. Master Christopherus began again to speak.

"There came ashore at Porto Santo some years ago a piece of wood long as
a spar but thicker. Pedro Correo, who is my brother-in-law, saw it. It
was graved all over, cut by something duller than our knives with beasts
and leaves and a figure that Pedro thought was meant for an idol. He and
another saw it and agree in their description. They left it on the beach
at twilight, well out of water reach. But in the night came up a great
storm that swept it away. It came from the west, the wind having blown
for days from that quarter. I ask you will empty billows fell a tree and
trim it and carve it? It is said that a Portuguese pilot picked up one
like it off Cape Bojador when the wind was southwest. I have heard a
man of the Azores tell of giant reeds pitched upon his shore _from the
west_. There is a story of the finding on the beach of Flores the bodies
of two men not like any that we know either in color or in feature. For
days a west wind had driven in the seas. And I know of other findings.
Whence do these things come?

"May there not be unknown islands west of Azores? They might come from
there, and still to the west of them stream all Ocean-Sea, violent and
unknown! The learned think the earth of such a size. Your Arabian holds
it smaller. What if it is larger than the largest calculation?"

He said with disdain, "All the wise men at Salamanca before whom the
King set me six years ago thought it had no end! Large or small, they
called it blasphemy for me, a poor, plain seaman, son of a wool-comber
and not even a Spanish wool-comber, to try to stretch mind over it!
Ocean-Sea had never been overpassed, and by that token could not be
overpassed! None had met its dangers, so dangers there must be of a most
strange and fearful nature! But if you were put to sea at fourteen and
have lived there long, water becomes water! A speck on the horizon will
turn out ship or land. Wave carries you on to wave, day to night and
night to day. At last there is port!"

All this time his horse had been cropping the scanty herbage. Now he
raised his head. In a moment we too heard the horsemen and looking back
toward Santa Fe saw four approaching. As they came nearer we made out
two cavaliers talking together, followed by serving men. When they were
almost at hand one of the leaders said something, whereat his fellow
laughed. It floated up Cordova road, a wide, deep, rich laugh. Master
Christop