"Are not the boats lost on your shore now and then?" He said that there was no fear, and that no boats were lost. He told me that up a great way by the moon—that is where the moon then came up—there dwelt a tribe of white men like me, with beards. I felt sure that they must have come from Spain, to work the gold mines. I put this to him: "Could I go from this isle and join those men?"
"Yes, yes, you may go in two boats."
It was hard to see how one man could go in two boats, but what he meant was, a boat twice as large as my own.
One day I said to my slave, "Do you know who made you?"
But he could not tell at all what these words meant. So I said, "Do you know who made the sea, the ground we tread on, the hills, and woods?" He said it was Beek, whose home was a great way off, and that he was so old that the sea and the land were not so old as he.
"If this old man has made all things, why do not all things bow down to him?"
My slave gave a grave look, and said, "All things say 'O' to him."
"Where do the men in your land go when they die?"
"All go to Beek."
I then held my hand up to the sky to point to it, and said, "God dwells there. He made the world, and all things in it. The moon and the stars are the work of his hand. God sends the wind and the rain on the earth, and the streams that flow: He hides the face of the sky with clouds, makes the grass to grow for the beasts of the field, and herbs for the use of man. God's love knows no end. When we pray, He draws near to us and hears us."