"'The sailors were ready to kill their admiral'"
"But when the sailors saw a great flock of land birds passing over the ship going southwest instead of west, they took new heart, for they were sure land must lie not far to the southwestward.
"So we led them on to the Bahamas. And on the seventh day, very early in the morning, the crew, with a cry of 'Land! Land!' fell down upon their knees and gave thanks to heaven. Watling's Island, one of the smaller Bahamas, lay ahead of them, smiling in the sea.
"Then the sailors gathered about the admiral, Christopher Columbus, whom a little before they were going to kill, and cheered and called him the greatest navigator in the world—which, in truth, he was.
"But even Columbus himself never learned to his dying day that it was the weather-beaten bird who had fallen on his friendly deck some years before, who had led him by the shortest cut to the land of the New World.
"So you see, Doctor," the Jay ended, picking up his letters and getting ready to fly, "if it hadn't been for my ancestor Christopher Columbus would have had to turn back to please his sailors, or be killed. If it hadn't been for him America would not have been discovered in 1492—later, perhaps, but not in 1492. Good-bye! I must be going. Thanks for the acorns."