“Not so fast there, velinha (small candle)” he cautioned, raising a whimsical forefinger.  “So said many of us in our youth.  And when we had sailed for weeks, and all our provisions were mouldy or weevilly, and our water-casks warped and leaking so that we had to catch the rain in our shirts, we began to wonder what it was we had come for.  The sea won’t be mocked or threatened.  She has ways of her own, the old witch, to tame the vainglorious.  And ’t is true enough,” the old pilot went on with a quizzing look at Fernao on his insecure perch, “that sailors have a bad habit of doubling and trebling their recollections when they find anybody who will listen.  I don’t know why they do it.  Maybe it is because having told a perfectly true tale which nobody believed, they think that a little more or a little less will do no harm.  For this you must remember, my children,—­that at sea many things happen which when told no one believes to be true.”

“I would believe anything you told me, Tio Sancho,” promised Beatriz, all love and confidence in her little glowing face.

“Ay, would you now?  What if I said that I have seen a ship with all sail set coming swiftly before the wind, in a place where no wind was, to stir our hair who beheld it—­and sailing moreover through the air at the height of a tall mast-head above the sea?  And a mountain of ice half a league long and as high as the Giralda at Seville, floating in a sea as blue as this one, and as warm?  And islands with mountains that smoke, appearing and disappearing in broad daylight?  Yet all of these are common sights at sea.”

“But is there a Sea of Darkness, verily, verily, tio caro?” persisted Beatriz.  The old man shook his head, with a little quiet smile.

“I’ll not say there is not.  And I’ll not say there is.  I saw a Sea of Darkness on the second voyage that ever I made, but that’s all.”

“Oh, tell us all the story!” begged Beatriz, and Fernao silently slid from the wall and came closer.

“The commander of our ship was Gonsales Zarco, one of Dom Henriques’ gentlemen.  Years before he’d been caught by a gale on his way to Africa, and driven north on to an island that he named because of that, Puerto Santo (Holy Haven).  So when he came that way again he stopped to see how the settlement that was planted there prospered, and found the people in great trouble of mind.  They showed him that a thick black cloud hung upon the sea to the northwest of the island, filling the air to the very heavens and never going away; and out of this cloud, they said, came strange noises, not like any they had heard before.  They dared not sail far from their island, for they said that if a man lost sight of land thereabouts it was a miracle if he ever returned.  They believed that place to be the great abyss, the mouth of hell.  But learned men held the opinion that this cloud hid the island of Cipango, where the Seven Bishops had taken refuge from the Moors and the Saracens.