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.
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