a tower by the palace and wave it back, so that the falling rain makes but a pleasant wall around the king’s fair garden that itself rests in sunshine.  Also that without touching them they cause the golden flagons to fill with red wine and to move through air, with no hand upon them, to the king’s table.  That was long ago.  We have had no news of them of late.  They may do now more marvelous, vaster things.”

“And the moral?”

“I said, `They do them there.’  Perhaps this is there.”

“I take you!” I said and half-laughed.  “We may be in Cathay all this while, under the golden roofs, with the bells strung from the eaves.  Yonder line of cranes standing in the shallow water, watching us, may, God wot, be tall magicians in white linen and scarlet silk!”

He crossed himself.  The cranes had lifted themselves and flown away.  “If they heard—­”

“Are you in earnest?”

He put his hands over his eyes.  “Sometimes I think it may be fact, sometimes not!  Sorcery is a fact, and who knows how far it may go?  At times my brain is like to crack, I have so cudgeled it!”

That he cudgeled it was true, and though his brain never cracked and to the end was the best brain in a hundred, yet from this time forth I began to mark in him an unearthliness.

These islands we named the Queen’s Gardens, and escaping from them came again to clean coast.  On we went for two days, and this part of Cuba had many villages, at sea edge or a little from the water, and all men and women were friendly and brought us gifts.

I remember a moonlight night.  All were aboard the Cordera, the Santa Clara and the San Juan, for we meant to sail at dawn.  We had left a village yet dancing and feasting.  The night was a miracle of silver.  Again I stood beside Christopherus Columbus; from land streamed their singing and their thin, drumming and clashing music.  At hand it is rather harsh than sweet, but distance sweetened it.

“What will be here in the future—­if there are not already here, after your notion, great cities and bridges and shipping, and only our eyes holden and our hands and steps made harmless?  Or nearly harmless, for we have slain some Indians!”

He had made a gesture of deprecation.  “Ah, that, I hardly doubt, was my fancy!  But in the future I see them, your cities!”

“Do you see them, from San Salvador onward and everywhere, —­Spanish cities?”

“Necessarily—­seeing that the Holy Father hath given the whole of the land to Spain.”  He looked at the moon that was so huge and bright, and listened to the savage music.  “If we go far enough—­walking afar—­who knoweth what we shall find?” He stood motionless. “I do not know.  It is in God’s hands!”

“Do you see,” I asked, “a great statue of yourself?”

“Yes, I see that.”

The moon shone so brightly it was marvel.  Land breeze brought perfume from the enormous forest.  “It is too fair to sleep!” said the Admiral.  “I will sit here and think.”