Here Zarco came to the end of his reading:  and facing again on Master d’Arfet (who sat pulling his fingers while his mouth worked as if he chewed something) I took up the tale.

“All this, Sir, by little and little the pilot Morales told us, there in the Prince’s map-room:  and you may be sure we kept it to ourselves.  But the next spring our royal master must fit out two caravels to colonise Porto Santo; with corn and honey on board, and sugar-canes and vines and (that ever I should say it!) rabbits.  Gonsalvez was leader, of course, with Tristram Vaz:  and to my great joy the Prince appointed me third in command.

“We sailed from Lagos in June and reached Porto Santo without mishap.  Here Gonsalvez found all well with the colonists he had left behind on his former visit.  But of one thing they were as eager to tell as of their prosperity:  and we had not arrived many hours before they led us to the top of the island and pointed to a dark line of cloud (as it seemed) lying low in the south-west.  They had kept watch on this (they said) day by day, until they had made certain it could not be a cloud, for it never altered its shape.  While we gazed at it I heard the pilot’s voice say suddenly at my shoulder, ’That will be the island, Captain—­the Englishman’s island!’ and I turned and saw that he was trembling.  But Gonsalvez, who had been musing, looked up at him sharply.  ‘All my life’ said he, ’I have been sailing the seas, yet never saw landfall like yonder.  That which we look upon is cloud and not land.’  ‘But who,’ I asked, ‘ever saw a fixed cloud?’ ’Marry, I for one,’ he answered, ’and every seaman who has sailed beside Sicily!  But say nothing to the men; for if they believe a volcano lies yonder we shall hardly get them to cross.’  ‘Yet,’ said Morales, ’by your leave, Captain, that is no volcano, but such a cloud as might well rest over the thick moist woodlands of which the Englishman told me.’  ’Well, that we shall discover by God’s grace,’ Gonsalvez made answer.  ’You will cross thither?’ I asked.  ‘Why to be sure,’ said he cheerfully, with a look at Tristram Vaz; and Tristram Vaz nodded, saying nothing.

“Yet he had no easy business with his sailors, who had quickly made up their own minds about this cloud and that it hung over a pit of fire.  One or two had heard tell of Cipango, and allowed this might be that lost wandering land.  ‘But how can we tell what perils await us there?’ ‘Marry, by going and finding out,’ growled Tristram Vaz, and this was all the opinion he uttered.  As for Morales, they would have it he was a Castilian, a foreigner, and only too eager to injure us Portuguese.

“But Gonsalvez had enough courage for all:  and on the ninth morning he and Tristram set sail, with their crews as near mutiny as might be.  Me they left to rule Porto Santo.  ‘And if we never come back,’ said Gonsalvez, ’you will tell the Prince that something lies yonder which we would have found, but our men murdered us on the way—­’”