Mind and
heart tranquilized, and into them stepped Isabel, and she
and I, hand in hand, walked fields of the west.
The moon shone. The Admiral's voice came from above
us where he watched from the castle. "Come up here, one
or two of you!" Gutierrez was nearest the ladder. He
mounted and I after him, and we stood one on either hand
the Admiral. He pointed south of west. "A light!" His
voice was an ocean. "It is as it should be. I, Christopherus
Columbus, have first seen the Shore of Asia!"
We followed his extended hand. Clear under sail we saw
it, dimmed by the moon, but evident, a light as it were of
a fire on a beach. Diego de Arana came up also and
saw it. It was, we thought, more than a league away, a
light that must be on land and made by man. It dwindled,
out it went into night and there ran only plain silver. We
waited while a man might have swam from us to the _Pinta_,
then forth it started again, red star that was no star. Some
one below us cried, "Ho, look!" The Admiral raised his
voice, it rang over ship. "Aye! I saw it a time ago, have
seen it thrice! I, the Admiral, saw first." Men were
crowding to the side to look, then it went out as though
a wave had crept up and drenched it. We gazed and gazed,
but it did not come again.
It might have been not land, but a small boat afire. But
that is not probable, and we upon the _Santa Maria_ held
that to see burning wood on shore, though naught showed
of that shore itself, was truly first to view, first of all of
us, that land we sought.
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