diego sent a stern letter to Don Pedro Margarite. Don Pedro answered that he was doing soldier's duty, as the Sovereigns would understand when it came before them. Don Diego sent again, summoning him upon his allegiance to Isabella. He chose for a month no answer to that at all, and the breezes still brought from the Vega cries of anger, wails of sorrow. Then he appeared ............