HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 105

Columbus ordered that if any officer should afterward say
he had been mistaken, he should be fined one hundred dol-
lars; and if any sailor should say so, he should receive one
hundred lashes with a whip and have his tongue pulled out.
That was a curious way to discover Cathay, was it not?

Then Columbus, fearing’ another shipwreck or another mu-
tiny, sailed back again to the city of Isabella. His men were
discontented, his ships were battered and leaky, his hunt for
gold and palaces had again proved a failure. He sailed
around Jamaica; he got as far as the eastern end of Hayti,
and then, just as he was about to run into the harbor of Isa-
bella, all his strength gave out. The strain and the disap-
pointment were too much for him; he fell very, very sick,
and on the twenty-ninth of September, 1494, after just about
five months of sailing and wandering and hunting, the Vina
ran into Isabella Harbor with Columbus so sick from fever
that he could not raise his hand or his head to give an order
to his men. }

For five long months Columbus lay in his stone house
on the plaza or square of Isabella a very sick man. His ©
brother Bartholomew had come across from Spain with
three supply ships, bringing provisions for the colony. So
Bartholomew took charge of affairs for a while.

And while Columbus lay so sick, some of the leading
men in the colony seized the ships in which Bartholomew
Columbus had come to his brother’s aid, and sailing back to
Spain they told the king and queen all sorts of bad stories