"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 never going away; and out of this cloud, they said,
came strange noises, not like any they had heard before. They dared not
sail far from their island, for they said that if a man lost sight of
land thereabouts it was a miracle if he ever returned. They believed
that place to be the great abyss, the mouth of hell. But learned men
held the opinion that this cloud hid the island of Cipango, where the
Seven Bishops had taken refuge from the Moors and the Saracens.
"Certainly the cloud was there, for we all saw it, and when the
Commander said that he would stay to see whether it would change when
the moon changed, we liked it not, I can tell you. And when we learned
that he was minded to sail straight into the darkness and see what lay
behind it, why, there were some who would have run away--if they could
have run anywhere but into the sea.
"But we had a Spanish pilot, Morales, who had once been a prisoner in
Morocco, and there he knew two Englishmen who had sailed these seas in
time past. Their ship had been lying ready to sail for France, when late
at night Robert Macham, a gentleman of their country, came hurriedly
aboard with his lady love whom he had carried off from her home in
Bristol, and between dark and dawn the captain weighed anchor and was
off. Then being driven from the course the ship was cast on a thickly
wooded island with a high mountain in the middle, where they dwelt not
long, for the lady died, and Macham died of grief. The crew left the
island and were wrecked in Morocco and made slaves. All this was many
years before, for the Englishmen had grown old in slavery, and Morales
himself had grown old since he heard the tale.
"It was the belief of Morales that this was the island of which they
told, and that the cloud which hung above the waters was the mist
arising from those dense woods which covered it. The upshot was that the
commander set sail one morning early and steered straight for the cloud.
"The nearer we came the higher and thicker looked the darkness that
spread over the sea, and we heard about noon a great roaring of the
waves. Still Gonsales held his course, and when the wind failed he
ordered out the boats to tow the ship into the cloud, and I was one of
those who rowed. As we got closer it was not quite so dark, but the
roaring was louder, although the sea was smooth. Then through the
darkness we beheld tall black objects which we guessed to be giants
walking in the water, but as we came nearer we saw that they were great
rocks, and before us loomed a high mountain covered with thick woods.
"We found no place to land but a cave under a rock that overhung the
sea, and that was trodden all over the bottom by the sea-wolves, so that
Gonsales named it the Camera dos Lobos. The island, because of its
forests, he called Madeira. When we came back, having taken possession
of the island for the King, he sent a colony to settle upon it, and the
first boy and girl born there were named Adam and Eva. The people set
fire to the trees, which were in their way, and could not put out the
fire, so that it burned for seven years and all the trees were
destroyed. And the King gave our commander the right to carry as
supporters on his coat-of-arms two sea-wolves."