Second day passed much like first,—light fickle wind, flapping sails, smooth sea, cloudless sky. To-day beheld sea life after shore grown habitual. We might have sailed from Marseilles or Genoa and been sailing for a month. If this were all, then no more terror from the Sea of Darkness than from our own so well-known sea! But Fernando said, “It is after the Canaries! We know well enough it is not so bad this side of them. Why do they call them Dog Islands?”
“Perhaps they found dogs there.”
“No, but that they give warning like watchdogs! ‘If you go any further it shall be to your woe!’”
“Aye, aye! Have you heard tell of the spouting mountain?”
This night the wind came up and by morning was blowing stiffly, urging us landward as though back to Spain. The sky became leaden, with a great stormy aspect. The waves mounted, the lookout cried that the Pinta was showing signals of distress. By now all had shortened sail, but the Pinta was taking in everything and presently lay under bare poles. The Santa Maria worked toward her until we were close by. They shouted and we back to them. It was her rudder that was unshipped and injured. Captain Martin Pinzon shouted that he would overcome it, binding it somehow in place, and would overtake us, the Pinta being faster sailer than the Santa Maria or the Nina. But the Admiral would not agree, and we took in all sail and lay tossed by a rough sea until afternoon when the Pinta signaled that the rudder was hung. But by now the sky stretched straight lead, and the water ran white-capped. We made no way till morning, when without a drop of rain all the cloud roof was driven landward and there sprang out a sky so blue that the heart laughed for joy. The violent wind sank, then veered and blowing moderately carried us again southward. All the white sails, white and new, were flung out, and we raced over a rich, green plain. That lasted through most of the day, but an hour before sunset the Pinta again signaled trouble. The rudder was once more worse than useless.
Again it was mended. But when the next morning it happened the third time and a kind of wailing grumble went through the Santa Maria, there came pronouncement from the Admiral. “The Canaries lie straight ahead. In two days we shall sight them. Very good! we shall rest there and make a new rudder for the Pinta. The Nina will do better with square sails and we can change these. Fresh meat and water and some rambling ashore!”
Beltran the cook had been to the Canaries, driven there by a perverse wind twenty years ago when he was boatswain upon a big carrack. He said it was no great way and one or two agreed with him, but others declined to believe the Admiral when he said that in two days we should behold the volcano. Some were found to clamor that the wind had driven us out of all reckoning! We might never find the Canaries and then what would the Pinta do? Whereas, if we all turned back to Palos—
“If—if!” answered Beltran the cook, who at first seemed strangely and humorously there as cook until one found that he had an injured leg and could not climb mast nor manage sail. “‘If’ is a seaman without a ship!—He’s a famous navigator.”
“Martin Pinzon?”
“Him too. But I meant our Admiral.”