And so they sailed on again on a westward course.  They were still in the Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear water, bright green leaves.  The sea was as smooth as the river in Seville; there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the water; several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a pelican with a stone.  On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower of rain; and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus’s pilot, came up to him with the doleful information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of Ferro.  According to Christopher’s doctored reckoning the distance published was 584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said nothing to a soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues.  The breeze still kept steady and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of the crews getting uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged westward through the blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying undisturbed far behind them.  On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was signalled by Alonso Pinzon, who wanted to change the course to the south-west.  It appears that, having failed to find the, islands of the shipwrecked pilot, they were now making for the island of Cipango, and that this request of Pinzon had something to do with some theory of his that they had better turn to the south to reach that island; while Columbus’s idea now evidently was—­to push straight on to the mainland of Cathay.  Columbus had his way; but the grumbling and murmuring in creased among the crew.

On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead.  This was the signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though their search was at last at an end.  But it was a mistake.  In the afternoon the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds that was seen passing from the north to the south-west.  The Admiral, remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be approaching in the land from whence they came.  He therefore altered. his course from west to west-south-west.  This course was entered upon an hour before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day.  “The sea was like the river of Seville,” says the Admiral; “the breezes as soft as at Seville in April, and very fragrant.”  More birds were to be seen, and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so often disappointed in their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena surrounding