1492 Part 10

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 rea.s.surance, general and large, stretching from the Canaries to India and Cathay and back again. He knew that, and after no great time spent with compa.s.s 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 c.i.p.ango. At first he thought it was heaven, but when he saw golden roofs he knew it must be c.i.p.ango, 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 c.i.p.ango," 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 ma.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sages, 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 gla.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses 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 ca.n.a.l between two floating ma.s.ses. 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 pa.s.sing 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 p.o.o.p 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 ba.s.s, 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