Days of the Discoverers. Louise Lamprey
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."
Beatriz drew a long breath. "Weren't you very scared, Tio Sancho?"
"Sailors must not be scared, little one. Or if they are, they must never let their arms and legs be scared. We knew that we had to obey orders or be dead, so we obeyed. I have been glad many a time since that I sailed with Gonsales and old Morales to the discovery of Madeira."
"What are sea-wolves?" asked Fernao.
"Like no beast that ever you saw, my son. They have the fore part of the body like a dog or bear, the hind part ending in a tail like a fish, but with hair, not scales, on the body; the head has a thick mane, and the jaws are large and strong. They are no more seen on that island, for they went there only because it was never visited by men."
"Did they try to drive the people away?"
"No; they do not fight men unless men attack them. But the settlers were once driven off Puerto Santo by animals, and not very fierce animals at that." The old pilot grinned. "They were driven away by rabbits. Somebody brought rabbits there and let them loose, and in a few years there were so many that everything that was planted was eaten green. The people who live on that island now have made a strict rule about rabbits."
The children's laughter echoed the dry chuckle of the old man. Then Fernao, unwilling to abandon his authorities—
"But if the Sea of Darkness and the great abyss are not in the western ocean, why haven't they found out what really is there?"
"That, my son, is more than I can tell you," said Sancho Serrao, getting up. "I sailed where I was told, and I never was told to sail