It had taken the pilot longer than he expected to hunt over his relics of old voyages, and there was nothing, after all, like the piece of wood cast ashore by the Atlantic waves.  Old Sancho turned it over, examined the edges of the carving, and shook his head.

“No; that is not African work; at least it is not like any work of the black men that I have ever seen.  They can all work iron, and this was made without the use of iron tools; that I am sure of.  Some of our men were shipwrecked once where they had to make stone and shells serve their turn, and I know the look of wood that has been worked with such tools.  And the wood itself is not like anything I have from Africa.  It is more like the timber of the East.”

Now the stranger’s eyes lighted with keener interest.

“You think it may be Indian, do you?”

“It may.  But how in the name of Sao Cristobal did it come here?  Besides, the people of India understand the use of metal as well as we do, or better.”

“May there not be wild men in remote islands of the Indian seas?”

“That might be.  Gil Andrade has been in those parts, and he says there are more islands than he could count.  I have sometimes had occasion to take his stories with a pinch of salt, but if there are islands where wild people live they would make such things as this.  And now I think of it, I once picked up a paddle myself, floating off the Azores, that was some such wood as this, but not carved.  But the queerest thing I ever found was this nut.  Look at it.”

It was part of a nutshell as big as a man’s head and as hard as wood.  “The inside was quite spoiled,” went on the old seaman, “but so far as I could judge it was no kin to the palm nuts we get.  I kept the shell, and I have never found any merchant who could match it.  Now the current sets toward our coast from the west at a certain point, and that is where all these odd things come ashore.”

The guest nodded.  “My brother-in-law and I have talked much of these matters.  One of his captains saw some time ago the floating bodies of two men, brown-skinned, with straight black hair, not like the natives of any part of Europe or Africa.  Another thing which is strange, though I hold it not as important as they do, is that the people of Madeira persistently declare that they see a great island appear and disappear to the westward.  According to their description it has lofty mountains and wooded valleys, and some say it is Atlantis and some Saint Brandan’s Isle.  No ship sailing that way has ever landed there, however.”

Sancho’s eyes turned seaward.  “It is marvelous,” he said after a pause, “what things men think they see.  And you think, senhor, that the world is not yet all known to us?’”