He had not sailed very far when what should he come across but the lost Pinta.

Captain Alonso Pinzon seemed very much ashamed when he saw the Admiral, and tried to explain his absence.
Columbus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had gone off gold hunting and had not found any gold.

But he did not scold him, and both the vessels sailed toward Spain.
The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one.

Once it was so rough that Columbus thought surely the Nina would be wrecked.

So he copied off the story of what he had seen and done, addressed it to the king and queen of Spain, put it into a barrel and threw the barrel overboard.
But the Nina was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth of February Columbus reached the Azores.