se seas that could take them back to Spain."

HIS DETERMINATION TO PROCEED.

On they go, having signs occasionally in the presence of birds and grass
and fish that land must be near; but land does not come. Once, too, they
are all convinced that they see land: they sing the "Gloria in excelsis;"
and even the admiral goes out of his course towards this land, which
turns out to be no land. They are like men listening to a dreadful
discourse or oration, that seems to have many endings which end not: so
that the hearer listens at last in grim despair, thinking that all things
have lost their meaning, and that ending is but another form of beginning.

These mariners were stout-hearted, too; but what a daring thing it was to
plunge, down-hill as it were, into

A world of waves, a sea without a shore,
Trackless, and vast, and wild, [Rogers]

mocked day by day with signs of land that neared not. And these men had
left at home all that is dearest to man, and did not bring out any great
idea to uphold them, and had already done enough to make them important
men in their towns, and to furnish ample talk for the evenings of their
lives. Still we find Columbus, as late as the 3rd of October, saying,
"that he did not choose to stop beating about last week during those days
that they had such signs of land, although he had knowledge of there being
certain islands in that neighbourhood, because he would not suffer any
detention, since his object was to go to the Indies; and if he should stop
on the way, it would show a want of mind."

SIGNS OF LAND AGAIN.

Meanwhile, he had a hard task to keep his men in any order. Peter Martyr,
who knew Columbus well, and had probably been favoured with a special
account from him of these perilous days, describes his way of dealing with
the refractory mariners, and how he contrived to win them onwards from day
to day; now soothing them with soft words, now carrying their minds from
thought of the present danger by spreading out large hopes before them,
not forgetting to let them know what their princes would say to them if
they attempted aught against him, or would not obey his orders. With this
untutored crowd of wild, frightened men around him, with mocking hopes,
not knowing what each day would bring to him, on went Columbus. At last
came the 11th of October, and with it indubitable signs of land. The diary
mentions their finding on that day a table-board and a carved stick, the