hone at home.
Above them, in the vault of heaven, hung the Great Ship, blazed the
Southern Cross. Every hour saw the flight of meteors, and their trains,
golden argosies of the sky, faded slowly from the dark-blue depths. When
the moon arose she was ringed with colors, but the men who gazed upon
her said not, "Every hue of the rainbow is there." They said, "See the
red gold, the pearls and the emeralds!" The night died suddenly and the
day was upon them, an aureate god, lavish of splendor. They hailed him
with music; as they pulled and hauled, the seamen sang. Other winds than
those of heaven drove them on. High purpose, love of country, religious
ecstasy, chivalrous devotion, greed of gain, lust of aggrandizement,
lust of power, mad ambitions, ruthless intents--by how strong a current,
here crystal clear, there thick and denied, were they swept towards
their appointed haven! In cruelty and lust, in the faith of little
children and the courage of old demi-gods, they went like homing
pigeons; and not a soul, from him who gave command to him who, far
aloft, looked out upon the deep, recked or cared that another age would
call him pirate or corsair, raising brow and shoulder over the morality
of his deeds.

In the realms which they were entering, Truth, shattered into a thousand
gleaming fragments, might be held in part, but never wholly. There man's
quarry was the false Florimel, and she lured him on and he saw with
magically anointed eyes. Too suddenly awakened, the imagination of the
time was reeling; its sap ran too fast; wonders of the outer,
revelations of the inner, universe crowded too swiftly; the heady wine
made now gods, now fools of men. The white light was not for the heirs
of that age, nor yet the golden mean. Wonders happened, that they knew,
and so like children they looked for strange chances. There was no
miracle at which their faith would balk, no illusion whose cobweb tissue
they cared to tear away. Give but a grain whereon to build, a phenomenon
before which started back, amazed and daunted, the knowledge of the age,
and forthwith a mighty imagination leaped upon it, claimed it for its
own. There had been but a grain of sand, an inexplicable fact--lo! now,
a rounded pearl shot with all the hues of the morning, a miracle of
grace or an evidence of diabolic power, to doubt which was heresy!

Adventurers to the Spanish Main believed in devil-haunted seas, in
flying islands, in a nation of men whose eyes