“I made it,” he said.  “There is nothing in the world more useful than knowing how to make maps and charts!  While I waited for Kings to make up their minds I earned my living so.”  I glanced at the log and he pushed it to me so that I might see.  “Every day from Palos out.”  His strong fingers touched the other book.  “My journal that I keep for myself and the Queen and King Ferdinand and indeed for the world.”  He turned the leaves.  The bulk of them were blank, but in the front showed closely covered pages, the writing not large but clear and strong.  “This voyage, you see, changeth our world!  Once in Venice I heard a scholar learned in the Greek tell of an old voyage of a ship called Argo, whence its captain and crew were named Argonauts, and he said that it was of all voyages most famous with the ancients.  This is like that, but probably greater.”  He turned the pages.  “I shall do it in the manner of Caesar his Commentaries.”

He knew himself, I thought, for as great a man as Caesar.  All said, his book might be as prized in some unentered future.  He did not move where time is as a film, but where time is deep, a thousand years as a day.  He could not see there in detail any more than we could see tree and house in those Canaries upon which we were bearing down.

I said, “Now that printing is general, it may go into far lands and into multitude of hands and heads.  Many a voyager to come may study it.”

He drew deep breath.  “It is the very truth!  Prince Henry the Navigator.  Christopherus Columbus the Navigator, and greater than the first—­”

Sun shone, wind sang, blue sea danced beyond the door.  Came from deck Roderigo Sanchez and Diego de Arana.  The Admiral made me a gesture of dismissal.

The Canaries and we drew together.  Great bands of cloud hid much of the higher land, but the volcano top came clear above cloud, standing bare and solemn against blue heaven.  Leaving upon our right Grand Canary we stood for the island of Gomera.  Here we found deep, clear water close to shore, a narrow strand, a small Spanish fort and beginnings of a village, and inland, up ravines clad with a strange, leafless bush, plentiful huts of the conquered Guanches.  Our three ships came to anchor, and the Admiral went ashore, the captains of the Pinta and the Nina following.  Juan Lepe was among the rowers.

The Spanish commandant came down to beach with an armed escort.  The Admiral, walking alone, met him between sea and bright green trees, and here stood the two and conversed while we watched.  The Admiral showed him letters of credence.  The commandant took and read, handed them back with a bow, and coming to water edge had presented to him the two captains, Martin and Vicente Pinzon.  He proved a cheery old veteran of old wars, relieved that we were not Portuguese nor pirates and happy to have late news from Spain.  It seemed that he had learned from a supply ship in June that the expedition was afoot.