in loudly to play. But when the drums began, the fife and
the castanets, the canoe started, quivered, the paddlers dipped, it
raced back to that shore whence it came, that shore that we thought
island.

"Lighter than Haytiens!" exclaimed the Admiral. "I have thought that as
we neared the Equator we should find them black!"

Afterwards he expanded upon this. "Jayme Ferrer thinks as I think, that
the nearer we come to the Equator the more precious grow all things, the
more gold, the more diamonds, rubies and emeralds, the more prodigal and
delicious the spices! The people are burnt black, but they grow gentler
and more wise, and under the line they are makers of white magic. I have
not told you, Juan Lepe, but I hold that now we begin to come to where
our Mother Earth herself climbs, and climbs auspiciously!"

"That we come to great mountains?"

"No, not that, though there may be great mountains. But I have thought
it out, and now I hold that the earth is not an orb, but is shaped, as
it were, like a pear. It would take an hour to give you all the reasons
that decide me! But I hold that from hereabouts it mounts fairer and
fairer, until under the line, about where would be the stem of the pear,
we come to the ancient Earthly Paradise, the old Garden of Eden!"

I looked to the southward. Certainly there is nowhere where there is not
something!

He gazed over the truly azure and beauteous sea, and the air blew soft
and cool upon our foreheads, and the fragrance which came to us from
land seemed new. "Would you not look for the halcyons? Trinidad! Holy
Island! We approach, I hold, the Holy Mountain of the World. And hark
to me, Juan Lepe, make vow that if it be permitted I will found there
an abbey whence shall arise perpetual orison for the souls of our first
parents!"

We found that night that the ships swung, caught in a current issuing
from the strait before us. In the morning we made sail and prepared to
pass through this narrow way between the two lands, seeing open water
beyond. We succeeded by great skill and with Providence over us, for we
met as it were an under wall of water ridged atop with strong waves. The
ships were tossed as by a tempest, yet was the air serene, the sky blue.
We came hardly through and afterwards called that strait Mouth of the
Serpent. Now we were in a great bay or gulf, and still the sea shook us
and drove us. Calm above, around, but underneath an agitation of waters,
strong current