re said to be waiting for him, about nine leagues distant.
At length, a breeze filling the sails of his ships, he was able to stand
on his course, as he hoped, free of all danger. Chaos, mystery, and
peril were before them. The hearts of his crew sank as they lost sight
of land, and many of the seamen broke into loud lamentations. The
Admiral tried to soothe their distress, and to inspire them with his own
glorious anticipations by describing to them the magnificence of the
countries to which he was about to conduct them, and the wealth and
glory which would be theirs.

He now issued orders to the commanders of the other vessels that, in the
event of separation, they should continue directly westward; but that,
after sailing seven hundred leagues, they should lay by from midnight to
daylight, as about that distance he confidently expected to find land.

As he foresaw the farther they sailed the more their vague terrors would
increase, to deceive them, he kept two logs; one correct, retained for
his own government, and the other open to general inspection, from which
a certain number of leagues were daily subtracted from the sailing of
the ships.

The crews, though no faint-hearted fellows, had not as yet learned to
place confidence in him. The slightest thing alarmed them. When about
one hundred and fifty leagues west of Ferro, they picked up part of the
mast of a large vessel, and the crews fancied that she must have been
wrecked drifting ominously to the entrance of those unknown seas.

About nightfall, on the 13th of September, he for the first time noticed
the variation of the needle, which, instead of pointing to the north
star, varied about half a point. He remarked that this variation of the
needle increased as he advanced. He quieted the alarm of his pilots,
when they observed this, by assuring them that the variation was not
caused by any fallacy in the compass, but by the movement of the north
star itself, which, like the other heavenly bodies, described a circle
round the pole.

The explanation appeared so highly plausible and ingenious that it was
readily received. On the 14th of September they believed that they were
near land, from seeing a heron and a tropical bird, neither of which
were supposed to venture far out to sea.

The following night the mariners were awestruck by beholding a meteor of
great brilliancy--a common phenomenon in those latitudes. With a
favourable breeze, day after da