extra draught of wine. It was
hardly needed. We were all lifted, with visions drumming in our heads.
Fray Ignatio stood against the mast, and I knew that he felt a pulpit
and was making his sermon. After a time, Diego de Arana and Pedro
Gutierrez moving away, I was alone. Mind and heart tranquilized, and
into them stepped Isabel, and she and I, hand in hand, walked fields of
the west.

The moon shone. The Admiral's voice came from above us where he watched
from the castle. "Come up here, one or two of you!" Gutierrez was
nearest the ladder. He mounted and I after him, and we stood one on
either hand the Admiral. He pointed south of west. "A light!" His voice
was an ocean. "It is as it should be. I, Christopherus Columbus, have
first seen the Shore of Asia!"

We followed his extended hand. Clear under sail we saw it, dimmed by
the moon, but evident, a light as it were of a fire on a beach. Diego
de Arana came up also and saw it. It was, we thought, more than a league
away, a light that must be on land and made by man. It dwindled, out it
went into night and there ran only plain silver. We waited while a man
might have swam from us to the _Pinta_, then forth it started again, red
star that was no star. Some one below us cried, "Ho, look!" The Admiral
raised his voice, it rang over ship. "Aye! I saw it a time ago, have
seen it thrice! I, the Admiral, saw first." Men were crowding to
the side to look, then it went out as though a wave had crept up and
drenched it. We gazed and gazed, but it did not come again.

It might have been not land, but a small boat afire. But that is not
probable, and we upon the _Santa Maria_ held that to see burning wood
on shore, though naught showed of that shore itself, was truly first to
view, first of all of us, that land we sought. He did not care for the
ten thousand maravedies, but he cared that it should be said that God
showed it first to him.

The wind pushed us on with the flat of a great hand. Midnight and after
midnight. At the sight of that flame we should have fired our cannon,
but for some reason this was not done. Now the silver silence beyond the
ship was torn across by the _Pinta's_ gun. She fired, then came near
us. "Land! Land!" Now we saw it under the moon, just lifting above the
sea,--lonely, peaceful, dark.

It was middle night. The Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina went
another league, then took in sail and came to anchor.

CHAPTER XV

THE Admiral set a wa