By now the noise had brought the
watch and others. A dozen men came crowding in, in the
moonlight. We took the madman away and kept him fast,
and Juan Lepe tried to cure him but could not. In three
days he died and we buried him at sea. And Fernando,
creeping to me, asked, "senor, don't you feel at times that
there is madness over all this ship and this voyage and _him_
--the Admiral, I mean?"
I answered him that it was a pity there were so few
madmen, and that Felipe must have been quite sane.
"Then what do you think was the matter with Felipe,
Senor?"
I said, "Did it ever occur to you, Fernando, that you had
too much courage and saw too far?" At which he looked
frightened, and said that at times he had felt those symptoms.
CHAPTER XXI
MARTIN PINZON did not return to us. That tall,
blond sea captain was gone we knew not where. The
_Santa Maria_ and the Nina sailed south along the foot
of Cuba. But now rose out of ocean on our southeast quarter
a great island with fair mountain shapes. We asked
our Indians--we had five aboard beside Diego Colon--
what it was. "Bohio! Bohio!" But when we came there,
its own inhabitants called it Hayti and Quisquaya.
The Admiral paced our deck, small as a turret chamber,
his hands behind him, his mind upon some great chart drawn
within, not without.
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