The indications of the vicinity of land had been so often deceitful, that the crew no longer put faith in them, and fell from discouragement into taciturnity, and from taciturnity into insubordination. The discontent was general, and no efforts were made to conceal it. In their mutinous conversations, they spoke contemptuously of Columbus as "the Genoese," as a charlatan and a rogue. Was it just, they said, that one hundred and twenty men should perish by the caprice and obstinacy of one single man, and that man a foreigner and an impostor? If he persisted in proceeding "towards his everlasting west, which went on and on, and never came to an end," he ought to be thrown into the sea and left there. On their return they could easily say that he had fallen into the waves while gazing at the stars. A revolt was agreed upon between the crews of the three ships, who were on several occasions brought into communication by the sending of boats from the one to the other. The captains of the Pinta and the Nina were aware of what was transpiring, but for the time being maintained a cautious neutrality. The sea continued calm as the Guadalquivir at Seville, the air was laden with tropical fragrance, and in twenty-four hours the fleet, apparently at rest, glided imperceptibly over one hundred and eighty miles. This motionless rapidity, as it were, thoroughly terrified the crew, and, breaking out into open mutiny, they refused, on the 10th of October, to go any farther westward. The Nina and the Pinta rejoined the Santa Maria; the brothers Pinzon, followed by their men, leaped upon her deck, and commanded Columbus to put his ship about and return to Palos. At this most vital point of the narrative, our authorities are contradictory, while the journal of Columbus himself is silent. According to Oviedo,--a writer who obtained his information from an enemy of Columbus,--the latter yielded to his men so far as to propose a compromise, and to consent to return unless land was discovered in three days' sail. To say the least, such a submission to the menaces and behests of his infuriated subalterns was not an act compatible with the character of Columbus, with his well known self-reliance, and his openly expressed and constantly reiterated confidence in the Divine protection. The Catholic biography, which we have quoted, attributes the pacification of the revolt directly to the Divine interference, asserting that no human philosophy can explain this sudden and complete suspension of the prevailing exasperation and animosity. It is certain, at any rate, that the demonstration, which began at nightfall, had ceased long before the morning's dawn.