Tinto and they gave me
shelter.

CHAPTER IX

RISING at dawn, I walked to the sea and along it until I came at last to
those dunes beneath which I had stretched myself that day of grayness.
Now it was deep summer, blue and gold, and the air all balm and
caressing. The evening before I had seen the three ships where they
rode in river mouth. They were caravels, and only the _Santa Maria_, the
largest, was fully decked. Small craft with which to find India, over
a road of a thousand leagues--or no road, for road means that men have
toiled there and traveled there--no road, but a wilderness plain, a
water desert! The Arabians say that Jinn and Afrits live in the desert
away from the caravans. If you go that way you meet fearful things and
never come forth again. The Santa Maria, the _Pinta_ and the Nina. The
Santa Maria could be Master Christopherus's ship. Bright point that was
his banner could be made out at the fore.

Palos waterside, in a red-filtered dusk, had been a noisy place, but the
noise did not ring genially. I gathered that this small port was more
largely in the mood of Pedro and Fernando than in that of Sancho. It
looked frightened and it looked sullen and it looked angry.

The old woman by the Tinto talked garrulously. Thankful was she that her
son Miguel dwelled ten leagues away! Else surely they would have taken
him, as they were taking this one's son and that one's son! To hear
her you would think of an ogre--of Polyphemus in the cave--reaching out
fatal hand for this or that fattened body. Nothing then, she said, to do
but to pinch and save so that one might pay the priest for masses! She
told me with great eyes that a hundred leagues west of Canaries one came
to a sea forest where all the trees were made of water growing up high
and spreading out like branches and leaves, and that this forest was
filled with sea wolves and serpents and strange beasts all made of sea
water, but they could sting and rend a man very ghastly. After that you
came to sirens that you could not help leaping to meet, but they put
lips to men's breasts and sucked out the life. Then if the wind drove
you south, you smelled smoke and at night saw flames, and if you could
not get the ship about--

In mid-afternoon I left the sands and took the road to La Rabida. By
the walled vineyard that climbs the hill I was met by three mounted
men coming from the monastery. The first was Don Juan de Penelosa, the
second was the Prior