At Puerto Bello he was obliged to leave another vessel, for she had been riddled by the teredo.  The two which he had were in wretched condition.  “They were as full of holes as a honey-comb.”  On the southern coast of Cuba, Columbus was obliged to supply them with cassava bread.  The leaks increased.  The ships’ pumps were insufficient, and the men bailed out the water with buckets and kettles.  On the twentieth of June, they were thankful to put into a harbor, called Puerto Bueno, on the coast of Jamaica, where, as it proved, they eventually left their worthless vessels, and where they were in exile from the world of civilization for twelve months.

Nothing in history is more pathetic than the memory that such a waste of a year, in the closing life of such a man as Columbus, should have been permitted by the jealousy, the cruelty, or the selfish ambition of inferior men.

He was not far from the colony at San Domingo.  As the reader will see, he was able to send a message to his countrymen there.  But those countrymen left him to take his chances against a strong tribe of savages.  Indeed, they would not have been sorry to know that he was dead.

At first, however, he and his men welcomed the refuge of the harbor.  It was the port which he had called Santa Gloria, on his first visit there.  He was at once surrounded by Indians, ready to barter with them and bring them provisions.  The poor Spaniards were hungry enough to be glad of this relief.

Mendez, a spirited sailor, had the oversight of this trade, and in one negotiation, at some distance from the vessels, he bought a good canoe of a friendly chief.  For this he gave a brass basin, one of his two shirts, and a short jacket.  On this canoe turned their after fortunes.  Columbus refitted her, put on a false keel, furnished her with a mast and sail.

With six Indians, whom the chief had lent him, Diego Mendez, accompanied by only one Spanish companion, set sail in this little craft for San Domingo.  Columbus sent by them a letter to the sovereigns, which gives the account of the voyage which the reader has been following.

When Mendez was a hundred miles advanced on his journey, he met a band of hostile savages.  They had affected friendship until they had the adventurers in their power, when they seized them all.  But while the savages were quarreling about the spoils, Mendez succeeded in escaping to his canoe, and returned alone to his master after fifteen days.

It was determined that the voyage should be renewed.  But this time, another canoe was sent with that under the command of Mendez.  He sailed again, storing his boats with cassava bread and calabashes of water.  Bartholomew Columbus, with his armed band, marched along the coast, as the two canoes sailed along the shore.

Waiting then for a clear day, Mendez struck northward, on the passage, which was long for such frail craft, to San Domingo.  It was eight months before Columbus heard of them.  Of those eight months, the history is of dismal waiting, mutiny and civil war.  It is pathetic, indeed, that a little body of men, who had been, once and again, saved from death in the most remarkable way, could not live on a fertile island, in a beautiful climate, without quarrelling with each other.