agrance struck us. "Ha!" cried the Admiral. "Can you not
smell cinnamon, spikenard, nutmeg, cloves and galingal?" His faith was
so strong that we did smell. From one of these islands, the _Cordera_
lying at anchor and a boat going ashore, we took a number of pigeons. So
unafraid were these birds that our men approached them easily and beat
them down with a pike. We had them for supper, and when their crops
were opened, the cook found and brought to the Admiral a number of
brown seeds. The Admiral dropped them into clear water, then smelled and
tasted. "Cloves? Are they not cloves?" He gave to Juan de la Cosa and to
me who also tasted and thought they might be cloves. But we did not find
their tree, and we saw no signs of ever a merchant of Cathay or Mangi or
Ind.

Christopherus Columbus leaned upon the rail of the _Cordera_. In this
islet world we lay at anchor for the night. "Do you know what it is," he
asked, "to have a word color the whole day long?" He glanced around, but
none was very near. "My Word to-day is _magic_. I'd not give it to any
but you, and I drop my voice in saying it. I'll sail on through magic
and against magic, for I have Help from Above! But I'll not lay a
fearsome word among those who are not so accorded! All say India hath
high magic, and the Grand Khan takes from that country his astrologers
and sorcerers. I have read that at Shandu, if there be long raining,
they will mount a tower by the palace and wave it back, so that the
falling rain makes but a pleasant wall around the king's fair garden
that itself rests in sunshine. Also that without touching them they
cause the golden flagons to fill with red wine and to move through air,
with no hand upon them, to the king's table. That was long ago. We have
had no news of them of late. They may do now more marvelous, vaster
things."

"And the moral?"

"I said, 'They do them there.' Perhaps this is there."

"I take you!" I said and half-laughed. "We may be in Cathay all this
while, under the golden roofs, with the bells strung from the eaves.
Yonder line of cranes standing in the shallow water, watching us, may,
God wot, be tall magicians in white linen and scarlet silk!"

He crossed himself. The cranes had lifted themselves and flown away. "If
they heard--"

"Are you in earnest?"

He put his hands over his eyes. "Sometimes I think it may be fact,
sometimes not! Sorcery is a fact, and who knows how far it may go? At
times my brain is like to