My Catalans were not wholly depressed. Behind their wrecked ship stood merchants who would furnish another bark. The master would have had me wait at San Lucar until he went forth again. But I was bound for the strand by Palos and the gray, piling Atlantic.

August was the month and the day warm. The first of August in the year 1492. Two leagues east of Palos I overtook three men trudging that way, and talking now loudly and angrily and now in a sullen, dragging fashion. I had seen between this road and ocean a fishing hamlet and I made out that they were from this place. They were men of small boats, men who fished, but who now and again were gathered in by some shipmaster, when they became sailors.

In me they saw only a poorly clad, sea-going person. When I gave greeting they greeted me in return. "For Palos?" I asked, and the one who talked the most and the loudest gave groaning assent. "Aye, for Palos. You too, brother, are flopping in the net?"

I did not understand and said as much. He gave an angry laugh and explained his figure. "Why, the Queen and the King and the law and Martin Pinzon, to whom we, are bound for a year, are pressing us! Which is to say they've cast a net and here we are, good fish, beating against the meshes and finding none big enough to slip through! Haven't you been pressed too, scooped in without a 'By your leave, Palos fish!' A hundred fish and more in this net and one by one the giant will take us out and broil us!"

The second man spoke with a whine. "I had rather a Barbary pirate were coming aboard! I had rather be took slave and row a galley!"

The third, a young man, had a whimsical, dark, fearless face. "But we be going to see strange things and serve the Queen! That's something!"

"The Queen is just a lady. She don't know anything about deep and fearful seas!"

"Where are you going," I asked, "and with whom?"

The angry man answered, "The last of that is the easiest, mate! With an Italian sorcerer who has bewitched the great! He ought to be burned, say I, with the Jews and heretics! We are going with him, and we are going with Captain Martin Pinzon, whom he hath bewitched with the rest! And we are going with three ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina."

The third said, "The Santa Maria's a good boat."

"There isn't any boat, good or bad," the first answered him, "that can hold together when you come to heat that'll melt pitch and set wood afire! There isn't any boat, good or bad, that can stand it when a lodestone as big as Gibraltar begins to draw iron!"

The second, whose element was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the Infanta Isabella was dashed on the rocks and something laughed at us all night!"

"Ireland's nothing at all to it!" answered the angry man, whose name was Pedro. "I've heard men that know talk! The Portuguese going down Africa coast got to Cape Bojador, but they've never truly gotten any further, though I hear them say they have! They sent a little carrack further down, and it had to come back because the water fell to boiling! There wasn't any land and there wasn't any true sea, but it was all melted up together in fervent heat! Like hot mud, so to speak. It's hell, that's what I say; it's hell down there! Moreover, there ain't any heaven stretched over it."

"What does it mean by that?" asked the second.

"It means, Fernando, that there wouldn't be any sky, blue nor gray nor black, nor clouds, nor air to breathe! There wouldn't be any thunder and lightning nor rain nor wind, and at night there wouldn't be stars, no north star, nor any! It would just be—I don't know what! Fray Ignatio told me, and he said the name was 'chaos'."

"That was south. That wasn't west."

"West is just as bad!"

Fernando also addressed the young man, the third, calling him Sancho. "If there were anything west for Christian men, wouldn't the Holy Father at Rome have sent long ago? We are all going to die!"

"But they didn't know it was round," said Sancho. "Now we do, and that's the difference! If you started a little manikin just here on an orange and told him to go straight ahead, he'd come around home, wouldn't he?"

"You weary me, Sancho!" cried the first. "And what if you did that and it took so long that you come back to Fishertown old and bald and driveling, and your wife is dead and all the neighbors! Much good you'd have from knowing it was round!"

"When you got right underfoot wouldn't you fall; that's what I want to know?"

"Fall! Fall where?"

"Into the sky! My God, it's deep! And there wouldn't be any boat to pick you up nor any floating oar to catch by—"

The vision seemed to appall them. Fernando drew back of hand across eyes.

I came in. "You wouldn't do that any more than the ant falls off the orange! Men have come back who have been almost underfoot, so far to the east had they traveled. They found there men and kingdoms and ways not so mightily unlike ours."

"They went that way," answered Pedro, jerking his hand eastward, "over good land! And maybe, whatever they said, they were lying to us! I'm thinking most of the learned do that all the time!"

"Well," said Sancho, "if we do come back, we'll have some rare good tales to tell!"

There fell a pause at that, a pause of dissent and exasperation, but also one of caught fancy. It would undoubtedly be a glory to tell those tales to a listening, fascinated Fishertown!

Juan Lepe said, "For months I've been with a trader running from San Lucar to Marseilles. I've had no news this long while! What's doing at Palos?"

They were ready for an audience, any audience, and forthwith I had the story of the Admiral fairly straight—or I could make it straight—from that day when we parted on the Cordova road. These men did not know what had happened in March or in April, but they knew something of May. In May he came to Palos and settled down with Fray Juan Perez in La Rabida, and to see him went Captain Martin Pinzon who knew him already, and the physician Garcia Fernandez and others, and they all talked together for a day and a night. After that the alcalde of Palos and others in authority had letters and warrants from the Queen and the King, and they overbore everything, calling him Don and El Almirante and saying that he must be furnished forth. Then came a day when everybody was gathered in the square before the church of Saint George, and the alcalde that had a great voice read the letters.

"I was there!" said Fernando. "I brought in fish that morning."

"I, too!" quoth Sancho. "I had to buy sailcloth."

It was Pedro chiefly who talked. "They were from the King and Queen, and the moral was that Palos must furnish Don Cristoval Colon, Admiral of the Ocean-Sea—and we thought that was a curious thing to be admiral of!—two ships and all seamen needed and all supplies. A third ship could be enterprised, and any in and around Palos was to be encouraged to put in fortune and help. Ships and those who went in them were to obey the said Don Cristoval Colon or Columbus as though he were the Queen and the King, the Bishop of Seville and the Marquis of Cadiz! It didn't say it just that way but that was what it meant. We were to follow him and do as he told us, or it would be much the worse for us! We weren't to put in at St. George la Mina on the coast of Africa, nor touch at the King of Portugal's islands, and that was the whole of it!"

"All seamen were to be given good pay," said Sancho. "And if anybody going was in debt, or even if he had done a crime—so that it wasn't treason or anything the Holy Office handles—he couldn't be troubled or held back, seeing it was royal errand. That is very convenient for some."

Pedro lost patience. "You'd make the best of Hell itself!"

"He'd deny," put in Fernando, "Holy Writ that says there shall be sorrows!"

They embarked upon loud blame of Sancho, instance after instance. At last I cut them across. "What further happened at Palos?"

They put back to that port. "Oh, it didn't seem so bad that day! One and another thought, 'Perhaps I'll go!' Him they call The Admiral is a big figure of a man, and of course we that use the sea get to know how a good captain looks. We knew that he had sailed and sailed, and had had his own ship, maybe two or three of them! Then too the Pinzons and the Prior of La Rabida answered for him. A lot of us almost belong to the Pinzons, having signed to fish and voyage for them, and the Prior is a well-liked man. The alcalde folds up the letter as though he were in church, and they all come down the steps and go away to the alcalde's house which is around the corner. It wasn't until they were gone that Palos began to ask, 'Where were three ships and maybe a hundred and fifty men going?'"

"We found out next day," said Fernando. "The tide went out, but it came back bearing the sound of where we were going!"

"Then what happened in Palos?"

"What happened was that they couldn't get the ships and they couldn't get the men! Palos wouldn't listen. It was too wild, what they wanted to do! It wouldn't listen to the Prior and it wouldn't listen to Doctor Garcia Fernandez, and it wouldn't even listen to Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon. And when that happens—! So for a long time there was a kind of angry calm. And then, lo you! we find that they have written to the Queen and the King. There come letters to Palos, and they are harsh ones!"

"I never heard harsher from any King and Queen!" said Fernando.

"There weren't only the letters, but they'd sent also a great man, Senor Juan de Penelosa, to see that they got obedience. Upshot is we've got to go, ships and men, or else be laid by the heels! As for Palos, her old sea privileges would be taken from her, and she couldn't face that. Get those ships ready and stock them and pipe sailors aboard, or there'd be our kind Queen and King to deal with!"

"Wherever it is, we're going. Great folk are too tall and broad for us!"

"So there comes another crowd in the square, before the church. Out steps Captain Martin Pinzon, and he cries, 'Men of Palos, for all you doubt it, 'tis a glorious thing that's doing! Here is the Nina that my brothers and I own. She's going with Don Cristoval the Admiral, and the men who are bound to me for fishing and voyaging are going, and more than that, there is going Martin Alonso Pinzon, for I'll ask no man to go where I will not go!'

"Then up beside him starts his brothers Vicente and Francisco, and they say they are going too. Fray Ignatio stands on the church steps and cries that there are idolaters there, and he will go to tell them about our Lord Jesus Christ! Then the alcalde gets up and says that the Sovereigns must be obeyed, and that the Santa Maria and the Pinta shall be made ready. Then the pilots Sancho Ruiz and Pedro Nino and Bartolomeo Roldan push out together and say they'll go, and others follow, seeing they'll have to anyhow! So it went that day and the next and the next, until now they've pressed all they need. So I say, we are here, brother, flopping in the net!"

"When does he sail?"

"Day after to-morrow, 'tis said. But we who don't live in Palos have our orders to be there to-night. Aren't you going too, mate?"

I answered that I hadn't thought of it, and immediately, out of the whole, there rose and faced me, "You have thought of it all the time!"

Sancho spoke. "If you'll go with us to Captain Martin Pinzon, he'll enter you. He'd like to get another strong man."

I said, "I don't know. I'll have to think of it. Here is Palos, and yonder the headland with La Rabida."

We entered the town. They would have had me go with them wherever they must report themselves. But I said that I could not then, and at the mouth of their street managed to leave them. I passed through Palos and beyond its western limit came again to that house of the poorest where I had lodged six months before and waking all night had heard the Tinto flowing by like the life of a man. Long ago I had had some training in medicine, and in mind's medicine, and three years past I had brought a young working man living then in Marchena out of illness and melancholy. His parents dwelled here in this house by the Tinto and they gave me shelter.



CHAPTER IX

RISING at dawn, I walked to the sea and along it until I came at last to those dunes beneath which I had stretched myself that day of grayness. Now it was deep summer, blue and gold, and the air all balm and caressing. The evening before I had seen the three ships where they rode in river mouth. They were caravels, and only the Santa Maria, the largest, was fully decked. Small craft with which to find India, over a road of a thousand leagues—or no road, for road means that men have toiled there and traveled there—no road, but a wilderness plain, a water desert! The Arabians say that Jinn and Afrits live in the desert away from the caravans. If you go that way you meet fearful things and never come forth again. The Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. The Santa Maria could be Master Christopherus's ship. Bright point that was his banner could be made out at the fore.

Palos waterside, in a red-filtered dusk, had been a noisy place, but the noise did not ring genially. I gathered that this small port was more largely in the mood of Pedro and Fernando than in that of Sancho. It looked frightened and it looked sullen and it looked angry.

The old woman by the Tinto talked garrulously. Thankful was she that her son Miguel dwelled ten leagues away! Else surely they would have taken him, as they were taking this one's son and that one's son! To hear her you would think of an ogre—of Polyphemus in the cave—reaching out fatal hand for this or that fattened body. Nothing then, she said, to do but to pinch and save so that one might pay the priest for masses! She told me with great eyes that a hundred leagues west of Canaries one came to a sea forest where all the trees were made of water growing up high and spreading out like branches and leaves, and that this forest was filled with sea wolves and serpents and strange beasts all made of sea water, but they could sting and rend a man very ghastly. After that you came to sirens that you could not help leaping to meet, but they put lips to men's breasts and sucked out the life. Then if the wind drove you south, you smelled smoke and at night saw flames, and if you could not get the ship about—

In mid-afternoon I left the sands and took the road to La Rabida. By the walled vineyard that climbs the hill I was met by three mounted men coming from the monastery. The first was Don Juan de Penelosa, the second was the Prior of La Rabida, the third was the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea.

Fray Juan Perez first saw me clearly, drawn up by wall. He had been quoting Latin and he broke at Dominus et magister. The Admiral turned gray eyes upon me. I saw his mind working. He said, "The road to Cordova—Welcome, Juan Lepe!"

"Welcome, Excellency!"

I gave him the name, seeing him for a moment somewhat whimsically as Viceroy of conquered great India of the elephants and the temples filled with bells. His face lighted. He looked at me, and I knew again that he liked me. I liked him.

My kinsman the Prior had started to speak to me, but then had shot a look at Juan de Penelosa and refrained. The Queen's officer spoke, "Why, here's another strong fellow, not so tall as some but powerfully knit! Are you used to the sea?"

I answered that I had been upon a Marseilles bark that was wrecked off Almeria, and that I had walked from San Lucar. He asked my name and I gave it. "Juan Lepe." "I attach you then, Juan Lepe, for the service of the Queen! Behold your admiral, Don Cristoval Colon! His ships are the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina, his destination the glorious finding of the Indies and Cipango where the poorest man drinks from a golden cup! Princes, I fancy, drink from hollowed emeralds! You will sail to-morrow at dawn. In which ship shall we put him, Senor?"

"In the Santa Maria," answered the Admiral.

So short as that was it done! And yet—and yet—it had been doing for a long time, for how long a time I have no way of measuring!

Juan de Penelosa continued to speak: "Follow us into Palos where Sebastian Jaurez will give you wine and a piece of money. Thence you will go to church where indeed we are bound, all who sail being gathered there for general confession and absolution. This voyage begins Christianly!"

Said Fray Juan Perez, "Not to do that, Juan Lepe, were to cry aloud for another shipwreck!"

He used the tone of priest, thrusting in speech as priests often do, where there is no especial need of speech. But I understood that that was a mask, and could read kinsmanly anxiety in a good man's heart. I said, "I will find Sebastian Jaurez, and I will go to church, Senors. A ship is a ship, and a voyage a voyage!"

"This, Juan Lepe," said the Admiral in that peculiarly warm and thrilling voice of his, "is such a voyage as you have never been!"

I made reply, "So be it! I would have every voyage greater than the last." And as they put their steeds into motion, walked behind them downhill and over sandy ways into Palos. There I found Sebastian Jaurez who signed me in. I put into my pocket the coin he gave me and drank with him a stoup of wine, and then I went to church.

It was a great shadowy church and I found it full. Jaurez piloted me to where just under pulpit were ranged my fellow mariners, a hundred plain sailormen, no great number with which to widen the world! A score or so of better station were grouped at the head of these, and in front of all stood Christopherus Columbus. I saw again Martin Alonso Pinzon who had entered the Prior's room at La Rabida, and with him his two brothers Francisco and Vicente. Martin Pinzon would be captain of the Pinta and Vicente of the Nina. And there were Roderigo Sanchez of Segovia, Inspector-General of Armament, and Diego de Arana, chief alguazil of the expedition, and Roderigo de Escobedo, royal notary, and with these three or four young men of birth, adventuring for India now that the war with the Moor was done. And there were two physicians, Garcia Fernandez and Berardino Nunez. And there was the Franciscan, Fray Ignatio, who would convert the heathen and preach before the Great Khan.

The Admiral of Ocean-Sea stood a taller man than any there, tall, muscular, a great figure. He was richly dressed, for as soon as he could he dressed richly. A shaft of light struck his brow and made his hair all glowing silver. His face was lifted. The air about him to my eyes swam and quivered and was faintly colored.

Fray Juan Perez preached the sermon and he used great earnestness and now and again his voice broke. He talked of God's gain that we went forth upon, reaping in a field set us. One thing came forth here that I had not before heard.

"And the unthinkable wealth that surely shall be found and gained, for these countries to which you sail have eight-tenths of the world's riches, shall put Castile and Leon where of old stood Pagan Rome, and shall make, God willing, of this very Palos a new Genoa or Venice! And this man, your Admiral, how hath he proposed to the Sovereigns to use first fruits? Why, friends, by taking finally and forever from Mahound, and for Holy Church and her servant the Spains, the Holy Sepulchre!"

In the end, we the going forth, kneeling, made general confession and the priest's hands in the dusk above absolved us. There was solemnity and there was tenderness. A hundred and twenty, we came forth from church, and around us flowed the hundreds of Palos, men and women and children. All was red under a red sunset, the boats waiting to take us out to the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina.

We marched to waterside. Priests and friars moved with us, singing loudly the hymn to the Virgin, Lady of all seamen. Great tears ran down Fray Juan Perez's checks. It was a red sunset and the west into which we were going looked indeed blood-flecked. Don Juan de Penelosa, harking us on, had an inspiration. "You see the rubies of Cipango!"

It is not alone "great" men who bring about things in this world. All of us are in a measure great, as all are on the way to greater greatness. Sailors are brave and hardy men; that is said when it is said that they are sailors. In many hearts hung dread of this voyage and rebellion against being forced to it. But they had not to be lashed to the boats; they went with sailors' careless air and dignity. By far the most went thus. Even Fernando ceased his wailing and embarked. The red light, or for danger or for rubies in which still might be danger, washed us all, washed the town, the folk and the sandy shore, and the boats that would take us out to the ships, small in themselves, and small by distance, riding there in the river-mouth like toys that have been made for children.

The hundred and twenty entered the boats. It was like a little fishing fleet going out together. The rowers bent to the oars, a strip of water widened between us and Spain. Loud chanted the friars, but over their voices rose the crying of farewell, now deep, now shrill. "Adios!" The sailors cried back, "Adios! Adios!" From the land it must have had a thin sound like ghosts wailing from the edge of the world. That, the sailors held and Palos held, was where the ships were going, over the edge of the world. It was the third day of August, in the year fourteen hundred and ninety-two.



CHAPTER X

PALOS vanished, we lost the headland of La Rabida, a haze hid Spain. By nightfall all was behind us. We were set forth from native land, set forth from Europe, set forth from Christendom, set forth from sea company and sailors' cheer of other ships. That last would not be wholly true until we were gone from the Canaries, toward which islands, running south, we now were headed. We might hail some Spanish ship going to, coming from, Grand Canary. We might indeed, before we reached these islands, see other sails, for a rumor ran that the King of Portugal was sending ships to intercept us, sink us and none ever be the wiser, it not being to his interest that Spain should make discoveries! Pedro it was who put this into my ear as we hauled at the same rope. I laughed. "Here beginneth the marvelous tale of this voyage! If all happens that all say may happen, not the Pope's library can hold the books!"

The Santa Maria was a good enough ship, though fifty men crowded it. It was new and clean, a fair sailer, though not so swift as the Pinta. We mariners settled ourselves in waist and forecastle. The Admiral, Juan de la Cosa, the master, Roderigo Sanchez, Diego de Arana and Roderigo de Escobedo, Pedro Gutierrez, a private adventurer, the physician Bernardo Nunez and Fray Ignatio had great cabin and certain small sleeping cabins and poop deck. In the forecastle almost all knew one another; all ran into kinships near or remote. But the turn of character made the real grouping. Pedro had his cluster and Sancho had his, and between swayed now to the one and now to the other a large group. Fernando, I feel gladness in saying, had with him but two or three. And aside stood variations, individuals. Beltran the cook was such an one, a bold, mirthful, likable man. We had several dry thinkers, and a braggart and two or three who proved miserably villainous. We had weathercocks and men who faced forward, no matter what the wind that blew.

The Admiral knew well that he must have, if he could, a ship patient, contented and hopeful. I bear him witness that he spared no pains.

We had aboard trumpet and drum and viol, and he would have frequent music. Each day toward evening each man was given a cup of wine. And before sunset all were gathered for vesper service, and we sang Salve Regina. At night the great familiar stars shone out above us.

Second day passed much like first,—light fickle wind, flapping sails, smooth sea, cloudless sky. To-day beheld sea life after shore grown habitual. We might have sailed from Marseilles or Genoa and been sailing for a month. If this were all, then no more terror from the Sea of Darkness than from our own so well-known sea! But Fernando said, "It is after the Canaries! We know well enough it is not so bad this side of them. Why do they call them Dog Islands?"

"Perhaps they found dogs there."

"No, but that they give warning like watchdogs! 'If you go any further it shall be to your woe!'"

"Aye, aye! Have you heard tell of the spouting mountain?"

This night the wind came up and by morning was blowing stiffly, urging us landward as though back to Spain. The sky became leaden, with a great stormy aspect. The waves mounted, the lookout cried that the Pinta was showing signals of distress. By now all had shortened sail, but the Pinta was taking in everything and presently lay under bare poles. The Santa Maria worked toward her until we were close by. They shouted and we back to them. It was her rudder that was unshipped and injured. Captain Martin Pinzon shouted that he would overcome it, binding it somehow in place, and would overtake us, the Pinta being faster sailer than the Santa Maria or the Nina. But the Admiral would not agree, and we took in all sail and lay tossed by a rough sea until afternoon when the Pinta signaled that the rudder was hung. But by now the sky stretched straight lead, and the water ran white-capped. We made no way till morning, when without a drop of rain all the cloud roof was driven landward and there sprang out a sky so blue that the heart laughed for joy. The violent wind sank, then veered and blowing moderately carried us again southward. All the white sails, white and new, were flung out, and we raced over a rich, green plain. That lasted through most of the day, but an hour before sunset the Pinta again signaled trouble. The rudder was once more worse than useless.

Again it was mended. But when the next morning it happened the third time and a kind of wailing grumble went through the Santa Maria, there came pronouncement from the Admiral. "The Canaries lie straight ahead. In two days we shall sight them. Very good! we shall rest there and make a new rudder for the Pinta. The Nina will do better with square sails and we can change these. Fresh meat and water and some rambling ashore!"

Beltran the cook had been to the Canaries, driven there by a perverse wind twenty years ago when he was boatswain upon a big carrack. He said it was no great way and one or two agreed with him, but others declined to believe the Admiral when he said that in two days we should behold the volcano. Some were found to clamor that the wind had driven us out of all reckoning! We might never find the Canaries and then what would the Pinta do? Whereas, if we all turned back to Palos—

"If—if!" answered Beltran the cook, who at first seemed strangely and humorously there as cook until one found that he had an injured leg and could not climb mast nor manage sail. "'If' is a seaman without a ship!—He's a famous navigator."

"Martin Pinzon?"

"Him too. But I meant our Admiral."

"He hasn't had a ship for years!"

"He was of the best when he had one! I've heard old Captain Ruy tell—"

"Maybe he wasn't crazy in those days, but he's crazy now!"

That was Fernando. I think it was from him that certain of the crew took the word "crazy." They used it until one would think that for pure variety's sake they would find another!

The sixth day from Palos there lifted from sea the peak of Teneriffe.

This day, passing on some errand the open door of the great cabin, I saw the Admiral seated at the table. Looking up, he saw me, gazed an instant, then lifted his voice. "Come in here!"

He sat with a great chart spread upon the table before him. Beside it the log lay open, and he had under his hand a book in which he was writing. Door framed blue sky and sea, a pleasant wind was singing in a pleasant warmth, the great cabin which, with the rest of the ship, he made to be kept very clean, was awash with light and fineness of air. "Would you like to look at the chart?" he asked, and I came and looked over his shoulder.

"I made it," he said. "There is nothing in the world more useful than knowing how to make maps and charts! While I waited for Kings to make up their minds I earned my living so." I glanced at the log and he pushed it to me so that I might see. "Every day from Palos out." His strong fingers touched the other book. "My journal that I keep for myself and the Queen and King Ferdinand and indeed for the world." He turned the leaves. The bulk of them were blank, but in the front showed closely covered pages, the writing not large but clear and strong. "This voyage, you see, changeth our world! Once in Venice I heard a scholar learned in the Greek tell of an old voyage of a ship called Argo, whence its captain and crew were named Argonauts, and he said that it was of all voyages most famous with the ancients. This is like that, but probably greater." He turned the pages. "I shall do it in the manner of Caesar his Commentaries."

He knew himself, I thought, for as great a man as Caesar. All said, his book might be as prized in some unentered future. He did not move where time is as a film, but where time is deep, a thousand years as a day. He could not see there in detail any more than we could see tree and house in those Canaries upon which we were bearing down.

I said, "Now that printing is general, it may go into far lands and into multitude of hands and heads. Many a voyager to come may study it."

He drew deep breath. "It is the very truth! Prince Henry the Navigator. Christopherus Columbus the Navigator, and greater than the first—"

Sun shone, wind sang, blue sea danced beyond the door. Came from deck Roderigo Sanchez and Diego de Arana. The Admiral made me a gesture of dismissal.

The Canaries and we drew together. Great bands of cloud hid much of the higher land, but the volcano top came clear above cloud, standing bare and solemn against blue heaven. Leaving upon our right Grand Canary we stood for the island of Gomera. Here we found deep, clear water close to shore, a narrow strand, a small Spanish fort and beginnings of a village, and inland, up ravines clad with a strange, leafless bush, plentiful huts of the conquered Guanches. Our three ships came to anchor, and the Admiral went ashore, the captains of the Pinta and the Nina following. Juan Lepe was among the rowers.

The Spanish commandant came down to beach with an armed escort. The Admiral, walking alone, met him between sea and bright green trees, and here stood the two and conversed while we watched. The Admiral showed him letters of credence. The commandant took and read, handed them back with a bow, and coming to water edge had presented to him the two captains, Martin and Vicente Pinzon. He proved a cheery old veteran of old wars, relieved that we were not Portuguese nor pirates and happy to have late news from Spain. It seemed that he had learned from a supply ship in June that the expedition was afoot.

The Santa Maria and the Nina rode close in shore. Captain Martin Pinzon beached the Pinta and unshipped the hurt and useless rudder. Work upon a new one began at once. The Admiral, the two captains and those of rank upon the ships supped with the commandant at his quite goodly house, and the next day he and his officers dined aboard the Santa Maria. The Admiral liked him much for he was more than respectful toward this voyage. A year before, bathing one day in the surf, there had come floating to his hand a great gourd. None such grew anywhere in these islands, and the wind for days had come steadily from the west. The gourd had a kind of pattern cut around it. He showed it to the Admiral and afterwards gave it to him. The latter caused it to pass from hand to hand among the seamen. I had it in my hands and truly saw no reason why it might not have been cut by some native of the West, and, carried away by the tide or dropped perchance from a boat, have at last, after long time, come into hands not Indian. Asia tossing unthinkingly a ball which Europe caught.

The Pinta proved in worse plight than was at first thought. The Nina also found this or that to do besides squaring her Levant sails. We stayed in Gomera almost three weeks. The place was novel, the day's task not hard, the Admiral and his captains complaisant. We had leisure and island company. To many it was happiness enough. While we stopped at Gornera we were at least not drifting upon lodestone, equator fire and chaos!

Here on Gomera might be studied the three Pinzon brothers. Vicente was a good, courageous captain, Francisco a good pilot, and a courageous, seldom-speaking man. But Martin Alonso, the eldest, was the prime mover in all their affairs. He was skillful navigator like his brothers and courageous like them, but not silent like Francisco, and ambitious far above either. He would have said perhaps that had he not been so, been both ambitious and shrewd, the Pinzons would never have become principal ship-owning, trading and maritime family of Palos and three leagues around. He, too, had family fortunes and aggrandizement at heart, though hardly on the grand, imperial scale of the Admiral. He had much manly beauty, daring and strength. His two brothers worshipped him, and in most places and moments his crew would follow him with a cheer. The Admiral was bound to him, not only in that he had volunteered and made others to go willingly, but that he had put in his ship, the Nina, and had furnished Master Christopherus with monies. That eighth of the cost of the expedition, whence else could it come? If it tied Martin Pinzon to the Admiral, seeing that only through success could those monies be repaid, it likewise made him feel that he, too, had authority, was at liberty to advise, and at need to become critical.

But the Admiral had the great man's mark. He could acknowledge service and be quite simply and deeply grateful for it. He was grateful to Martin Pinzon who had aided him from his first coming to Palos, and also I think he loved the younger man's great blond strength and beauty. He had all of Italy's quickness to beauty, be it of land or sea, forest, flower, animal or man. But now and again, even so early as this, he must put out hand to check Pinzon's impetuous advice. His brows drew together above gray eyes and eagle nose. But for the most part, on Gomera, they were very friendly, and it was a sight to see Admiral and captains and all the privileged of the expedition sit at wine with the commandant.

Juan Lepe had no quarrel with any of them. Jayme de Marchena swept this voyage into the Great Voyage.

The Pinta was nearly ready when there arrived a small ship from Ferro bringing news that three large Portuguese ships had sailed by that island. Said the commandant, "Spain and Portugal are at peace. They would not dare to try to oust us!" He came to waterside to talk to the Admiral. "Not to fight you," said the Admiral, "but me! King John wishes to keep India, Cipango and Cathay still veiled. So he will get time in which to have from the Holy Father another bull that will place the Portuguese line west and west until he hath the whole!" He raised his hand and let it fall. "I cannot sail to-morrow, but I will sail the day after!"

We were put to hard labor for the rest of that day, and through much of the moonlit night. By early morning again we labored. At mid-afternoon all was done. The Pinta, right from stem to stern, rode the blue water; the Nina had her great square sails. The Guanches stored for us fresh provisions and rolled down and into ship our water casks. There was a great moon, and we would stand off in the night. Nothing more had been seen of the Portuguese ships, but we were ready to go and go we should. All being done, and the sun two hours high, we mariners had leave to rest ashore under trees who might not for very long again see land or trees.

There was a grove that led to a stream and the waterfall where we had filled the casks. I walked through this alone. The place lay utterly still save for the murmuring of the water and the singing of a small yellowish bird that abounds in these islands. At the end of an aisle of trees shone the sea, blue and calm as a sapphire of heaven. I lay down upon the earth by the water.

Finding of India and rounding the earth! We seemed poor, weak men, but the thing was great, and I suppose the doers of a great thing are great. East—west! Going west and yet east.—The Jew in me had come from Palestine, and to Palestine perhaps from Arabia, and to Arabia—who knew?—perhaps from that India! And much of the Spaniard had come from Carthage and from Phoenicia, old Tyre and Sidon, and Tyre and Sidon again from the east. From the east and to the east again. All our Age that with all lacks was yet a stirring one with a sense of dawn and sunrise and distant trumpets, now was going east, was going Home, going east by the west road. West is home and East is home, and North and South. Knowledge extendeth and the world above is fed.

The sun made a lane of scarlet and gold across Ocean-Sea. I wondered what temples, what towns, what spice ships at strange wharfs might lie under it afar. I wondered if there did dwell Prester John and if he would step down to give us welcome. The torrent of event strikes us day and night, all the hours, all the moments. Who can tell with distinctness color and shape in that descending stream?



CHAPTER XI

AN hour after moonrise we were gone from Gomera. At first a light wind filled the sails, but when the round moon went down in the west and the sun rose, there was Teneriffe still at hand, and the sea glassy. It rested like a mirror all that day, and the sails hung empty and the banner at maintop but a moveless wisp of cloth. In the night arose a contrary wind, and another red dawn showed us Teneriffe still. The wind dropping like a shot, we hung off Ferro, fixed in blue glass. Watch was kept for the Portuguese, but they also would be rooted to sea bottom. The third morning up whistled the wind, blowing from Africa and filling every sail.

Palos to the Canaries, we had sailed south. Now for long, long days the sun rose right aft, and when it set dyed with red brow and eyes and cheek and breast of the carved woman at our prow. She wore a great crown, and she looked ever with wide eyes upon the west that we chased. Straight west over Ocean-Sea, the first men, the first ships! If ever there had been others, our world knew it not. The Canaries sank into the east. Turn on heel around one's self, and mark never a start of land to break the rim of the vast sea bowl! Never a sail save those above us of the Santa Maria, or starboard or larboard, the Pinta and the Nina. The loneliness was vast and utter. We might fail here, sink here, die here, and indeed fail and sink and die alone!

Two seamen lay sick in their beds, and the third day from Gomera the Santa Maria's physician, Bernardo Nunez, was seized with the same malady. At first Fray Ignatio tried to take his place, but here the monk lacked knowledge. One of the sailors died, a ship boy sickened, and the physician's fever increased upon him. Diego de Arana began to fail. The ship's master came at supper time and looked us over. "Is there any here who has any leechcraft?"

Beltran the cook said, "I can set a bone and wash a wound; but it ends there!"

Cried Fernando from his corner. "Is the plague among us!" The master turned on him. "Here and now, I say five lashes for the man who says that word again! Has any man here sense about a plain fever?"

None else speaking, I said that long ago I had studied for a time with a leech, and that I was somewhat used to care of the sick. "Then you are my man!" quoth the master, and forthwith took me to the Admiral. I became Juan Lepe, the physician.

It was, I held, a fever received while wandering through the ravines and woods of Gomera. Master Bernardo had in his cabin drugs and tinctures, and we breathed now all the salt of Ocean-Sea, and the ship was clean. I talked to Beltran the cook about diet, and I chose Sancho and a man that I liked, one Luis Torres, for nurses. Two others sickened this night, and one the next day, but none afterward. None died; in ten days all were recovered. Other ailments aboard I doctored also. Don Diego de Arana was subject to fits of melancholy with twitchings of the body. I had watched Isaac the Physician cure such things as this, and now I followed instruction. I put my hands upon the patient and I strengthened his will with mine, sending into him desire for health and perception of health. His inner man caught tune. The melancholy left him and did not return. Master Bernardo threw off the fever, sat up and moved about. But he was still weak, and still I tended the others for him.

The Pinta had signaled four men ill. But Garcia Fernandez, the Palos physician, was there with Martin Pinzon, and the sick recovered. The Nina had no doctor and now she came near to the Santa Maria and sent a boat. She had five sick men and would borrow Bernardo Nunez.

The Admiral spoke with Nunez, now nearly well. Then the physician made a bundle of drugs and medicaments, said farewell to all and kindly enough to me, and rowed away to the Nina. He was a friend of the Pinzons, and above the vanity of the greater ship. The sick upon the Nina prospered under him.

But Juan Lepe was taken from the forecastle, and slept where Nunez had slept, and had his place at the table in the great cabin. He turned from the sailor Juan Lepe to the physician Juan Lepe, becoming "Doctor" and "Senor." The wheel turns and a man's past makes his present.

A few days from Gomera, an hour after sunset, the night was torn by the hugest, flaming, falling star that any of us had ever seen. The mass drove down the lower skirt of the sky, leaving behind it a wake of fire. It plunged into the sea. There is no sailor but knows shooting stars. But this was a hugely great one, and Ocean-Sea very lonely, and to most there our errand a spectral and frightening one. It needed both the Admiral and Fray Ignatio to quell the panic.

The next day a great bird like a crane passed over the Santa Maria. It came from Africa, behind us. But it spoke of land, and the sailors gazed wistfully.

This day I entered the great cabin when none was there but the Admiral, and again he sat at table with his charts and his books. He asked of the sick and I answered. Again he sat looking through open door and window at blue water, a great figure of a man with a great head and face and early-silvered hair. "Do you know aught," he asked, "of astrology?"

I answered that I knew a little of the surface of it.

"I have a sense," he said, "that our stars are akin, yours and mine. I felt it the day Granada fell, and I felt it on Cordova road, and again that day below La Rabida when we turned the corner and the bells rang and you stood beside the vineyard wall. Should I not have learned in more than fifty years to know a man? The stars are akin that will endure for vision's sake."

I said, "I believe that, my Admiral."

He sat in silence for a moment, then drew the log between us and turned several pages so that I might see the reckoning. "We have come well," I said. "Yet with so fair a wind, I should have thought—"

He turned the leaves till he rested at one covered with other figures. "Here it is as it truly is, and where we truly are! We have oversailed all that the first show, and so many leagues besides."

"Two records, true and untrue! Why do you do it so?"

"I have told them that after seven hundred leagues we should find land. Add fifty more for our general imperfection. But it may be wider than I think. We may not come even to some fringing island in eight hundred leagues, no, nor in more than that! If it be a thousand, if it be two thousand, on I go! But after the seven hundred is passed, it will be hard to keep them in hand. So, though we are covering more, I let them think we are covering only this."

I could but laugh. Two reckonings! After all, he was not Italian for nothing!

"The master knows," he said, "and also Diego de Arana. But at least one other should know. Two might drown or perish from sickness. I myself might fall sick and die, though I will not believe it!" He paused a moment, then said, looking directly at me, "I need one in whom I can utterly confide. I should have had with me my brother Bartholomew. But he is in England. A man going to seek a Crown jewel for all men should have with him son or brother. Diego de Arana is a kinsman of one whom I love, and he partly believes. But Roderigo Sanchez and the others believe hardly at all. There is Fray Ignatio. He believes, and I confess my sins to him. But he thinks only of penitents, and this matter needs mind, not heart alone. Because of that sense of the stars, I tell you these things."

The next day it came to me that in that Journal which he meant to make like Caesar's Commentaries, he might put down the change in the Santa Maria's physicians and set my name there too often. I watched my chance and finding it, asked that he name me not in that book. His gray eyes rested upon me; he demanded the reason for that. I said that in Spain I was in danger, and that Juan Lepe was not my name. More than that I did not wish to say, and perchance it were wiser for him not to know. But I would not that the powerful should mark me in his Journal or elsewhere!

Usually his eyes were wide and filled with light as though it were sent into them from the vast lands that he continuously saw. But he could be immediate captain and commander of things and of men, and when that was so, the light drew into a point, and he became eagle that sees through the wave the fish. Had he been the seer alone, truly he might have been the seer of what was to be discovered and might have set others upon the path. But he would not have sailed on the Santa Maria!

In his many years at sea he must many times have met men who had put to sea out of fear of land. He would have sailed with many whose names, he knew, were not those given them at birth. He must have learned to take reasons for granted and to go on—where he wished to go on. So we gazed at each other.

"I had written down," he said, "that you greatly helped the sick, and upon Bernardo Nunez's going to the Nina, became our physician. But I will write no more of you, and that written will pass in the flood of things to come." After a moment, he ended with deliberation, "I know my star to be a great star, burning long and now with a mounting flame. If yours is in any wise its kin, then there needs must be histories."



CHAPTER XII

IT was a strange thing how utterly favoring now was the wind! It blew with a great steady push always from the east, and always we ran before it into the west. Day after day we experienced this warm and steadfast driving; day after day we never shifted sail. The rigging sang a steady song, day and night. The crowned woman, our figurehead, ran, light-footed, over a green and blue plain, and where the plain ended no man might know! "Perhaps it does not end!" said the mariners.

Of the hidalgos aboard I like best Diego de Arana who had cast off his melancholy. He was a man of sense, candid and brave. Roderigo Sanchez sat and moved a dull, good man. Roderigo de Escobedo had courage, but he was factious, would take sides against his shadow if none other were there. Pedro Gutierrez had been a courtier, and had the vices of that life, together with a daredevil recklessness and a kind of wild wit. I had liking and admiration for Fray Ignatio, but careful indeed was I when I spoke with him!

The wind blew unchanging, the stark blue shield of sea, a water-world, must be taken in the whole, for there was no contrasting point in it to catch the eye. Sancho, forward, in a high sweet voice like a jongleur's voice, was singing to the men an endless ballad. Upon the poop deck Escobedo and Gutierrez, having diced themselves to an even wealth or poverty, turned to further examination of the Admiral's ways. Endlessly they made him and his views subject of talk. Roderigo Sanchez listened with a face like an owl, Diego de Arana with some irony about his lips. I came and stood beside the latter.

They were upon the beggary of Christopherus Columbus. "How did the Prior of La Rabida—?"

"I'll tell you, for I heard it. One evening at vesper bell comes our Admiral—no less a man!—to Priory gate with a young boy in his hand. Not Fernando his love-child, but Diego the elder, who was born in Lisbon. All dusty with the road, like any beggar you see, and not much better clad, foot-sore and begging bread for himself and the boy. And because of his white hair, and because he carried himself in that absurd way that makes the undiscerning cry, 'Ah, my lord king in disguise!' the porter must have him in, and by and by comes the prior and stands to talk with him, 'From where?' 'From Cordova.' 'Whither?' 'To Portugal.' 'For why?' 'To speak again with King John!' 'Are you in the habit of speaking with kings?' 'Aye, I am!' 'About what, may I ask?' 'About the finding of India by way of Ocean-Sea, the possession of idolatrous countries and the great wealth thereof, and the taking of Christ to the heathen who else are lost!'"

"Ha, ha! Ha, ha!" This was Escobedo.

"The prior thinks, 'This is an interesting madman.' And being a charitable good man and lacking entertainment that evening, he brings the beggar in to supper and sits by him."

Roderigo Sanchez opened his mouth. "All Andalusia knows Fray Juan Perez is a kind of visionary!"

"Aye, like to like! 'Have you been to our Queen and the King?' 'Aye, I have!' saith the beggar, 'but they are warring with the Moors and will pull Granada down and do not see the greater glory!'"

All laughed at that, and indeed Gutierrez could mimic to perfection. We got, full measure, the beggar's loftiness.

"So the siren sings and the prior leaps to meet her, or tarantula stings him and he dances! 'I am growing mad too,' thinks Fray Juan Perez, and begins presently to tell that last week he dreamed of Prester John. The end is that he and the beggar talk till midnight and the next morning they talk again, and the prior sends for his friends Captain Martin Alonzo Pinzon and the physician Garcia Fernandez. The beggar gains them all!"

"Do you think a beggar can do that?" I said. "Only a giver can do that."

Pedro Gutierrez turned black eyes upon Juan Lepe, whom he resented there on the poop deck. "How could you have learned so much, Doctor, while you were making sail and washing ship?" He was my younger in every way, and I answered equably, "I learned in the same way that the Admiral learned while he begged."

"Touched!" said Diego de Arana. "So that is the way the prior came into the business?"

"He enters with such vigor," said Gutierrez, "that what does he do but write an impassioned letter to the Queen, having long ago, for a time, been her confessor? What he tells her, God knows, but it seems that it changes the world! She answers that for herself she hath grieved for Master Columbus's departure from the court and the realm, and that if he will turn and come to Santa Fe, his propositions shall at last be thoroughly weighed. Letter finds the beggar with his boy honored guest of La Rabida, touching heads with Martin Pinzon over maps and charts and the 'Book of Travels' of Messer Marco Polo. There is great joy! The beggar hath the prior's own mule and his son a jennet, and here we go to Santa Fe! That was last year. Now the boy that whimpered for bread at convent gate is Don Diego Colon, page to Prince Juan, and the Viceroy sails on the Santa Maria for the countries he will administer!"

Gutierrez shook the dice in the box. "Oh, Queen Luck, that I have served for so long! Why do you not make me viceroy?"

Said Escobedo, "Viceroy of the continent of water and Admiral of seaweed and fishes!"

Diego de Arana took that up. "We are obliged to find something! No sensible man can think like some of those forward that this goes on forever and we shall sail till the wood rots and sails grow ragged and wind carries away their shreds or they fall into dust!"

"Who knows anything of River-Ocean? We may not find the western shore, if there be such a thing, for a year! By that time storm will sink us ten times over, or plague will take us—"

"There's not needed plague nor storm. Just say, food won't last, and water is already half gone!"

"That's the undeniable truth," quoth Roderigo Sanchez, and looked with a perturbed face at the too-smooth sea.

Smooth blue sea continued, wind continued, pushing like a great, warm hand, east to west. The Admiral spent hours alone in his sleeping cabin. There were men who said that he studied there a great book of magic. He had often a book in his hand, it is true, but Juan Lepe the physician knew what he strove to keep from others, that the gout that at times threatened crippling was upon him and was easier to bear lying down.

Sunset, vesper prayer and Salve Regina. As the strains died, there became evident a lingering on the part of the seamen. The master spoke to the Admiral. "They've found out about the needle, sir! Perhaps you'd better hear them and answer them."

Almost every day he heard them and answered them. To make his seamen, however they groaned and grumbled and plotted, yet abide him and his purpose was a day-after-day arising task! "Now," he said equably, in the tone almost of a father, "What is it to-day, men?"

The throng worked and put forward a spokesman, who looked from the Admiral to the clear north. "It is the star, sir! The needle no longer points to it! We thought you might explain to us unlearned—What we think is that distance is going to widen and widen! What's to keep needle from swinging right south? Then will we never get home to Palos and our wives and children—never and never and never!"

Said the Admiral, "It will not change further, or if it does a very little further!" In his most decisive, most convincing voice he explained why the needle no longer pointed precisely to the star. The deviation marked and allowed for, it was near enough for practical purposes, and the reasons for the wandering—

I do not know if the wisdom of our descendants will confirm his explanation. It is so often to explain the explanation! But one as well as another might do here. What the Santa Maria wanted was reassurance, general and large, stretching from the Canaries to India and Cathay and back again. He knew that, and after no great time spent with compass needle and circularly traveling polar star, he began to talk gold and estate, and the pearls and silk and spices they would surely take for gifts to their family and neighbors, Palos or Huelva or Fishertown!

It was truly the hope that upheld many on a voyage that they chose to think a witches' one. He talked now out of Marco Polo and he clad what that traveler had said in more gorgeous attire. He meant nothing false; his exalted imagination saw it so. He was painter of great pageants, heightening and remodeling, deepening and purifying colors, making humdrum and workaday over to his heart's desire. The Venetian in his book, and other travelers in their books, had related wonders enough. These grew with him, it might be said—and indeed in his lifetime was often said—into wonders without a foot upon earth. But if one took as figures and symbols his gold roofs and platters, temples and gardens, every man a merchant in silks and spices, strange fruit-dropping trees and pearls in carcanets, the Grand Khan and Prester John—who could say that in the long, patient life of Time the Admiral was over-esteeming? The pity of it was that most here could not live in great lengths of time. They wanted riches now, now! And they wanted only one kind of riches; here and now, or at the most in another month, in the hands and laps of Pedro and Fernando and Diego.



CHAPTER XIII

THERE grew at times an excited feeling that he was a prophet, and that there were fabulously great things before us. As I doctored some small ill one day in the forecastle, a great fellow named Francisco from Huelva would tell me his dream of the night before. He had already told it, it seemed, to all who would listen, and now again he had considerable audience, crowding at the door. He said that he dreamed he was in Cipango. At first he thought it was heaven, but when he saw golden roofs he knew it must be Cipango, for in heaven where it never rained and there were no nights, we shouldn't need roofs. One interrupted, "We'd need them to keep the flying angels from looking in!"

"It was Cipango," persisted Francisco, "for the Emperor himself came and gave me a rope of pearls. There were five thousand of them, and each would buy a house or a fine horse or a suit of velvet. And the Emperor took me by the hand, and he said, 'Dear Brother—' You might have thought I was a king—and by the mass, I was a king! I felt it right away! And then he took me into a garden, and there were three beautiful women, and one of them would push me to the other, and that one to the third, and that to the first again, as though they were playing ball, and they all laughed, and I laughed. Then there came a great person with five crowns on his head, and all the light blazed up gold and blue, and somebody said, 'It's Prester John'!"

His dream kept a two-days' serenity upon the ship. It came to the ear of the Admiral, who said, "'In dreams will I instruct thee.'—I have had dreams far statelier than his."

Pedro Gutierrez too began to dream,—fantastic things which he told with an idle gusto. They were of wine and gold and women, though often these were to be guessed through strange, jumbled masks and phantasies. "Those are ill dreams," said the Admiral. "Dream straight and high!" Fray Ignatio, too, said wisely, "It is not always God who cometh in dreams!"

But the images of Gutierrez's dreams seemed to him to be seated in Cathay and India. They bred in him belief that he was coming to happiness by that sea road that glistered before us. He and Roderigo de Escobedo began to talk with assurance of what they should find. Having small knowledge of travelers' tales they made application to the Admiral who, nothing loth, answered them out of Marco Polo, Mandeville and Pedro de Aliaco.

But the ardor of his mind was such that he outwent his authors. Where the Venetian said "gold" the Genoese said "Much gold." Where the one saw powerful peoples with their own customs, courts, armies, temples, ships and trade, the other gave to these an unearthly tinge of splendor. Often as he sat in cabin or on deck, or rising paced to and fro, we who listened to his account, listened to poet and enthusiast speaking of earths to come. Besides books like those of Marco Polo and John Mandeville and the Bishop of Cambrai he had studied philosophers and the ancients and Scripture and the Fathers. He spoke unwaveringly of prophecies, explicit and many, of his voyage, and the rounding out of earth by him, Christopherus Columbus. More than once or twice, in the great cabin, beneath the swinging lantern, he repeated to us such passages, his voice making great poetry of old words. "Averroes saith—Albertus Magnus saith—Aristotle saith—Seneca saith—Saint Augustine saith—Esdras in his fourth book saith—" Salt air sweeping through seemed to fall into a deep, musical beat and rhythm. "After the council at Salamanca when great churchmen cried Irreligion and even Heresy upon me, I searched all Scripture and drew testimony together. In fifty, yea, in a hundred places it is plain! King David saith—job saith—Moses saith—Thus it reads in Genesis—"

Diego de Arana smote the table with his hand. "I am yours, senor, to find for the Lord!" Fray Ignatio lifted dark eyes. "I well believe that nothing happens but what is chosen! I will tell you that in my cell at La Rabida I heard a cry, 'Come over, Ignatio the Franciscan!'"

And I, listening, thought, "Not perhaps that ancient spiritual singing of spiritual things! But in truth, yes, it is chosen. Did not the Whole of Me that I can so dimly feel set my foot upon this ship?" And going out on deck before I slept, I looked at the stars and thought that we were like the infant in the womb that knows not how nor where it is carried.

We might be four hundred leagues from Spain. Still the wind drove us, still we hardly shifted canvas, still the sky spread clear, of a vast blue depth, and the blue glass plain of the sea lay beneath. It was too smooth, the wind in our rigging too changeless of tune. At last, all would have had variety spring. There began a veritable hunger for some change, and it was possible to feel a faint horror. What if this is the horror—to go on forever and ever like this?

Then one morning when the sun rose, it lit a novel thing. Seaweed or grass or herbage of some sort was afloat about us. Far as the eye might reach it was like a drowned meadow, vari-colored, awash. All that day we watched it. It came toward us from the west; we ran through it from the east. Now it thinned away; now it thickened until it seemed that the sea was strewn with rushes like a castle floor. With oars we caught and brought into ship wreaths of it. All night we sailed in this strange plain. A yellow dawn showed it still on either side the Santa Maria, and thicker, with fewer blue sea straits and passes than on yesterday. The Pinta and the Nina stood out with a strange, enchanted look, as ships crossing a plain more vast than the plain of Andalusia. Still that floating weed thickened. The crowned woman at our prow pushed swathes of it to either side. Our mariners hung over rail, talking, talking. "What is it—and where will it end? Mayhap presently we can not plough it!"

I was again and again to admire how for forty years he had stored sea-knowledge. It was not only what those gray eyes had seen, or those rather large, well molded ears had heard, or that powerful and nervous hand had touched. But he knew how to take, right and left, knowledge that others gathered, as he knew that others took and would take what he gathered. He knew that knowledge flows. Now he stood and told that no less a man than Aristotle had recorded such a happening as this. Certain ships of Gades—that is our Cadiz—driven by a great wind far into River-Ocean, met these weeds or others like them, distant parents of these. They were like floating islands forever changing shape, and those old ships sailed among them for a while. They thought they must have broken from sea floor and risen to surface, and currents brought other masses from land. Tunny fish were caught among them.

And that very moment, as the endless possibilities of things would have it, one, leaning on the rail, cried out that there were tunnies. We all looked and saw them in a clear canal between two floating masses. It brought the Admiral credence. "Look you all!" he said, "how most things have been seen before!"

"But Father Aristotle's ship—Was he 'Saint' or 'Father'?"

"He was a heathen—he believed in Mahound."

"No, he lived before Mahound. He was a wise man—"

"But his ships turned back to Cadiz. They were afraid of this stuff—that's the point!"

"They turned back," said the Admiral. "And the splendor and the gold were kept for us."

A thicker carpet of the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land to the west?"

"But it is caught here! What if we are caught here too? These weeds may stem us—turn great crab pincers and hold us till we rot!"

"If—and if—and if" cried the Admiral. "For Christ, His sake, laugh at yourselves!"

On, on, we went before that warm and potent wind, so steadfast that there must be controlling it some natural law. Ocean-Sea spread around, with that weed like a marsh at springtide. Then, suddenly, just as the murmuring faction was murmuring again, we cleared all that. Open sea, blue running ocean, endlessly endless!

The too-steady sunshine vanished. There broke a cloudy dawn followed by light rain. It ceased and the sky cleared. But in the north held a mist and a kind of semblance of far-off mountains. Startled, a man cried "Land!" but the next moment showed that it was cloud. Yet all day the mist hung in this quarter. The Pinta approached and signaled, and presently over to us put her boat, in it Martin Pinzon. The Admiral met him as he came up over side and would have taken him into great cabin. But, no! Martin Pinzon always spoke out, before everybody! "Senor, there is land yonder, under the north! Should not we change course and see what is there?"

"It is cloud," answered the Admiral. "Though I do not deny that such a haze may be crying, 'Land behind!'"

"Let us sail then north, and see!"

But the Admiral shook his head. "No, Captain! West—west—arrow straight!"

Pinzon appeared about to say, "You are very wrong, and we should see what's behind that arras!" But he checked himself, standing before Admiral and Don and Viceroy, and all those listening faces around. "I still think," he began.

The other took him up, but kept considerate, almost deferring manner. "Yes, if we had time or ships to spare! But now it is, do not stray from the path. Sail straight west!"

"We are five hundred leagues from Palos."

"Less than that, by our reckoning. The further from Palos, the nearer India!"

"We may be passing by our salvation!"

"Our salvation lies in going as we set forth to go." He made his gesture of dismissal of that, and asked after the health of the Pinta. The health held, but the stores were growing low. Biscuit enough, but bacon almost out, and not so many measures of beans left. Oil, too, approached bottom of jars. The Nina was in the same case.

"Food and water will last," said the Admiral. "We have not come so far without safely going farther."

Martin Alonso Pinzon was the younger man and but captain of the Pinta, while the other stood Don and Admiral, appointed by Majesty, responsible only to the Crown. But he had been Master Christopherus the dreamer, who was shabbily dressed, owed money, almost begged. He owed large money now to Martin Pinzon. But for the Pinzons, he could hardly have sailed. He should listen now, take good advice, that was clearly what the captain of the Pinta thought! Undoubtedly Master Christopherus dreamed true to a certain point, but after that was not so followable! As for Cristoforo Colombo, Italian shipmaster, he had, it was true, old sea wisdom. But Martin Pinzon thought Martin Pinzon was as good there!—Captain Martin Alonso said good-by with some haughtiness and went stiffly back over blue sea to the Pinta.

The sun descended, the sea grew violet, all we on the Santa Maria gathered for vesper prayer and song. Fray Ignatio's robe and back-thrown cowl burned brown against the sea and the sail. One last broad gold shaft lighted the tall Admiral, his thick white hair, his eagle nose, his strong mouth. Diego de Arana was big, alert and soldierly; Roderigo Sanchez had the look of alcalde through half a lifetime. I had seen Roderigo de Escobedo's like in dark streets in France and Italy and Castile, and Pedro Gutierrez wherever was a court. Juan de la Cosa, the master, stood a keen man, thin as a string. Out of the crowd of mariners I pick Sancho and Beltran the cook, Ruiz the pilot, William the Irishman and Arthur the Englishman, and two or three others. And Luis Torres. The latter was a thinker, and a Jew in blood. He carried it in his face, considerably more markedly than I carried my grandmother Judith. But his family had been Christian for a hundred years. Before I left forecastle for poop I had discovered that he was learned. Why he had turned sailor I did not then know, but afterwards found that it was for disappointed love. He knew Arabic and Hebrew, Aristotle and Averroes, and he had a dry curiosity and zest for life that made for him the wonder of this voyage far outweigh the danger.

There was a hymn that Fray Ignatio taught us and that we sang at times, beside the Latin chant. He said that a brother of his convent had written it and set it to music.

Thou that art above us, Around us, beneath us, Thou who art within us, Save us on this sea! Out of danger, Teach us how we may Serve thee acceptably! Teach us how we may Crown ourselves, crowning Thee!

Beltran the cook's voice was the best, and after him Sancho, and then a sailor with a great bass, William the Irishman. Fray Ignatio sang like a good monk, and Pedro Gutierrez like a troubadour of no great weight. The Admiral sang with a powerful and what had once been a sweet voice. Currents and eddies of sweetness marked it still. All sang and it made together a great and pleasurable sound, rolling over the sea to the Pinta and the Nina, and so their singing, somewhat less in volume, came to us. All grew dusk, the ships were bat wings sailing low; out sprang the star to which the needle no longer pointed. The great star Venus hung in the west like the lantern of some ghostly air ship, very vast.

Thou that art above us, Around us, beneath us, Thou that art within us, Save us on this sea!



CHAPTER XIV

WE were a long, long way from Spain. A flight of birds went over us. They were flying too high for distinguishing, but we did not hold them to be sea birds. We sounded, but the lead touched no bottom. West and west and west, pushed by that wind! Late September, and we had left Palos the third of August.

The wind shifted and became contrary. The sea that for so long had been glassy smooth took on a roughness. A bird that was surely a forest bird beaten to us perched upon a stretched rope and uttered three quick cries. A boy climbed and softly took it from behind. It fluttered in the Admiral's two hands. All came to look. Its plumage was blue, its breast reddish. We wondered, but before we could make it a cage, it strongly strove and was gone. One flash and all the azure took it to itself.

In the night the waves flattened. Rose-dawn showed smooth sea and every sail filled again with that westward journeying wind. Yesterday's roughness and the bird tossed aboard were as a dream.

A day and a day and a day. As much Ocean-Sea as ever, and Asia a lie, and alike at this end and that of the vessel a dull despondency, and Pedro Gutierrez's wit grown ugly. So naked, so lonely, so indifferent spread the Sea of Darkness!

Another day and another and another. When half the ship was at the point of mutiny signs reappeared and thickened. Birds flew over the ships; one perched beside the Admiral's banner and sang. More than that, a wood dove came upon the deck and ate corn that was strewed for it. "Colombo—Colombo!" quoth the Admiral. "I, too, am 'dove.'" And he opened a window and sent forth a "dove" to find if there were land!

Almost the whole ship from Jason down took these two birds for portents. Fray Ignatio lifted hands. "The Blessed Francis who knew that birds have souls to save hath sent them!" We passed the drifting branch of a tree. It had green leaves. The sea ran extremely blue and clear, and half the ship thought they smelled frankincense, brought on the winds which now were changeable. At evening rose a great cry of "Land!" and indeed to one side the sinking sun seemed veritable cliffs with a single mountain peak. The Admiral, who knew more of sea and air than any two men upon those ships, cried "Cloud—cloud!" but for a time none believed him. There sprang great commotion, the Pinta too signaling. Then before our eyes came a rift in the mountain and the cliffs slipped into the sea.

But now all believed in land ahead. It was as though some one had with laughter tossed them that assurance over the horizon straight before us. Every mariner now was emulous to be the lookout, every man kept eyes on the west. Now sprang clear and real to them the royal promise of ten thousand maravedies pension to him who first sighted Cipango, Cathay or India. The Admiral added a prize of a green velvet doublet.

We had come nigh eight hundred leagues.

In the cabin, upon the table he spread Toscanelli's map, and beside it a great one like it, of his own making, signed in the corner Columbus de Terra Rubra. The depiction was of a circle, and in the right or eastern side showed the coasts of Ireland and England, France, Spain and Portugal, and of Africa that portion of which anything was known. Out in Ocean appeared the islands gained in and since Prince Henry's day. Their names were written,—Madeira, Canaria, Cape de Verde and Azores. West of these and filling the middle map came Ocean-Sea, an open parchment field save for here a picture of a great fish, and here a siren and here Triton, and here the Island of the Seven Cities and here Saint Brandon's Isle, and these none knew if they be real or magical! Wide middle map and River-Ocean! The eye quitting that great void approached the left or western side of the circle. And now again began islands great and small with legends written across and around them. The great island was Cipango, and across the extent of it ran in fine lettering. "Marco Polo was here. It is the richest of the eastern lands. The houses are roofed with gold. The people are idolaters. There are spices and pearls, nutmegs, pepper and precious stones. Very much gold so that the common people use it as they wish."

We read, the Admiral seated, we, the great cabin group, standing, bending over the table. After the islands came mainland. "Cathay" ran the writing. "Mangi. Here is the seat of the Great Khan. His city is Cambalu." South of all this ran other drawings and other legends. "Here, opposite Africa, near the equator, are islands called Manillas. They have lodestone, so that no ship with iron can sail to them. Here is Java of all the spices. Here is great India that the ancients knew."

"We are bearing toward Cipango," said the Admiral. "I look first for small outward islands, where perhaps the folk are uncouth and simple, and there is little gold."

And again days passed. When many times upon the Santa Maria and as often on the Pinta and the Nina some one had cried "Land!" and the ships been put in commotion and the land melted into air before our eyes, and another as plausible island or coast formed before us only to vanish, despair seized us again. Witchcraft and sorcery and monstrous ignorance, and fooled to our deaths! "West—west—west!" till the west was hated. The Pinzons thought we should change course. If there were lands we were leaving them in the north where hung the haze. But the Madman or the Black Magician, our Italian Admiral, would not hear good advice! It was Gutierrez's word, under his breath when the Admiral was in earshot, and aloud when he was not. "Our Italian—our Italian! Why did not Italy keep him? And Portugal neither would have him! Castile, the jade, takes him up!"

Then after absence began again the signs. Flocks of birds went by us. I saw him watching, and truly these flights did seem to come from south of west. On the seventh of October he altered course. We sailed southwest. This day there floated by a branch with purple berries, and we saw flying fish. Dolphins played about the ship. The very sea felt warm to the hand, and yet was no oppression, but light and easily breathed air, fragrant and lifting the spirits.

And now we saw floating something like a narrow board or a wide staff. The master ordered the boat lowered; we brought it in and it was given dripping into the Admiral's hand. "It is carved by man," he said. "Look!" Truly it was so, rudely done with bone or flint, but carved by man with something meant for a picture of a beast and a tree.

We sailed west by south this day and the next. No more man-wrought driftage came our way, but other signs multiplied. We saw many birds, the water was strangely warm and clear, when the wind blew toward us it had a scent, a tone, that cried land breeze! Then came by a branch with yellow flowers, and upon one a butterfly. After this none doubted, not Fernando nor any. "Gold flowers—gold flowers—gold, gold!"

This night we lay by so that we should not slip past land in the darkness. When day came there showed haze south and west. A gentle wind sang in our rigging. On board the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina all watched for land. Excitement and restlessness took us all. The Admiral's eyes burned like deep gray seas. I could read in them the images behind. Prester John and the Release of the Sepulchre. The Grand Khan a tributary Prince. Argosies of gold, silk and spices, sailing steady, sailing fast over a waterway unblocked by Mahound and his soldans. All Europe burning bright, rising a rich Queen. Holy Church with another cubit to her stature. Christopherus Columbus, the Discoverer, the Enricher, the Deliverer! Queen Isabella, and on her cheeks a flush of gratitude; all the Spanish court bowing low. All the friends, the kindred, all so blessed! Sons, brothers; Genoa, and Domenico Colombo clad in velvet, dining with the Doge.

Dolphins were all about us; once there rose a cry from the mariners that they heard singing over the waves. We held breath and listened, but if they were sirens they ceased their song. But at eve, the sky pale gold, the water a sapphire field, we ourselves sang mightily our "Salve Regina."

The Admiral would speak to us. Now all loved him, with golden India rising to-morrow from the sea, with his wisdom proving itself! He had this eve a thrilling voice. God had been good to us; who could say other? This very eve, at Palos, they thought of us. At Santa Maria de la Rabida, chanting vesper hymn, they prayed for us also. In Cordova the Queen prayed. In Rome, the Holy Father had us in mind. Would we lessen ourselves, disappointing so many, and very God, grieving very Christ? "No! But out of this ship we shall step on this land to come, good men, true men, servants and sons of Christ in His kingdom. This night, in India before us, men sigh, 'We weary of our idols! Why tarrieth true God?' There the learned think, bending over their maps, 'Why doth not some one put forth, bringing all the lands into one garland?' They look to their east whence we come, and they may see in dream tonight these three ships!" His voice rang. "I tell you these Three Ships shall be known forever! Your grandchildren's grandchildren shall say, 'The Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina—and one that was our ancestor sailed in this one or in that one, to the glory and gain of the world, wherefore we still make festival of his birthday!'"

At this they stirred, whether from Palos or Huelva or Fishertown. They looked at him now as though indeed he were great mage, or even apostle.

That evening I heard Roderigo de Escobedo at an enumeration. He seemed to have committed to memory some Venice list. "Mastic, aloes, pepper, cloves, mace and cinnamon and nutmeg. Ivory and silk and most fine cloth, diamonds, balasses, rubies, pearls, sapphires, jacinth and emeralds. Silver in bulk and gold common as iron with us. Gold—gold!"

Pedro Gutierrez was speaking. "Gold to carry to Spain and pay my debts, with enough left to go again to court—"

Said Escobedo, "The Admiral saith, 'No fraud nor violence, quarreling nor oppression'!"

Gutierrez answered: "The Admiral also thinks to pay his debts! He may think he will be strict as the Saints, but he will not!"

The Admiral was walking the deck. He stopped beside Juan Lepe who leaned upon the rail and watched a strange, glistering sea. It was that shining stuff we see at times at night in certain weather. But to-night Luis Torres, passing, had said, "Strewn ducats!"

The Admiral and Juan Lepe watched. "Never a sail!" said I. "How strange a thing is that! Great populous countries that trade among themselves, and never a sail on this sea rim!"

He drummed upon the rail. "Do not think I have not thought of that! I looked to meet first a ship or ships. But now I think that truly there may be many outlying islands without ships. Or there may be a war between princes, and all ships drawn in a fleet to north or south. One beats one's brains—and time brings the solution, and we say, 'How simple!'"

Turning his great figure, he mounted to our castle built up from deck, whence he could see great distances. The wind had freshened; we were standing to the west; it was behind us again and it pushed us like a shuttle in a giant's hand. The night was violet dark and warm; then at ten the moon rose. Men would not sleep while the ship sailed. A great event was marching, marching toward us. We thought we caught the music of it; any moment heralds, banners, might flame at end of road. We were watching for the Marriage Procession; we were watching for Kings, for the Pope, for I know not what! But there was certain to be largesse.

I went among the mariners. Sancho met me, a young man whom then and afterwards I greatly liked. "Well, we've had luck, senor! Saint Noah himself, say I, wasn't any luckier!"

"Yes, we've done well!"

Beltran the cook's great easy voice rolled in. "Fear's your only barnacle, say I!"

Luis Torres said, "When I studied Arabic and the Hebrew, I thought it was for the pleasure of it. They said around me, 'How you waste your time!' But now some about the Grand Khan should know Arabic. I will be of use."

Pedro said, "Well, it has turned out better than any reasonable man could have expected!" and Fernando, "Yes, it has! Of course there may be witches. I've heard it said there are great necromancers in India!"

"Necromancers! That's them that show you a thing and then blow it away—"

I said, "Do you not know that all of us are the only necromancers?"

"Did you see," asked Sancho, "the glistering in the water? Are we going to lie to after midnight? Saint George! I would like to plunge in and swim!"

On poop deck, Diego de Arana called me to him. "Well, Doctor, how goes it?" He and I rested good friends. I said, "Why, it goes well."

"I was thinking, watching the moon, how little I ever dreamed, being no sea-going man, of such a thing as this. Who knows his fate? A man's a strange matter!"

"He is a ballad," I answered. "One stave leads to another and the story mounts."

"I cannot think what to-morrow may show us!"

"Nor can I! But it will be important. We enter by a narrow strait great widths of the future."

"There will be great changes, doubtless. Our world is growing little. Everybody feels that we must push out! It isn't only Spain, but all kingdoms."

Pedro Gutierrez joined us. "You are a learned man, Doctor! What like are the women of Cipango?"

The moon, past the full yet strong enough to silver this vast shield, rose higher. The sails of the Pinta and the Nina were curves of pearl, our sails above us pale mountains. The light dimmed our lanterns. Crowned woman at our prow would be bathed in it as she ran across Ocean-Sea. It washed our decks, pricked out our moving men. They cast shadows. The master had served out an extra draught of wine. It was hardly needed. We were all lifted, with visions drumming in our heads. Fray Ignatio stood against the mast, and I knew that he felt a pulpit and was making his sermon. After a time, Diego de Arana and Pedro Gutierrez moving away, I was alone. Mind and heart tranquilized, and into them stepped Isabel, and she and I, hand in hand, walked fields of the west.

The moon shone. The Admiral's voice came from above us where he watched from the castle. "Come up here, one or two of you!" Gutierrez was nearest the ladder. He mounted and I after him, and we stood one on either hand the Admiral. He pointed south of west. "A light!" His voice was an ocean. "It is as it should be. I, Christopherus Columbus, have first seen the Shore of Asia!"

We followed his extended hand. Clear under sail we saw it, dimmed by the moon, but evident, a light as it were of a fire on a beach. Diego de Arana came up also and saw it. It was, we thought, more than a league away, a light that must be on land and made by man. It dwindled, out it went into night and there ran only plain silver. We waited while a man might have swam from us to the Pinta, then forth it started again, red star that was no star. Some one below us cried, "Ho, look!" The Admiral raised his voice, it rang over ship. "Aye! I saw it a time ago, have seen it thrice! I, the Admiral, saw first." Men were crowding to the side to look, then it went out as though a wave had crept up and drenched it. We gazed and gazed, but it did not come again.

It might have been not land, but a small boat afire. But that is not probable, and we upon the Santa Maria held that to see burning wood on shore, though naught showed of that shore itself, was truly first to view, first of all of us, that land we sought. He did not care for the ten thousand maravedies, but he cared that it should be said that God showed it first to him.

The wind pushed us on with the flat of a great hand. Midnight and after midnight. At the sight of that flame we should have fired our cannon, but for some reason this was not done. Now the silver silence beyond the ship was torn across by the Pinta's gun. She fired, then came near us. "Land! Land!" Now we saw it under the moon, just lifting above the sea,—lonely, peaceful, dark.

It was middle night. The Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina went another league, then took in sail and came to anchor.



CHAPTER XV

THE Admiral set a watch and commanded all beside to sleep. To-morrow might be work and wakefulness enough! The ship grew silent. With the Pinta and the Nina it lay under the moon, and all around was silver water.

He did not sleep this night, I am sure. At all times he was a provident and wakeful sea king who knew his ship through and through. His habit was light sleep and not many hours of that. He studied his books at night while others slept. Lying in his bed, with eyes open or eyes shut, he watched form in the darkness lands across sea.

This night so far from Europe passed. The sense of day at hand wrapped us. In the east arose a cool, a stern and indifferent pallor. It changed, it flushed. We carried in the Santa Maria a cock and hens. Cock crew.

Christopherus Columbus had Italian love for fit, harmonious noting of vast events. This morning the trumpeter also of the Santa Maria waked those who slept. The clear and joyful notes were heard by the Pinta and the Pinta, too, answered with music. The Nina took it from her. Beltran the cook and his helpers gave us a stately breakfast. The Admiral came forth from his cabin in a dress that a prince might have worn, crimson and tawny, and around his throat a golden chain. Far and near rushed into light, for in these lands and seas the dawn makes no tarrying. It is almost night, then with a great clap of light it is day.

We had voyaged, all thought, to Asia over an untrodden way. Every eye turned to land. Not haze, not dissolving cloud, not a magic nothing in the thought, but land, land, solid, palpable, like Palos strand! Had we seen a great port city, had we seen ships crowding harbor, had we seen a citadel on some height, armed and frowning, had we marked temples and palaces and banners afloat in this divine cool wind of morning, many aboard us would have had now no surprise, would have cried, "Of course, I really knew it, though for the fun of it I pretended otherwise!"

But others among us could not expect such as this after the quiet night; no light before us save that one so soon quenched, no stir of boat at all or large or small; an unearthly quiet, a low land still as a sleeping marsh under moon.

The light brightened. The water about us turned a blue that none there had ever seen, so turquoise, so cerulean, so penetrable by the eye! Before us gentle surf broke on a beach bone-white. The beach with little rise met woodland; thick it seemed and of a vivid greenness and fairly covering the island. It was island, masthead told us, who saw blue ribbon going around. Moreover, there were two others, no greater, upon the horizon. Nor, though the woodland seemed thick as pile of velvet, was it desolate isle. We made out in three places light plumes of smoke. Now some one uttered a cry, "Men!"

They were running out of the wood, down upon the white beach. There might be a hundred.

"Naked men! They are dark—They are negroes!"—"Or magicians!"

The Admiral lifted his great voice. "Mariners all! India and Cathay are fringed with islands, as are many parts of Europe. A dozen of you have sailed among the Greek islands. There may be as many here as those. This is a small island and its folk simple. They are not Negroes, but the skin of the Indian is darker than ours, and that of Cipango and Cathay is yellow. As for clothing, in all warm lands the simpler folk wear little. But as for magicians, there may be magicians among them as there are among all peoples, but it is falseness and absurdity to speak of all as magicians! Nonsense and cowardice! The man who cried that goes not ashore to-day!"

Not Great India before us nor Golden Cipango! But it was land—land—it was solid, there were folk! How long had flowed the sea around us, for this was the twelfth of October, five weeks since Gomera and above two months since Palos had sunk away and we had heard the last faint bell of La Rabida! And there had been strong doubt if ever we should see again a white beach, or a tree, or a kindly fire ashore, or any men but those of our three ships, or ever another woman or a child. But land—land! Here was land and green woods and crowds of strange folk. The mariners laughed, and the tears stood in their eyes and friends embraced. And they grew mightily respectful to the Admiral.

So many were to go ashore in the first boat, and so many in the second. The Pinta and the Nina were lowering their boats. Our hidalgos aboard, Diego de Arana, Roderigo Sanchez and the rest, had also fine apparel with them—seeing that the Grand Khan would have a court and our Sovereigns must be rightly represented—and this morning they suited themselves only less splendidly than did the Admiral. The great banner of Castile and Leon was ready for carrying. Trumpet, drum and fife should land. Fray Ignatio was ready—oh, ready! His liquid dark eyes had an unearthly look. Gifts were being sorted out. There were aboard rich things, valued in any land of ours, for gifts to the Grand Khan and his ministers, or the Emperor of Cipango and his. For Queens and Empresses and Ladies also. And there was a wondrous missal for Prester John did we find him! But this was evidently a little island afar, and these were naked, savage men. The expedition was provident. It had for all. The Portuguese, our great navigators, had taught what the naked African liked. A basket stood at hand filled with pieces of colored cloth, beads, caps, hawk bells, fishhooks, toys of sorts. For that we might have trouble, four harquebus men and four crossbows were going. The Santa Maria carried two cannon. Now at the Admiral's signal, one of these was discharged. It was a voice not heard before in this world. If he wished to produce awe that should accompany him like the ancient pillars of cloud and fire, he had success. When the smoke cleared we saw the wild men prostrate upon the ivory beach as though a scythe had cut them down. They lay like fallen grain, then rose and made haste for the wood. We could thinly hear their shouting.

Christopherus Columbus descended into the boat of the Santa Maria, Fray Ignatio after him. Diego de Arana, Roderigo Sanchez, Escobedo, Gutierrez and Juan Lepe the physician followed. Juan de la Cosa stayed with the ship, it not being wise to take away all authority. Our armed men came after and the rowers. We drew off and the small boat filled. Boats of the Pinta and the Nina joined us. The great banner over us, the Admiral's hand upon its standard, we rowed for Asia.

Nearer and nearer. The water hung about us, plain marvel, not dark blue, but turquoise and clear as air. We could see the strange, bright-hued fish and the white bottom. The air breathed Maytime, and now we thought we could tell the spices. And so ivory-white it was, the long curved beach, and so gayly bright the emerald of the wood! There were many palms with other trees we knew not. It was low, the island, and it shone before us silver and green, and the trees moved gently in a wind more sweet, we thought, than any Andalusian zephyr. Pedro Gutierrez stared. "Paradise—Paradise!"

It was not what we had looked for, but it was good enough. It seemed divine, that morning!

Nearer we drew, nearer. The beach was now bare. We made out the dark, naked folk at edge of the wood, in tree shadows, watching us. Were they strange to us, be sure we were stranger to them!

The azure water, so marvelous, met that sand white like crushed bone, strewn with delicate shells. Never was wind so sweet as that which blew this morning! Green plumes, the palms brushed the sky; there seemed to us fruit trees also, with satin stems and wide-laden boughs. When we looked over shoulder the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina each rode double, mast and hull in sky, mast and hull in mirror sea. Something strange and divine was about us, over us. We wished to laugh, we wished to weep.

Boat head touched clean sand. The oars rested. Christopherus Columbus the Admiral stepped from boat first and alone, all waiting as was right. He took with him the banner of Spain. He walked a few yards, then struck the standard into the sand. There was air enough to open the folds, to make them float and fly. Kneeling, he bowed himself and kissed the earth. We heard his strong voice praying. "Domine Deus, aeterne et omnipotens, sacro tuo verbo coelum, et terra, et mare, creasti—"

We also bowed our heads. He rose and cried to Fray Ignatio. The Franciscan was the next to enter this new world. After him sprang out Diego de Arana and the others. The Pinzons, too, were now leaving their boats. All were at last gathered about the Admiral, between blue water and green wood. Fifty Spaniards, we gathered there, and we heard our fellows left upon the ships cheering us. We kneeled and Fray Ignatio thanked God for us.

We rose, drew long breath and looked about us, then turned to the Admiral with loud praise and gratulation. He was girded with a sword, cross-hilted. Drawing it, he set its point in the sand. Then with one hand upon the cross, and one lifted and wrapped in the banner folds, he, with a great voice, proclaimed Spain's ownership. To the King and Queen of the Spains all lands unchristian and idolatrous that we might find and use and hold, all that were clearly away from the line of the King of Portugal, drawn for him by the Holy Father! In the name of God, in the name of Holy Church, in the name of Isabella, Queen of Castile, and Ferdinand, King of Aragon and their united Power, amen and amen! He motioned to the trumpeter who put trumpet to his lips and blew a blast to the north and the south and the east and the west. At the sound there seemed to come a cry from the fringing wood, a cry of terror.

The island was ours,—if all this could make it ours.

A piece of scarlet cloth spread upon the sand had heaped upon it necklaces of glass and three or four hawk bells with other toys. We placed it there, then stood back. At the Admiral's command the harquebus and crossbow men laid their weapons down, though watchful eye was kept. But no arrow flights had come from the wood, and as far as could be seen some kind of lance, not formidable looking, was their only weapon. Next the Admiral made our fifer to play a merry and peaceful air.

We had noted a clump of trees advanced into the sand and we thought that the bolder men were occupying this. Now a man started out alone, a young man by the looks of him, drawn as he was against the white sand, and a paladin, for he marched to meet alone he knew not what or whom. "Blackamoor!" exclaimed De Arana beside me, but as he came nearer we saw that the dead blackness was paint, laid in a fantastic pattern upon his face and body. Native hue of skin, as we came presently to find in the unpainted, was a pleasing red-brown. He advanced walking daintily and proudly, knowing that his people were watching him. Single Castilian, single Moor, had advanced so, many a time, between camps, or between camp and fortress.