itten will pass in the flood of
things to come." After a moment, he ended with deliberation, "I know my
star to be a great star, burning long and now with a mounting flame. If
yours is in any wise its kin, then there needs must be histories."

CHAPTER XII

IT was a strange thing how utterly favoring now was the wind! It blew
with a great steady push always from the east, and always we ran before
it into the west. Day after day we experienced this warm and steadfast
driving; day after day we never shifted sail. The rigging sang a
steady song, day and night. The crowned woman, our figurehead, ran,
light-footed, over a green and blue plain, and where the plain ended no
man might know! "Perhaps it does not end!" said the mariners.

Of the hidalgos aboard I like best Diego de Arana who had cast off his
melancholy. He was a man of sense, candid and brave. Roderigo Sanchez
sat and moved a dull, good man. Roderigo de Escobedo had courage, but
he was factious, would take sides against his shadow if none other were
there. Pedro Gutierrez had been a courtier, and had the vices of that
life, together with a daredevil recklessness and a kind of wild wit.
I had liking and admiration for Fray Ignatio, but careful indeed was I
when I spoke with him!

The wind blew unchanging, the stark blue shield of sea, a water-world,
must be taken in the whole, for there was no contrasting point in it to
catch the eye. Sancho, forward, in a high sweet voice like a jongleur's
voice, was singing to the men an endless ballad. Upon the poop deck
Escobedo and Gutierrez, having diced themselves to an even wealth or
poverty, turned to further examination of the Admiral's ways. Endlessly
they made him and his views subject of talk. Roderigo Sanchez listened
with a face like an owl, Diego de Arana with some irony about his lips.
I came and stood beside the latter.

They were upon the beggary of Christopherus Columbus. "How did the Prior
of La Rabida--?"

"I'll tell you, for I heard it. One evening at vesper bell comes our
Admiral--no less a man!--to Priory gate with a young boy in his hand.
Not Fernando his love-child, but Diego the elder, who was born in
Lisbon. All dusty with the road, like any beggar you see, and not much
better clad, foot-sore and begging bread for himself and the boy. And
because of his white hair, and because he carried himself in that absurd
way that makes the undiscerning cry, 'Ah, my lord king in disguise!'
the porter mus