Knowing that he
would be likely to have trouble when he reached the seven-hundred-league
limit his crews had set for him, he kept two reckonings. One was for his
private journal, the other was for all to see. He took the actual
figures of each day's run as set down in his private record, subtracted
from them a certain percentage and gave out this revised reckoning to
the fleet. He, and he alone, knew that they were nearly seven hundred
leagues from Palos already, instead of five hundred and fifty. According
to Toscanelli's calculation, by sailing west from the Canaries along the
thirtieth parallel of latitude he should land somewhere on the coast of
Cipangu; but the map of Toscanelli might be incorrect. If the ocean
should prove to be a hundred or more leagues wider than the chart showed
it, they would have to go on, all the same.
Even after they were out of the seaweed there was something weird and
unnatural in the sluggish calm of the sea. Light winds blew from the
west and southwest, but there were no waves, as by all marine experience
there should have been. On September 25 the sea heaved silently in a
mysterious heavy swell, without any wind. Then the wind once more
shifted to the east, and carried them on so smoothly that they could
talk from one ship to another.
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