The gold
in the Admiral's hand might have been gold of consciousness.
After this day for days we sailed along Cuba strand,
seeing many a fair haven and entering two or three. There
were villages, and those dusk, naked folk to whom by now
we were well used, running to beach or cliff brow, making
signs, seeming to cry, "Heaven come down, heaven, heaven
and the gods!" The notion of a sail had never come to
them, though with their cotton they might have made them.
They were slow to learn that the wind pushed us, acting
like a thousand tireless rowers. We were thrillingly new to
them and altogether magical. To any seeing eye a ship under
full sail is a beautiful, stately, thrilling thing! To these
red men there was a perilous joy in the vision. If to us in
the ships there hung in this voyage something mystic, hidden,
full of possibility, inch by inch to unroll, throbbing all
with the future which is the supernatural, be sure these, too,
who were found and discovered, moved in a cloud of mystery
torn by strange lightnings!
Sometimes we came into haven, dropped anchor and lowered
sails, whereupon those on the shore again cried out.
When we took our boats and went to land we met always
the same reception, found much the same village, carried on
much the same conversations. Little by little we collected
gold.
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