The cranes had lifted themselves
and flown away. "If they heard--"
"Are you in earnest?"
He put his hands over his eyes. "Sometimes I think it
may be fact, sometimes not! Sorcery is a fact, and who
knows how far it may go? At times my brain is like to
crack, I have so cudgeled it!"
That he cudgeled it was true, and though his brain never
cracked and to the end was the best brain in a hundred, yet
from this time forth I began to mark in him an unearthliness.
These islands we named the Queen's Gardens, and escaping
from them came again to clean coast. On we went for
two days, and this part of Cuba had many villages, at sea
edge or a little from the water, and all men and women were
friendly and brought us gifts.
I remember a moonlight night. All were aboard the _Cordera_,
the _Santa Clara_ and the _San Juan_, for we meant to
sail at dawn. We had left a village yet dancing and feasting.
The night was a miracle of silver. Again I stood beside
Christopherus Columbus; from land streamed their
singing and their thin, drumming and clashing music. At
hand it is rather harsh than sweet, but distance sweetened
it.
"What will be here in the future--if there are not already
here, after your notion, great cities and bridges and
shipping, and only our eyes holden and our hands and steps
made harmless? Or nearly harmless, for we have slain
some Indians!"
He had made a gesture of deprecation.
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