of the English landing in
Madeira was a close secret, which by good fortune passed into the
Prince's keeping, but not beyond, so that as far as general knowledge
went, the Portuguese were now fairly embarked upon the Sea of Darkness.

First came the sighting of the "Holy Haven" in 1418. In this year, says
Azurara, two squires of the Prince's household, named John Gonsalvez
Zarco and Tristam Vaz, eager for renown and anxious to serve their lord,
had set out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, but they were
caught by a storm near Lagos and driven to the island of Porto Santo.
This name they gave themselves "at this very time in their joy at thus
escaping the perils of the tempest."

Zarco and Vaz returned in triumph to Sagres and reported the new-found
island to be well worth a permanent settlement. Henry, always
"generous," took up the idea with great interest and sent out Zarco and
Vaz with another of his equerries, one Bartholomew Perestrello, to
colonise, with two ships and products for a new country; corn, honey,
the sugar cane from Sicily, the Malvoisie grape from Crete, even the
rabbit from Portugal.

On his first return voyage Zarco had captured the pilot Morales of
Seville, and from him the Prince had gained certain news of the English
landing in Madeira. So it was with a definite purpose of further
discovery that his captains returned to Porto Santo in 1420, with
Morales as their guide. Now, as before, Zarco appears as chief in
command; he had won himself a name at Ceuta, and if the tradition be
true, had just brought in the first use of ship-artillery; the finding
of Porto Santo was mainly credited to him.

Sailing from Lagos in June, 1420, he had no sooner reached once again
the "Fair Haven" of his first success, than he was called to note a dark
line, like a mark of distant land, upon the south-west horizon. The
colonists he had left on his earlier visit had watched this day by day
till they had made certain of its being something more than a passing
appearance of sea or sky, and Morales was ready with his suggestion that
this was Machin's island. The fog that hung over this part of the ocean
would be natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island
of his old adventure.

Zarco resolved to try: After eight days' rest in Porto Santo he set
sail, and, observing that the fog grew less toward the east of the cloud
bank, made for that point and came upon a low marshy cape, which he
called