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Chapter 11
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 Niña. 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 Nuñez, was seized with the same malady. At first Fray Ignatio 



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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 Niña had no doctor and now 



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she came near to the Santa Maria and sent a boat. She had five sick men and would borrow Bernardo Nuñez. 

   The Admiral spoke with Nuñez, 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 Niña. He was a friend of the Pinzons, and above the vanity of the greater ship. The sick upon the Niña prospered under him. 

   But Juan Lepe was taken from the forecastle, and slept where Nuñez 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 "Señor." 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 



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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 



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he meant to make like Cæsar'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 Nuñez's going to the Niña, 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."



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Chapter 12
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, 



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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 be 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 



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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 Fé, 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 Fé! 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 



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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!" 



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   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.



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Chapter 13
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'!" 



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   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 



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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, señor, to find for the Lord!" Fray Ignatio lifted dark yes. "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 



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thicker, with fewer blue sea straits and passes than on yesterday. The Pinta and the Niña 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!" 

   It 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!" 



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   "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! "Señor, 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 



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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 Niña 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 



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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 



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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 Niña, 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!

