laga. I
meant to find there a ship, maybe for Africa, maybe for Italy, though in
Italy, too, sits the Inquisition. But who knows what it is that turns
a man, unless we call it his Genius, unless we call it God? I let
the muleteers pass me on the road to Cordova, let them dwindle in the
distance. And still I walked and did not turn back and find the Malaga
road. It was as though I were on the sea, and my bark was hanging in a
calm, waiting for a wind to blow. A man mounted on a horse was coming
toward me from Santa Fe. Watching the small figure grow larger, I said,
"When he is even with me and has passed and is a little figure again in
the distance, I will turn south."

He came nearer. Suddenly I knew him to be that Master Christopherus who
had entered the wedge of shadow yesterday in the palace court. He was
out of it now, in the broad light, on the white road--on the way to
France. He approached. The ocean before Palos came and stood again
before me, salt and powerful. The keen, far, sky line of it awoke and
drew!

Christopherus Columbus came up with me. I said, "A Palos sailor gives
you good morning!"

Checking the horse, he sat looking at me out of blue-gray eyes. I saw
him recollecting. "Dress is different and poorer, but you are the squire
in the crowd! 'Sailor Palos sailor'--There's some meaning there too!"

He seemed to ponder it, then asked if I was for Cordova.

"No. I am going to Malaga where I take ship."

"This is not the Malaga road."

"No. But I am in no hurry! I should like to walk a mile with you."

"Then do it," he answered. "Something tells me that we shall not be ill
travelers together."

I felt that also and no more than he could explain it. But the reason, I
know, stands in the forest behind the seedling.

He walked his horse, and I strode beside. He asked my name and I gave
it. Juan Lepe. We traveled Cordova road together. Presently he said, "I
leave Spain for France, and do you know why?"

Said Juan Lepe, "I have been told something, and I have gathered
something with my own eyes and ears. You would reach Asia by going
west."

He spoke in the measured tone of a recital often made alike to himself
and to others. "I hold that the voyage from Palos, say, first south
to the Canaries and then due west would not exceed three months. Yet
I began to go west to India full eighteen years ago! I have voyaged
eighteen years, with dead calms and head winds, with storms and
back-puttings, with p