He died before his Portuguese sailors, Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did sail around it and got as far as "the Indies." So while Prince Henry was trying to see whether ships could sail around Africa and reach Cathay in that way, the boy Columbus was listening to the stories the sailors told and was wondering whether some other and easier way to Cathay might not be found.
When he was at school he had studied about a certain man named Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years before he was born, and who had said that the earth was round "like a ball or an orange." As Columbus grew older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books and listened to what other people said, he began to believe that this man named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth was round, though everybody declared it was flat.

If it is round, he said to himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around Africa to get to Cathay?
Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right around the world until you strike Cathay?
I believe it could be done," said Columbus.
By this time Columbus was a man.

He was thirty years old and was a great sailor.

He had been captain of a number of vessels; he had sailed north and south and east; he knew all about a ship and all about the sea.

But, though he was so good a sailor, when he said that he believed the earth was round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy.