Or rather, he had long felt it and fought the feeling, but
now strongly it came creeping over.
We were among the hugest number of small islands. Starboard
loomed, until it was lost in the farness, that coast
that we were following, but the three ships were in a half-land, half-water world. We wandered in this
labyrinth,
keeping with difficulty our way, so crooked and narrow the
channels, so many the sandbars. From deck it minded me
of that sea of weed we met in the first passage.
Waves of fragrance struck us. "Ha!" cried the Admiral.
"Can you not smell cinnamon, spikenard, nutmeg,
cloves and galingal?" His faith was so strong that we did
smell. From one of these islands, the _Cordera_ lying at
anchor and a boat going ashore, we took a number of pigeons.
So unafraid were these birds that our men approached them
easily and beat them down with a pike. We had them for
supper, and when their crops were opened, the cook found
and brought to the Admiral a number of brown seeds. The
Admiral dropped them into clear water, then smelled and
tasted. "Cloves? Are they not cloves?" He gave to Juan
de la Cosa and to me who also tasted and thought they might
be cloves. But we did not find their tree, and we saw no
signs of ever a merchant of Cathay or Mangi or Ind.
Christopherus Columbus leaned upon the rail of the _Cordera_.
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