Days of the Discoverers. Louise Lamprey

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СКАЧАТЬ Black Plague sped over land and sea And swept so many a board. That will I now most surely believe, It was not with the Lord's will. Help us God and Mary, Save us all from evil."

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THE NAVIGATORS

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      We were Prince Henry's gentlemen— His gentlemen were we, To dare the gods of Heathendom, Whoever they might be— To do our master's sovereign will Upon a trackless sea.

      We were Prince Henry's gentlemen, And undismayed we went To fight for Lusitania Wherever we were sent— The stars had laid our course for us, And we were well content.

      We were Prince Henry's gentlemen, And though our flagship lie Where white the great-winged albatross Came wheeling down the sky, Or black abysses yawned for us, We could not fear to die.

      We were Prince Henry's gentlemen— Around the Cape of Wrath We sailed our wooden cockleshells— Great pride the pilot hath To voyage to-day the Indian Sea— But we marked out his path!

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III

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SEA OF DARKNESS

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      "Those things that you say cannot be true, Fernao! How do you know that the sea turns black and dreadful just behind those heavenly clouds? If there are hydras, and gorgons, and sea-snakes that can swallow a ship, and a great black hand reaching up out of a whirlpool to drag men down, why do we never see them here? Look at that sea, can there be anything in the world more beautiful?"

      The vehement small speaker waved her slender hand with a gesture that seemed to take in half the horizon. The old Moorish garden, overrun with the brilliant blossoms that drink their hues from the sea, overlooked the harbor. Across the huddled many-colored houses the ten-year-old Beatriz and her playfellow Fernao could see the western ocean in a great half-circle, bounded by the mysterious line above which three tiny caravels had just risen. The sea to-day was exquisite, bluer than the heavens that arched above it. The wave-crests looked like a flock of sea-doves playing on the sunlit sparkling waters. Fernao from his seat on the crumbling wall watched the incoming ships with the far-sighted gaze of a sailor. Portuguese through and through, the son and grandson of men who had sailed at the bidding of the great Prince Henry, he felt that he could speak with authority.[1]

      "Of course I am telling you the truth. You are very wise about the sea—you who never saw it until two weeks ago! Gil Andrade has been to places that you Castilians never even heard of. He has seen whales, and mermaids, and the Sea of Darkness itself! He has been to the Gold Coast beyond Bojador, where the people are fried black like charcoal, and the rivers are too hot to drink."

      "Then why didn't he die?" inquired the unbelieving Beatriz.

      "Because he didn't stay there long enough. And there are devils in the forest, stronger than ten men, and all covered with shaggy hair—"

      "I will not listen to such nonsense! Do you think that because I am Spanish, and a girl, I am without understanding? Tio Sancho, is it true that there is a Sea of Darkness?"

      Sancho Serrao was an old seaman, as any one would know by his eyes and his walk. For fifty years he had used the sea, as ship-boy, sailor, and pilot. His daughter Catharina had been the nurse of Beatriz, and he had brought coral, shells and queer toys to the little thing from the time she could toddle to his knee.

      "What has Fernao been saying to thee, pombinha agreste?" (little wood-dove) he asked soberly, though his eyes twinkled ever so little. He seated himself as he spoke, on an ancient bench that rested its back against the wall just where the wind was sweetest. Under the fragrances of ripening vineyards and flowering shrubs there was always the sharp clean smell of the sea.

      "He believes all that Gil Andrade and Joao Pancado tell him as if it were the Credo," Beatriz began, her words flung out like sparks from a little crackling fire. "He says that there is a Sea of Darkness out away beyond the Falcon Islands, where ships are drawn into a great pit under the edge of the world. And he says that ships cannot go too far south because the sun is so near it would burn them, and they cannot go too far north because the icebergs will catch them and crush them. If I were a man, I would sail straight out there, into the sunset, and show them what my people dared to do!"

      Old Sancho was not all Portuguese. In his veins ran the blood of the three great seafaring races of southern Europe—the Genoese, the Lusitanian and the Vizcayan—and their jealousies and rivalries amused him. He had spent most of his life in the feluccas and caravels of Lisbon and Oporto, because when he was young they went where no other ships dared even follow; but he did not believe that the last word in discovery had been said even by Dom Henriques at Sagres, or the Mappe-Monde of Fra Mauro in Venice.

      "Not so fast there, velinha (small candle)" he cautioned, raising a whimsical forefinger. "So said many of us in our youth. And when we had sailed for weeks, and all our provisions were mouldy or weevilly, and our water-casks warped and leaking so that we had to catch the rain in our shirts, we began to wonder what it was we had come for. The sea won't be mocked or threatened. She has ways of her own, the old witch, to tame the vainglorious. And 't is true enough," the old pilot went on with a quizzing look at Fernao on his insecure perch, "that sailors have a bad habit of doubling and trebling their recollections when they find anybody who will listen. I don't know why they do it. Maybe it is because having told a perfectly true tale which nobody believed, they think that a little more or a little less will do no harm. For this you must remember, my children—that at sea many things happen which when told no one believes to be true."

      "I would believe anything you told me, Tio Sancho," promised Beatriz, all love and confidence in her little glowing face.

      "Ay, would you now? What if I said that I have seen a ship with all sail set coming swiftly before the wind, in a place where no wind was, to stir our hair who beheld it—and sailing moreover through the air at the height of a tall mast-head above the sea? And a mountain of ice half a league long and as high as the Giralda at Seville, floating in a sea as blue as this one, and as warm? And islands with mountains that smoke, appearing and disappearing in broad daylight? Yet all of these are common sights at sea."

      "But is there a Sea of Darkness, verily, verily, tio caro?" persisted Beatriz. The old man shook his head, with a little quiet smile.

      "I'll not say there is not. And I'll not say there is. I saw a Sea of Darkness on the second voyage that ever I made, but that's all."

      "Oh, tell us all the story!" begged Beatriz, and Fernao silently slid from the wall and came closer.

      "The commander of our ship was Gonsales Zarco, one of Dom Henriques' gentlemen. Years before he'd been caught by a gale on his way to Africa, and driven north on to an island that he named because of that, Puerto Santo (Holy Haven). So when he came that way again he stopped to see how the settlement that was planted there prospered, and found the people in great trouble of mind. They showed him that a thick black cloud hung upon the sea to the northwest of the island, filling the air to the very heavens and СКАЧАТЬ