Some scholars have said that it cost about two hundred and thirty thousand dollars to fit out this expedition.  I do not think it cost nearly so much.  We do know that Queen Isabella gave sixty-seven thousand dollars to help pay for it.  Some people, however, reckoning the old Spanish money in a different way, say that what Queen Isabella gave toward the expedition was not over three or four thousand dollars of our money.  Perhaps as much more was borrowed from King Ferdinand, although he was to have no share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella and Columbus were partners.

It was just an hour before sunrise on Friday, the third of August, 1492, that the three little ships hoisted their anchors and sailed away from the port of Palos.  I suppose it was a very sorry and a very exciting morning in Palos.  The people probably crowded down on the docks, some of them sad and sorrowful, some of them restless and curious.  Their fathers and brothers and sons and acquaintances were going—­no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy old Italian sailor who thought there was land to be found somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place.  They all knew he was wrong.  They were certain that nothing but dreadful goblins and horrible monsters lived off there to the West, just waiting to devour or destroy the poor sailors when these three little ships should tumble over the edge.

But how different Columbus must have felt as he stepped, into the rowboat that took him off to his “flag-ship,” the Santa Maria.  His dreams had come true.  He had ships and sailors under his command, and was about to sail away to discover great and wonderful things.  He who had been so poor that he could hardly buy his own dinner, was now called Don and Admiral.  He had a queen for his friend and helper.  He was given a power that only the richest and noblest could hope for.  But more than all, he was to have the chance he had wished and worked for so long.  He was to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have his share in all the wealth he should discover and bring away.  The son of the poor wool-weaver of Genoa was to be the friend of kings and princes; the cabin boy of a pirate was now Admiral of the Seas and Governor of the Colonies of Spain!  Do you wonder that he felt proud?

So, as I have told you, just before sunrise on a Friday morning in August, he boarded the Santa Maria and gave orders to his captains “to get under way.”  The sailors with a “yo heave ho!” (or whatever the Spanish for that is) tugged at the anchors, the sails filled with the morning breeze, and while the people of Palos watched them from the shore, while the good friar, Juan Perez, raised his hands to Heaven calling down a blessing on the enterprise, while the children waved a last good-by from the water-stairs, the three vessels steered out from Palos Harbor, and before that day’s sun had set, Columbus and his fleet were full fifty miles on their way across the Sea of Darkness.  The westward voyage to those wonderful lands, the Indies and Cathay, had at last begun.