HIS DETERMINATION TO PROCEED.
On they go, having signs occasionally in the presence of birds and grass and fish that land must be near; but land does not come. Once, too, they are all convinced that they see land: they sing the "Gloria in excelsis;" and even the admiral goes out of his course towards this land, which turns out to be no land. They are like men listening to a dreadful discourse or oration, that seems to have many endings which end not: so that the hearer listens at last in grim despair, thinking that all things have lost their meaning, and that ending is but another form of beginning.
These mariners were stout-hearted, too; but what a daring thing it was to plunge, down-hill as it were, into
A world of waves, a sea without a shore,
Trackless, and vast, and wild, [Rogers]
mocked day by day with signs of land that neared not. And these men had left at home all that is dearest to man, and did not bring out any great idea to uphold them, and had already done enough to make them important men in their towns, and to furnish ample talk for the evenings of their lives. Still we find Columbus, as late as the 3rd of October, saying, "that he did not choose to stop beating about last week during those days that they had such signs of land, although he had knowledge of there being certain islands in that neighbourhood, because he would not suffer any detention, since his object was to go to the Indies; and if he should stop on the way, it would show a want of mind."