Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/25

Rh prevent her son-in-law from running him through the body as he lay prostrate. As it was, his bruises laid him up until after Ovando's fleet had sailed, and, upon his recovery, he went to Valencia with the intention of embarking for Italy to join the forces of the great Captain. What defeated his purpose is not recorded, but, upon his return to Medellin about a year later, his parents consented to his following Ovando and provided him with the money for his journey. He was thus enabled to sail from San Lucar de Barameda in 1504 on the trading vessel of one Alonzo Quintero of Palos, bound with four others carrying merchandise to the Indies.

The little fleet touched first at the Canaries which was the usual route. Alonzo Quintero was a shifty fellow, who, twice on the voyage, sought to overreach his brother captains by detaching himself from the fleet in the hope of making port ahead of them and disposing of his cargo to advantage and without their competition. Both times, however, untoward weather overtook him, and, the second time, his pilot, Francisco Niño, lost his bearings, and the ship, in a bad condition, short of water and provisions was like to be lost. At dawn on Good Friday a dove was seen perching on the rigging, and, by following the flight of the bird of good omen, land was sighted by Cristobal Zorno on Easter Day, and four days later, the weather-beaten craft reached port where the others of the fleet had long since arrived and disposed of their goods.

Seekers after signs and wonders were not slow to claim the appearance of this dove to guide Quintero's ship at such a critical moment as evidence of the celestial protection and miraculous intervention of providence in the direction of Cortes's fortunes, of which numerous other similar examples are cited, and to which he himself was always ready to ascribe his success; and, in the early chronicle, De Rebus Gestisof authoritative but unknown authorship, it is stated that, even at the time