d had come from
Carthage and from Phoenicia, old Tyre and Sidon, and Tyre and Sidon
again from the east. From the east and to the east again. All our Age
that with all lacks was yet a stirring one with a sense of dawn and
sunrise and distant trumpets, now was going east, was going Home, going
east by the west road. West is home and East is home, and North and
South. Knowledge extendeth and the world above is fed.

The sun made a lane of scarlet and gold across Ocean-Sea. I wondered
what temples, what towns, what spice ships at strange wharfs might lie
under it afar. I wondered if there did dwell Prester John and if he
would step down to give us welcome. The torrent of event strikes us
day and night, all the hours, all the moments. Who can tell with
distinctness color and shape in that descending stream?

CHAPTER XI

AN hour after moonrise we were gone from Gomera. At first a light wind
filled the sails, but when the round moon went down in the west and
the sun rose, there was Teneriffe still at hand, and the sea glassy.
It rested like a mirror all that day, and the sails hung empty and the
banner at maintop but a moveless wisp of cloth. In the night arose a
contrary wind, and another red dawn showed us Teneriffe still. The wind
dropping like a shot, we hung off Ferro, fixed in blue glass. Watch was
kept for the Portuguese, but they also would be rooted to sea bottom.
The third morning up whistled the wind, blowing from Africa and filling
every sail.

Palos to the Canaries, we had sailed south. Now for long, long days
the sun rose right aft, and when it set dyed with red brow and eyes
and cheek and breast of the carved woman at our prow. She wore a great
crown, and she looked ever with wide eyes upon the west that we chased.
Straight west over Ocean-Sea, the first men, the first ships! If ever
there had been others, our world knew it not. The Canaries sank into the
east. Turn on heel around one's self, and mark never a start of land to
break the rim of the vast sea bowl! Never a sail save those above us of
the _Santa Maria_, or starboard or larboard, the Pinta and the Nina. The
loneliness was vast and utter. We might fail here, sink here, die here,
and indeed fail and sink and die alone!

Two seamen lay sick in their beds, and the third day from Gomera the
Santa Maria's physician, Bernardo Nunez, was seized with the same
malady. At first Fray Ignatio tried to take his place, but here the monk
lacked knowledge.