Days of the Discoverers. Louise Lamprey
at first sight he looked older, because of his white hair. The fresh complexion, alert walk, and keen thoughtful blue eyes were those of a man not old in either mind or body. He smiled in answer to the greeting, and replied with a quick wave of the hand. "Do not disturb yourself, I beg of you, my friend. The garden is very pleasant. I have come on an errand of my own this time. Did you ever see, in your voyages to Africa or elsewhere, any such carving as this?"
He held out a curious worm-eaten bit of reddish brown wood, rudely ornamented with carved figures in relief. Old Sancho took it and turned it about, examining it with narrowed attentive eyes.
"Where did it come from?" he asked, finally.
"From the beach at Puerto Santo. My little son Diego picked it up, the day before I came away from the island."
"Now that is curious. I was just telling the young ones about an adventure of my youth, when Gonsales Zarco touched there on his way to Madeira. With your good permission I will leave you for a few minutes and rummage in an old sea-chest, and see whether there is any flotsam in it to compare with this."
Left alone with the stranger, Fernao and Beatriz looked at him with shy curiosity. They had seen him before, and knew him to be a mapmaker in the King's service, but he had never before been within speaking distance. He seemed to like children, for he smiled at them very kindly and spoke to them almost at once.
"And you were hearing about the discovery of Madeira?"
"Ay, Senhor," Beatriz answered with demure dignity.
"I live not very far from that island. It seems like living on the western edge of the world."
"Senhor," asked Fernao with sudden daring, "what is beyond the edge of the world?"
"There is no edge, my boy. The world is round—like an orange."[2]
In all their fancies they had never thought of such a thing as that. Beatriz looked at the tall man with silent amazement, and Fernao looked as if he would like to ask who could prove the statement. The stranger's smile was amused but quite comprehending, as if he was not at all surprised that they should doubt him.
"See," he went on, taking an orange from the basket that stood by, "suppose this little depression where the stem lost its hold to be Jerusalem, the center of our world; then this is Portugal—" he traced with the point of a penknife the outline of the great western peninsula. "Here you see are the capes—Saint Vincent, Finisterre, the great rock the Arabs call Geber-al-Tarif—the Mediterranean—the northern coast of Africa—so. Beyond are Arabia and India, and the Spice Islands which we do not know all about—then Cathay, where Marco Polo visited the Great Khan—you have heard of that? Yes? On the eastern and southern shore of Cathay is a great sea in which are many islands—Cipangu here, and to the south Java Major and Java Minor. We are told in the Book of Esdras that six parts of the earth are land and one part water, so here we cut away the skin where there is any sea—"
The miniature globe took form, like fairy mapmaking, under the cosmographer's skilful fingers, and the children watched, fascinated.
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