The Admiral looked out to sea. “I have
cried, `West— west—west!’
through a-many years! Yucatan! But I make
out no sea-passage thence into Vasco da Gama’s
India! And I am sworn to the Queen and King Ferdinand
this time to find it. So it’s south, it’s
south, brother and son!”
So, our casks being full, our fruit gathered, the
sky clear and the wind fair, we left the west to others
and sailed to find the strait in the south. When
we raised our sails that dragon canoe cried out and
marveled. But the cacique with the coronal asked
intelligent questions. The Admiral showed him
the way of it, mast and spar and sail cloth, and how
we made the wind our rower. He listened, and at
the last he gave Christopherus Columbus for that instruction
the gold disk from his breast. I do not know—Yucatan
might have gone on from that and itself developed
true ship. If it had long enough time! But
Europe was at its doors.
The canoe kept with us for a little, then shouted
to see the fair breeze fill our sails and carry us
from them.
It was mid-August. We came to a low-lying land
with hills behind. Here we touched and found
Indians, though none such as Yucatan seemed to breed.
It was Sunday and under great trees we had mass, having
with us the Franciscan Pedro of Valencia. From
this place we coasted three days, when again we landed.
Here the Indians were of a savage aspect, painted
with black and white and yellow and uttering loud
cries. We thought that they were eaters of men’s
flesh. Likewise they had a custom of wearing earrings
of great weight, some of copper, some of that mixed
gold we called guanin. So heavy were these ornaments
that they pulled the ear down to mid-throat. The
Admiral named this place the Coast of the Ear.
On we sailed, and on, never out of sight of land to
starboard. Day by day, along a coast that now
as a whole bent eastward. And yet no strait—no
way through into the sea into which poured the Ganges.
THE weather plagued us. The rains were cataracts,
the lightning blinding, the thunder loud enough to
wake the dead. Day after day, until this weather
grew to seem a veritable Will, a Demon with a grudge
against us.
The Margarita sailed no better; she sailed
worse. The Admiral considered abandoning her,
taking the Adelantado upon the Consolacion
and dividing his crew among the three ships.
But the Adelantado’s pride and obstinacy and
seamanship were against that. “I’ll
sail her, because San Domingo thinks I can!”
Stormy days and nights, and the Admiral watching.
“The Margarita! Ho, look out!
Do you see the Margarita?”
In the midst of foul weather came foully back the
gout that crippled him. I would have had him
stay in his bed. “I cannot! How do
you think I can?” In the end he had us build
him some kind of shelter upon deck, fastening there
a bench and laying a pallet upon this. Here, propped
against the wood, covered with cloaks, he still watched
the sea and how went our ship and the other ships.
