But now a trouble seized
his eyes. They gave him great pain; at times he could
barely see. Bathe them with a soothing medicine, rest them.
But when had he rested them, straining over the ocean
since he was a boy? He was a man greatly patient under
adversity, whether of the body or of the body's circumstance,
but this trouble with the eyes shook him. "If I
become blind--and all that's yet to do and find! Blessed
Mother of God, let not that happen to me!"
I thought that he should go to Hispaniola, where in the
Adelantado's house in San Domingo he might submit to
bandaging, light and sea shut out.
At last, "Well, well, we will turn! But first we must
leave this gulf and try it out for some distance westward!"
We left this water by a way as narrow as the entering
strait, as narrow and presenting the like rough confusion
of waters, wall against wall. We called it the Mouth of
the Dragon. Mouth of the Dragon, Mouth of the Serpent,
and between them the Gulf of the Whale or of Paria. Now
was open sea, and south of us ran still that coast that he
would have mount to the Equator and to that old, first
Garden Land where all things yet were fair and precious!
"I can not stay now, but I will come again! I will find
the mighty last things!" His eyes gave him great pain.
He covered them, then dropped his hands and looked, then
must again cover.
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