e crews.]

By September 25 the Admiral's chief difficulty had come to be the
impatience of his crews at not finding land. On that day there was a
mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed to
be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at dawn
next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds and
other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed
again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of
exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were
entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released
jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night to
push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had
slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more
perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards did
not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his
superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in
going back.

[Illustration: Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean (with outline of American
continent superimposed).]

[Sidenote: Change of course from W. to W. S. W.]

[Sidenote: Land ahead! Oct. 12 (N. S. 21), 1492.]

By October 4 there were ominous symptoms of mutiny, and the anxiety of
Columbus was evinced in the extent of his bold understatement of that
day's run,--138 miles instead of the true figure 189. For some days his
pilots had been begging him to change his course; perhaps they had
passed between islands. Anything for a change! On the 7th at sunrise,
they had come 2,724 geographical miles from the Canaries, which was
farther than the Admiral's estimate of the distance to Cipango; but
according to his false statement of the runs, it appeared that they had
come scarcely 2,200 miles. This leads one to suspect that in stating the
length of the voyage, as he had so often done, at 700 leagues, he may
have purposely made it out somewhat shorter than he really believed it
to be. But now after coming more than 2,500 miles he began to fear that
he might be sailing past Cipango on the north, and so he shifted his
course two points to larboard, or west-southwest. If a secret knowledge
of Vinland had been his guiding-star he surely would not have turned his
helm that way; but a glance at the Toscanelli map shows what was in his
mind. Numerous flights of small birds confirmed his belief that land