"But we be going to see strange things and serve
the Queen! That's something!"
"The Queen is just a lady. She don't know anything
about deep and fearful seas!"
"Where are you going," I asked, "and with whom?"
The angry man answered, "The last of that is the easiest,
mate! With an Italian sorcerer who has bewitched the
great! He ought to be burned, say I, with the Jews and
heretics! We are going with him, and we are going
with Captain Martin Pinzon, whom he hath bewitched with
the rest! And we are going with three ships, the _Santa
Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina."
The third said, "The Santa Maria's a good boat."
"There isn't any boat, good or bad," the first answered
him, "that can hold together when you come to heat that'll
melt pitch and set wood afire! There isn't any boat, good
or bad, that can stand it when a lodestone as big as Gibraltar
begins to draw iron!"
The second, whose element was melancholy, sighed, "I've
been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough!
The lookout saw a siren and the _Infanta Isabella_ was dashed
on the rocks and something laughed at us all night!"
"Ireland's nothing at all to it!" answered the angry man,
whose name was Pedro. "I've heard men that know talk!
The Portuguese going down Africa coast got to Cape Bojador,
but they've never truly gotten any further, though I
hear them say they have! They sent a little carrack further
down, and it had to come back because the water fell to
boiling! There wasn't any land and there wasn't any true
sea, but it was all melted up together in fervent heat! Like
hot mud, so to speak.
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