Darkness increased. We were now among lightnings like javelins and loud thunder. Then fell the rain, in torrents, in drops large as plums. It was as though another ocean was descending upon us.
It lasted and we endured. After long while came lessening in that weight of rain, and then cessation. Suddenly the tempest was over. There shone a star—three stars and on topmast and bowsprit Saint Elmo’s lights.
Our mariners shouted, “Safe—safe! Saint Elmo!”
Suddenly, over all the sky, were stars shining. The Admiral raised his great voice. “Sing, all of us!
‘Stella Maris—Sancta Maria!’”
With the morning the Santa Clara and the San Juan, beaten about, some injury done, but alive! And the coast of Cuba, nearer, nearer, tall and blue—and at last very tall and green and gold.
Off Cuba and still off Cuba, the southern coast now, as against the northern that once we tried for a while. Sail and come to land, stay a bit, and shake out sails once more!
Wherever we tarried we found peaceable if vastly excited Indians. But still naked, but still unwise as to gold and spices, traders and markets. Cambalu, Quinsai and Zaiton of the marble bridges!
“‘Somewhere,’ saith Messer Marco, ‘in part the country is savage, filled with mountains, and here come few strangers, for the king will not have them, in order that his treasures and certain matters of his kingdom come not into the world’s knowledge.’ And again he saith, ‘The folk here are naked.’—What wonder then,” said the Admiral, “that we find these things! Yea, I feel surprised at the incessancy, but I check myself and think, how vast is Asia, and what variousness must needs be!”
But we moved in a cloud of differences, and while on the one hand this world was growing familiar, on the other the sense increased. “How vast indeed must be Asia, if all this and yet we come not—and now it is going on two years—to any clear hint of other than this!”