1492 by Mary Johnston
page 190 of 410 (46%)
page 190 of 410 (46%)
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Fray Ignatio crossed himself. "The devil they worship,--
poor lost sheep!" The third gift was a considerable piece of that mixed and imperfect gold which afterwards we called guanin. And would we go to visit the cacique whose town was not so far yonder? It was Christmas Eve. We sailed with a small, small wind for the cacique's village, out from harbor of St. Thomas, around a headland and along a low, bright green shore. So low and fitful was the wind that we moved like two great snails. Better to have left the ships and gone, so many of us, in our boats with oars, canoes convoying us! The distance was not great, but distance is as the power of going. "I remember," quoth the Admiral, "a calm, going from the Levant to Crete, and our water cask broken and not a mouthful for a soul aboard! That was a long, long two days while the one shore went no further and the other came no nearer. And going once to Porto Santo with my wife she fell ill and moaned for the land, and we were held as by the sea bottom, and I thought she would die who might be saved if she could have the land. And I remember going down the African coast with Santanem--" Diego de Arana said, "You have had a full life, senor!" He was cousin, I had been told, to that Dona Beatrix whom the Admiral cherished, mother of his youngest son, Fernando. The Admiral had affection for him, and Diego de Arana lived and died, a good, loyal man. "A full outward life," he went on, "and I dare swear, a full inward |
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