Time lacks to say all that we did and heard and guessed
this day upon this island! It was first love after
long weeks at sea, and our cramped ships and all our
great uncertainty! If it was not what we had
expected, still here it was, tangible land that never
had been known, wonderful to us, giving us already
rich narrative for Palos and Huelva and Fishertown,
for Cordova and the Queen and King. We were
sure now that other land was to be met, so soon as
we sailed a reasonable distance to meet it. Under
the horizon would be land surely, and surely of an
import that this small island lacked, like Paradise
though it seemed to us this day! Any who looked
at the Admiral saw that he would make no long tarrying
here. He named this island San Salvador, but we
would not wait in San Salvador.
This day in shifts, all our men were brought ashore,
each division having three hours of blessed land.
So good was earth under foot, so good were trees,
so delectable the fruit, so lovely to move and run
and watch every moving, running, walking thing!
And these good, red-brown folk, naked it was true,
but mannerly after their own fashion, who thought
every seaman a god, and the ship boys sons of gods!
And we also were good and mannerly, the Santa Maria,
the Pinta and the Nina. I look back and I see
a strange, a boyish and a happy day.
The sun was westering. We felt the exhaustion
of a long holiday with novelties so many that at last
the senses did not answer. Perhaps the Indians
felt it too. Often and often have I seen great
wisdom guide the Admiral. An hour before approaching
night might have said “Go!” he took us
one and all back to the ships. “Salve Regina”
was a sound that evening to hear, and afterwards it
was to sleep, sleep,—tired as from the
Fair at Seville!
CHAPTER XVI
AT first, the day before, we had not made out that
the Indians had boats. Later, straying here and
there, we had seen them drawn upon the shore and covered
with boughs of trees. They called them “canoes”,
made them, large and small, out of trunks of trees,
hollowed by fire, and with their stone knives.
We had seen one copper knife. Asked about that,
they pointed to the south and seemed to say that yonder
dwelled men who had all they wished of most things.
From dark the east grew pale, from pallor put on roses.
This day no mariner grumbled at the call to awake.
Here still lay our Fortunate Isle, our San Salvador;
here our ivory beach, our green wood. Up went
the little curls of smoke.
We had breakfast. So great was now the deference
to him who three days ago had been “madman”
and “black magician”, “dreaming
fool” and “spinner without thread!”
Now it was “Admiral”, “Excellency”,
and “What shall we do next?” and “What
is your opinion, sir?”
