Fearful things had happened to such mariners, the sailors added, for the Sea of Darkness swarmed with spectres, devils, and imps. And when night fell, slimy monsters crawled and swam in its boiling waves. Among these monsters, was an enormous nautilus large enough to crush a whole ship in its squirming arms, and a serpent fifty leagues long with flaming eyes and horse’s mane. Sea-elephants, sea-lions, and sea-tigers, fed in beds of weeds. Harpies and winged terrors flew over the surface of the water.
And horrible, they said, was the fate which overtook the ship of any foolhardy mariners who ventured too far out on that gloomy ocean. A gigantic hand was thrust up through the waves, and grasped the ship. A polypus, spouting two water-spouts as high as the sky, made such a whirlpool that the vessel, spinning round and round like a top, was sucked down into the roaring abyss.
These frightful sea-yarns and many like them, the sailors told about the Atlantic Ocean, and people believed them. But the eyes of the boy Columbus, as he sat listening, must have sparkled as he longed to explore those mysterious waters of the Sea of Darkness, and follow them to the very edge of the world.
For all that lay to the west of the Azores, was a great and fascinating mystery, when Columbus was a boy, before America was discovered.
THE FORTUNATE ISLES
Listen now to some of the stories that the Irish sailors who visited Genoa, told when Columbus was a boy. And people in those days, believed them to be true.
They told how far, far in the West, where the sun set in crimson splendour, lay the Terrestrial Paradise from which Adam and Eve were driven. And other wonder tales the sailors told.
One was the enchanting tale of Maeldune, the Celtic Knight, who seeking his father’s murderer, sailed over the wide Atlantic in a coracle of skins lapped threefold, one over the other.
Many were the wonder-islands that Maeldune and his comrades visited—the Island of the Silvern Column; the Island of the Flaming Rampart; the Islands of the Monstrous Ants, and the Giant Birds; the Islands of the Fierce Beasts, the Fiery Swine, and the Little Cat; the Islands of the Black Mourners, the Glass Bridge, and the Spouting Water; the Islands of the Red Berries, and the Magic Apples; and the islands of many other wonders.
Many were the strange adventures that Maeldune had in enchanted castles with beautiful Queens and lovely damsels, with monstrous birds, sleep-giving potions, and magic food.