lightnings like javelins and loud
thunder. Then fell the rain, in torrents, in drops large as plums. It
was as though another ocean was descending upon us.

It lasted and we endured. After long while came lessening in that weight
of rain, and then cessation. Suddenly the tempest was over. There shone
a star--three stars and on topmast and bowsprit Saint Elmo's lights.

Our mariners shouted, "Safe--safe! Saint Elmo!"

Suddenly, over all the sky, were stars shining. The Admiral raised his
great voice. "Sing, all of us!

'Stella Maris--Sancta Maria!'"

With the morning the _Santa Clara_ and the _San Juan_, beaten about,
some injury done, but alive! And the coast of Cuba, nearer, nearer, tall
and blue--and at last very tall and green and gold.

Off Cuba and still off Cuba, the southern coast now, as against the
northern that once we tried for a while. Sail and come to land, stay a
bit, and shake out sails once more!

Wherever we tarried we found peaceable if vastly excited Indians.
But still naked, but still unwise as to gold and spices, traders and
markets. Cambalu, Quinsai and Zaiton of the marble bridges!

"'Somewhere,' saith Messer Marco, 'in part the country is savage, filled
with mountains, and here come few strangers, for the king will not have
them, in order that his treasures and certain matters of his kingdom
come not into the world's knowledge.' And again he saith, 'The folk here
are naked.'--What wonder then," said the Admiral, "that we find these
things! Yea, I feel surprised at the incessancy, but I check myself and
think, how vast is Asia, and what variousness must needs be!"

But we moved in a cloud of differences, and while on the one hand this
world was growing familiar, on the other the sense increased. "How vast
indeed must be Asia, if all this and yet we come not--and now it is
going on two years--to any clear hint of other than this!"

He himself, the Admiral, began to feel this strangeness. Or rather,
he had long felt it and fought the feeling, but now strongly it came
creeping over.

We were among the hugest number of small islands. Starboard loomed,
until it was lost in the farness, that coast that we were following, but
the three ships were in a half-land, half-water world. We wandered in
this labyrinth, keeping with difficulty our way, so crooked and narrow
the channels, so many the sandbars. From deck it minded me of that sea
of weed we met in the first passage.

Waves of fr