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!
III
SEA OF DARKNESS
"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.
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