an-Sea. The twenty-fifth of May the Canaries sank
behind us. On and on, all the sails steady.

We were not first for Hispaniola. All must be strange, this voyage!
Jamaica, not San Domingo, was our star. Rest there a moment, take
food and water, then forth and away. West again, west by south. He was
straitly forbidden to drop anchor in any water of Hispaniola. "For why?"
said they. "Because the very sight of his ships will tear asunder again
that which Don Nicholas de Ovando is healing!"

The _Margarita_, that was next to the _Consolacion_ in greatness, sailed
so infirmly that mercy 'twas the seas were smooth. It was true accident.
She had been known at Palos, Cadiz and San Lucar for good ship. But
at Ercilla where we must stop on the Sovereigns' business, a storm had
beaten her upon the shore where she got a great wound in her side. That
was staunched, but all her frame was wrenched and she never did well
thereafter. In mid-June we came to an island of the Caribs which they
called Mantineo. Here we rested the better part of a week, keeping good
guard against the Caribs, then sailed, and now north by west, along a
vast curve, within a world of islands. They are great, they are small,
they are of the extremest beauty! San Martin, Dominica, Guadaloupe,
San Juan--the Boriquen whence had come, long ago, that Catalina whom
Guacanagari aided--and untouched at, or under the horizon, many another
that the Admiral had named; _Santa Maria_ la Antigua, Santa Cruz, Santa
Ursula, Montserrat, Eleven Thousand Virgins, Marigalante and all beside.
What a world! Plato his Atlantis. How truly old we are God only knows!

The _Margarita_ sailed most badly. At San Juan that is the neighbor
great island to Hispaniola, council, two councils, one following the
other. Then said the Admiral, "We are to find the Strait that shall at
last carry us to clothed Asia of all the echoes, and to find we have but
four small ships and one of them evidently doomed. And in that one sails
my brother. What is the Sovereigns' command? 'Touch not on your outward
way at Hispaniola!' What is in their mind here? 'Hale and faring well,
you have no need.'--But if we are not hale and faring well by a fourth
of our enterprise? They never meant it to a drowning man, or one whose
water cask was empty! Being Christian, no! We will put into San Domingo
and ask of Don Nicholas de Ovando a ship in place of the _Margarita_."

Whereat all cheered. We were gathered under palms,