departure from Gomera, and commenced his great
undertaking by standing directly westward, but made very slow progress at
first on account of calms. On Sunday, September 9th, about daybreak, they
were nine leagues west of the island of Ferro. Now, losing sight of
land and stretching out into utterly unknown seas, many of the people
expressed their anxiety and fear that it might be long before they should
see land again; but the admiral used every endeavor to comfort them with
the assurance of soon finding the land he was in search of, and raised
their hopes of acquiring wealth and honor by the discovery. To lessen the
fear which they entertained of the length of way they had to sail, he
gave out that they had only proceeded fifteen leagues that day, when the
actual distance sailed was eighteen; and, to induce the people to believe
that they were not so far from Spain as they really were, he resolved to
keep considerably short in his reckoning during the whole voyage, though
he carefully recorded the true reckoning every day in private.

On Wednesday, September 12th, having got to about one hundred fifty
leagues west of Ferro, they discovered a large trunk of a tree,
sufficient to have been the mast of a vessel of one hundred twenty tons,
and which seemed to have been a long time in the water. At this distance
from Ferro, and for somewhat farther on, the current was found to set
strongly to the northeast. Next day, when they had run fifty leagues
farther westward, the needle was observed to vary half a point to the
eastward of north, and next morning the variation was a whole point
east. This variation of the compass had never been before observed, and
therefore the admiral was much surprised at the phenomenon, and concluded
that the needle did not actually point toward the polar star, but to some
other fixed point. Three days afterward, when almost one hundred leagues
farther west, he was still more astonished at the irregularity of the
variation; for, having observed the needle to vary a whole point to the
eastward at night, it pointed directly northward in the morning.

On the night of Saturday, September isth, being then almost three
hundred leagues west of Ferro, they saw a prodigious flash of light,
or fire-ball, drop from the sky into the sea, at four or five leagues'
distance from the ships, toward the southwest. The weather was then quite
fair and serene like April, the sea perfectly calm, the wind favorable
from