red guest
of La Rabida, touching heads with Martin Pinzon over maps and charts
and the 'Book of Travels' of Messer Marco Polo. There is great joy! The
beggar hath the prior's own mule and his son a jennet, and here we go
to Santa Fe! That was last year. Now the boy that whimpered for bread
at convent gate is Don Diego Colon, page to Prince Juan, and the Viceroy
sails on the _Santa Maria_ for the countries he will administer!"

Gutierrez shook the dice in the box. "Oh, Queen Luck, that I have served
for so long! Why do you not make me viceroy?"

Said Escobedo, "Viceroy of the continent of water and Admiral of seaweed
and fishes!"

Diego de Arana took that up. "We are obliged to find something! No
sensible man can think like some of those forward that this goes on
forever and we shall sail till the wood rots and sails grow ragged and
wind carries away their shreds or they fall into dust!"

"Who knows anything of River-Ocean? We may not find the western shore,
if there be such a thing, for a year! By that time storm will sink us
ten times over, or plague will take us--"

"There's not needed plague nor storm. Just say, food won't last, and
water is already half gone!"

"That's the undeniable truth," quoth Roderigo Sanchez, and looked with a
perturbed face at the too-smooth sea.

Smooth blue sea continued, wind continued, pushing like a great, warm
hand, east to west. The Admiral spent hours alone in his sleeping cabin.
There were men who said that he studied there a great book of magic. He
had often a book in his hand, it is true, but Juan Lepe the physician
knew what he strove to keep from others, that the gout that at times
threatened crippling was upon him and was easier to bear lying down.

Sunset, vesper prayer and _Salve Regina_. As the strains died, there
became evident a lingering on the part of the seamen. The master spoke
to the Admiral. "They've found out about the needle, sir! Perhaps you'd
better hear them and answer them."

Almost every day he heard them and answered them. To make his seamen,
however they groaned and grumbled and plotted, yet abide him and his
purpose was a day-after-day arising task! "Now," he said equably, in the
tone almost of a father, "What is it to-day, men?"

The throng worked and put forward a spokesman, who looked from the
Admiral to the clear north. "It is the star, sir! The needle no longer
points to it! We thought you might explain to us unlearned--What we
think is that