ve thee acceptably!
Teach us how we may
Crown ourselves, crowning Thee!

Beltran the cook's voice was the best, and after him Sancho, and then a
sailor with a great bass, William the Irishman. Fray Ignatio sang like a
good monk, and Pedro Gutierrez like a troubadour of no great weight.
The Admiral sang with a powerful and what had once been a sweet voice.
Currents and eddies of sweetness marked it still. All sang and it made
together a great and pleasurable sound, rolling over the sea to the
_Pinta_ and the Nina, and so their singing, somewhat less in volume,
came to us. All grew dusk, the ships were bat wings sailing low; out
sprang the star to which the needle no longer pointed. The great star
Venus hung in the west like the lantern of some ghostly air ship, very
vast.

Thou that art above us,
Around us, beneath us,
Thou that art within us,
Save us on this sea!

CHAPTER XIV

WE were a long, long way from Spain. A flight of birds went over us.
They were flying too high for distinguishing, but we did not hold them
to be sea birds. We sounded, but the lead touched no bottom. West and
west and west, pushed by that wind! Late September, and we had left
Palos the third of August.

The wind shifted and became contrary. The sea that for so long had been
glassy smooth took on a roughness. A bird that was surely a forest
bird beaten to us perched upon a stretched rope and uttered three quick
cries. A boy climbed and softly took it from behind. It fluttered in the
Admiral's two hands. All came to look. Its plumage was blue, its breast
reddish. We wondered, but before we could make it a cage, it strongly
strove and was gone. One flash and all the azure took it to itself.

In the night the waves flattened. Rose-dawn showed smooth sea and
every sail filled again with that westward journeying wind. Yesterday's
roughness and the bird tossed aboard were as a dream.

A day and a day and a day. As much Ocean-Sea as ever, and Asia a lie,
and alike at this end and that of the vessel a dull despondency, and
Pedro Gutierrez's wit grown ugly. So naked, so lonely, so indifferent
spread the Sea of Darkness!

Another day and another and another. When half the ship was at the point
of mutiny signs reappeared and thickened. Birds flew over the ships;
one perched beside the Admiral's banner and sang. More than that, a
wood dove came upon the deck and ate corn that was strewed for it.
"Colombo--Colombo!" quoth the Admiral.