14. The life at home between his voyages, whether spent with his
brother, the cosmographer, at Lisbon, or with his wife and sailor
brother-in-law, on the Porto Santo island, was hardly less nautical
than the voyages themselves. Porto Santo was in line with the
ship-routes to and from Spain and all the new-found African coast and
islands; and the family there, with the men sailors and geographers,
and the women, wives and daughters of sailors and geographers, lived
in the bracing salt sea-air, full of the tingle of adventure.

15. Wild stories tell the sailors, coming and going, whom one can
scarce contradict for lack of certain knowledge; and is it not an age
of wonders in real life? And the round earth, the round earth--_is_ it
round? And the empire of the Grand Khan just over the western water
there--not far! The sailors said that on the shores of one of the
islands two dead men of strange appearance had been washed in from the
west. The sailors said they had picked up curiously-carved sticks
drifting from the west. Pedro Correa himself, Columbus's
brother-in-law, and a man to be trusted, had found one floating from
the west. And there was a legend of the sight of land lying like a
faint cloud along that western horizon.

16. "The world _is_ round," said Columbus. "It is not very large" (he
thought it much smaller than it is), "and opposite us across that sea
lies Asia; and to Asia by way of that sea I will go. There, in the
west, lies my duty to God and man; I will carry salvation to the
heathen, and bring back gold for the Christians. From the 'Occident to
the Orient' a path I will find through the waters."

THE WAITING.