tell me his dream of the night before. He had already
told it, it seemed, to all who would listen, and now again he had
considerable audience, crowding at the door. He said that he dreamed
he was in Cipango. At first he thought it was heaven, but when he saw
golden roofs he knew it must be Cipango, for in heaven where it
never rained and there were no nights, we shouldn't need roofs. One
interrupted, "We'd need them to keep the flying angels from looking in!"

"It was Cipango," persisted Francisco, "for the Emperor himself came
and gave me a rope of pearls. There were five thousand of them, and each
would buy a house or a fine horse or a suit of velvet. And the Emperor
took me by the hand, and he said, 'Dear Brother--' You might have
thought I was a king--and by the mass, I was a king! I felt it right
away! And then he took me into a garden, and there were three beautiful
women, and one of them would push me to the other, and that one to the
third, and that to the first again, as though they were playing ball,
and they all laughed, and I laughed. Then there came a great person with
five crowns on his head, and all the light blazed up gold and blue, and
somebody said, 'It's Prester John'!"

His dream kept a two-days' serenity upon the ship. It came to the ear
of the Admiral, who said, "'In dreams will I instruct thee.'--I have had
dreams far statelier than his."

Pedro Gutierrez too began to dream,--fantastic things which he told with
an idle gusto. They were of wine and gold and women, though often these
were to be guessed through strange, jumbled masks and phantasies. "Those
are ill dreams," said the Admiral. "Dream straight and high!" Fray
Ignatio, too, said wisely, "It is not always God who cometh in dreams!"

But the images of Gutierrez's dreams seemed to him to be seated
in Cathay and India. They bred in him belief that he was coming to
happiness by that sea road that glistered before us. He and Roderigo de
Escobedo began to talk with assurance of what they should find. Having
small knowledge of travelers' tales they made application to the Admiral
who, nothing loth, answered them out of Marco Polo, Mandeville and Pedro
de Aliaco.

But the ardor of his mind was such that he outwent his authors. Where
the Venetian said "gold" the Genoese said "Much gold." Where the one saw
powerful peoples with their own customs, courts, armies, temples, ships
and trade, the other gave to these an unearthly tinge of splendor.
O