It
needed both the Admiral and Fray Ignatio to quell the panic.
The next day a great bird like a crane passed over the
_Santa Maria_. It came from Africa, behind us. But it spoke
of land, and the sailors gazed wistfully.
This day I entered the great cabin when none was there
but the Admiral, and again he sat at table with his charts
and his books. He asked of the sick and I answered.
Again he sat looking through open door and window at blue
water, a great figure of a man with a great head and face
and early-silvered hair. "Do you know aught," he asked,
"of astrology?"
I answered that I knew a little of the surface of it.
"I have a sense," he said, "that our stars are akin, yours
and mine. I felt it the day Granada fell, and I felt it on
Cordova road, and again that day below La Rabida when
we turned the corner and the bells rang and you stood beside
the vineyard wall. Should I not have learned in more
than fifty years to know a man? The stars are akin that
will endure for vision's sake."
I said, "I believe that, my Admiral."
He sat in silence for a moment, then drew the log between
us and turned several pages so that I might see
the reckoning. "We have come well," I said. "Yet with
so fair a wind, I should have thought--"
He turned the leaves till he rested at one covered with
other figures.
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