Even after they were out of the seaweed there was something weird and unnatural in the sluggish calm of the sea.  Light winds blew from the west and southwest, but there were no waves, as by all marine experience there should have been.  On September 25 the sea heaved silently in a mysterious heavy swell, without any wind.  Then the wind once more shifted to the east, and carried them on so smoothly that they could talk from one ship to another.  Martin Pinzon borrowed the Admiral’s chart, and it seemed to him that according to this they must be near Cipangu.  He tossed the chart back to the flagship on the end of a cord, and gave himself to scanning the horizon.  Ten thousand maravedis had been promised by the sovereigns to the first man who actually saw land.  Suddenly Pinzon shouted, “Tierra!  Tierra!” There was a low bank of what seemed to be land, about twenty-five leagues away to the southwest.  Even for this Colon hesitated to turn from his pre-arranged course, but at last he yielded to the chorus of pleading and protest which arose from his officers, set his helm southwest and found—­a cloud-bank.

Again and again during the following days the eager eyes and strained nerves of the seamen led to similar disappointments.  Land birds appeared; some alighted fearlessly on the rigging and sang.  Dolphins frolicked about the keels.  Flying-fish, pursued by their enemy the bonito (mackerel), rose from the water in rainbow argosies, and fell sometimes inside the caravels.  A heron, a pelican and a duck passed, flying southwest.  By the true reckoning the fleet had sailed seven hundred and fifty leagues.  Colon wondered whether there could be an error in the map, or whether by swerving from their course they had passed between islands into the southern sea.  Pedro, as sensitive as a dog to the moods of his master, watched the Admiral’s face as he came and went, and wondered in his turn.

The pilots and shipmasters were cautious in expressing their fears within hearing of the sailors, for by this time every one in authority knew that open mutiny might break out at any moment.  On the evening of October 10 a delegation of anxious officers came to explain to the Admiral that they could not hold the panic-stricken crews.  If no land appeared within a week their provisions would not last until they reached home; they had not enough water to last through the homeward voyage even now.  The Admiral knew as well as they the horrors of thirst and famine at sea, particularly with a crew of the kind they had been obliged to ship.  What did he intend to do?

The Admiral, seated at his table, finished the sentence he was adding in his neat, legible hand to his log, put it aside, put the pen in the case which hung at his belt, closed his ink-horn.  His quiet eyes rested fearlessly on their uneasy faces.

“This expedition,” he said calmly, “has been sent out to look for the Indies.  With God’s blessing we shall continue to look for them until we find them.  Say to the men, however, that if they will wait two or three days I think they will see land.”