It would have been impossible for the admiral to have much longer withstood the numbers which now opposed him; but it pleased God that, in the afternoon of Thursday, October 11th, such manifest tokens of being near the land appeared that the men took courage and rejoiced at their good-fortune as much as they had been before distressed.  From the admiral’s ship a green rush was seen to float past, and one of those green fish which never go far from the rocks.  The people in the Pinta saw a cane and a staff in the water, and took up another staff very curiously carved, and a small board, and great plenty of weeds were seen which seemed to have been recently torn from the rocks.  Those of the Nina, besides similar signs of land, saw a branch of a thorn full of red berries, which seemed to have been newly torn from the tree.

From all these indications the admiral was convinced that he now drew near to the land, and after the evening prayers he made a speech to the men, in which he reminded them of the mercy of God in having brought them so long a voyage with such favorable weather, and in comforting them with so many tokens of a successful issue to their enterprise, which were now every day becoming plainer and less equivocal.  He besought them to be exceedingly watchful during the night, as they well knew that in the first article of the instructions, which he had given to all the three ships before leaving the Canaries, they were enjoined, when they should have sailed seven hundred leagues west without discovering land, to lay to every night from midnight till daybreak.  And, as he had very confident hopes of discovering land that night, he required every one to keep watch at their quarters; and, besides the gratuity of thirty crowns a year for life, which had been graciously promised by their sovereigns to him that first saw the land, he engaged to give the fortunate discoverer a velvet doublet from himself.

After this, as the admiral was in his cabin, about ten o’clock at night, he saw a light on shore; but it was so unsteady that he could not certainly affirm that it came from land.  He called to one Pedro Gutierrez and desired him to try if he could perceive the same light, who said he did; but one Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, on being desired to look the same way, could not see it, because he was not up time enough, as neither the admiral nor Gutierrez could see it again above once or twice for a short space, which made them judge it to proceed from a candle or torch belonging to some fisherman or traveller, who lifted it up occasionally and lowered it again, or perhaps from people going from one house to another, because it appeared and vanished again so suddenly.  Being now very much on their guard, they still held on their course until about two in the morning of Friday, October 12th, when the Pinta, which was always far ahead, owing to her superior sailing, made the signal of seeing land, which was first discovered