“‘Wait a minute, my young hornet,’ says the captain—­he wasn’t much more than a boy, himself,—­’didn’t your master the Duke of Medina Coeli teach you better than to irritate a man on the deck of his own ship?  Mine can sail two leagues to your one, and I’m just leaving for home, so, unless you would like to go with me, perhaps you will let this conversation end without any more pointed remarks.  If I chose, you know, I could drop you overboard in sight of your men, to swim ashore.  My guns would stave your longboat all to pieces.  But I’ve stayed long enough to give the lads a chance to have a good meal and a bit of fun—­nothing’s better than dancing, for the spirits, dad always said it was better than either fighting or dicing on shipboard.  Before we part, though, I’m going to give you one piece of advice.  Don’t stir up these coast natives too often.  If you do, they’ll eat you.  They use poisoned arrows in some of these parts, and there’s no cure for that but a red-hot iron.’

“The caballero’s temper is like gunpowder—­it flashes up in a second, or not at all.  He must ha’ seen that the captain meant him kindness.  Anyway, he slips his sword back in the scabbard and says cool as you please,

“’Senor, pardon my hasty conclusion.  You have of course a perfect right to look at the sky, and to dance, if that is your diversion.  I should be extremely sorry to interfere with your departure.  But you will understand that when a commander in the service of the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile finds intruders within their territory it is his duty to make it his affair.  I thank you for your warning.  Adios,’ and he makes a little stiff bow and goes over the side, me after him.  I looked back just as I went over the rail, and the skipper was watching me, and I may be mistaken but I believe he winked.  I tell you, our little captain can do things that would get him run through the body if he were any other man.”

Vespucci smiled thoughtfully.  But this incident may have had something to do with his later decision to part company with Ojeda.  Vespucci continued to explore the coast, and Ojeda sailed northward to the islands, where he kidnaped some Indians for slaves.  When he returned to Cadiz the young adventurer found to his intense disgust that after all expenses were paid there remained but five hundred ducats to be divided among fifty-five men.  This was all the more mortifying because, two months before, Pedro Alonso Nino, a captain of Palos, and Christoval Guerra of Seville, had come in from a trading voyage in the Indies with the richest cargo of gold and pearls ever seen in Cadiz.

Vespucci wrote his book some years later, and as it was the first popular account of the new Spanish possessions and was written in a lively and entertaining style it had a great reputation.  It gave to the natives of the country the name which they have ever since borne—­Indians.  A German geographer who much admired the work suggested that an appropriate mark of appreciation would be to name the new continent America, after Vespucci, and this was done.  Vespucci described all that he saw and some things of which he heard, using care and discretion, and if he suspected that the captain of the Bristol ship was Sebastian Cabot, later pilot-major of Spain, he did not say so.