“And beyond it?”
“Beyond it we found a pleasant country, and would doubtless have made the Indies, if our ships had not grown foul and our crews mutinous from fear of the unknown. It is clear to me that we must establish a port of victualling in that southern Africa before we can sail the last stage to Cathay.”
The man spoke modestly and simply as if he were talking of a little journey from one village to another. Something in his serious calm powerfully caught Philip's fancy. In all his days he had never met such a one.
“I have not your name, Signor,” he said.
“They call me Battista de Cosca, a citizen of Genoa, but these many years a wanderer. And yours?”
Philip gave it and the stranger bowed. The de Lavals were known as a great house far beyond the confines of France.
“You contemplate another voyage?”
The brown man nodded. “I am here on the quest of maps, for these Venetians are the princes of mapmaking. Then I sail again.”
“To Cathay?”
A sudden longing had taken Philip. It was as if a bright strange world had been spread before him compared with which the old was tarnished and dingy.