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.
