n and grandson
of men who had sailed at the bidding of the great Prince Henry, he felt
that he could speak with authority.[1]

"Of course I am telling you the truth. You are very wise about the
sea--you who never saw it until two weeks ago! Gil Andrade has been to
places that you Castilians never even heard of. He has seen whales, and
mermaids, and the Sea of Darkness itself! He has been to the Gold Coast
beyond Bojador, where the people are fried black like charcoal, and the
rivers are too hot to drink."

"Then why didn't he die?" inquired the unbelieving Beatriz.

"Because he didn't stay there long enough. And there are devils in the
forest, stronger than ten men, and all covered with shaggy hair--"

"I will not listen to such nonsense! Do you think that because I am
Spanish, and a girl, I am without understanding? Tio Sancho, is it true
that there is a Sea of Darkness?"

Sancho Serrao was an old seaman, as any one would know by his eyes and
his walk. For fifty years he had used the sea, as ship-boy, sailor, and
pilot. His daughter Catharina had been the nurse of Beatriz, and he had
brought coral, shells and queer toys to the little thing from the time
she could toddle to his knee.

"What has Fernao been saying to thee, pombinha agreste?" (little
wood-dove) he asked soberly, though his eyes twinkled ever so little. He
seated himself as he spoke, on an ancient bench that rested its back
against the wall just where the wind was sweetest. Under the fragrances
of ripening vineyards and flowering shrubs there was always the sharp
clean smell of the sea.

"He believes all that Gil Andrade and Joao Pancado tell him as if it
were the Credo," Beatriz began, her words flung out like sparks from a
little crackling fire. "He says that there is a Sea of Darkness out
away beyond the Falcon Islands, where ships are drawn into a great pit
under the edge of the world. And he says that ships cannot go too far
south because the sun is so near it would burn them, and they cannot go
too far north because the icebergs will catch them and crush them. If I
were a man, I would sail straight out there, into the sunset, and show
them what my people dared to do!"

Old Sancho was not all Portuguese. In his veins ran the blood of the
three great seafaring races of southern Europe--the Genoese, the
Lusitanian and the Vizcayan--and their jealousies and rivalries amused
him. He had spent most of his life in the feluccas and caravels of
Lisb