Next morning Pedro was engaged in polishing his master’s steel corslet and casque, while near by two or three sailors conferred in low tones.

“We have had enough of promises,” growled one.  “As Rascon says, we are like Fray Agostino’s donkey, that went over the mountain at a trot, trying to reach the bunch of carrots hung on a staff in front of his nose.”

There was a half-hearted snicker, and one of the men pointed a warning thumb at Pedro.

“Oh!” said the speaker.  “You heard, you little beggar?”

“I did,” said Pedro.

“Well?”

“Well, I was waiting for the end of the story.  As I heard it the Abbot charged the old friar with deceiving the dumb beast, and he said he had to, because he was dealing with a donkey!”

Pedro slung the pieces of gleaming plate-mail to his shoulder and added as he turned to go, “You need not be afraid that I shall tell the Admiral what you were saying.  I am not a fool, and he knows how scared you are, already.”

More signs of land appeared—­river weeds, a thorny branch with fresh berries like rose-hips, a reed, a piece of wood, a carved staff.  As always, the vesper hymn to the Virgin was sung on the deck of the flagship, and after service the Admiral briefly addressed the men.  He reminded them of the singular favor of God in granting them so quiet and safe a voyage, and recalled his statement made on leaving the Canaries, that after they had made seven hundred leagues he expected to be so near land that they should not make sail after midnight.  He told them that in his belief they might find land before morning.

Nobody slept that night.  About ten o’clock the Admiral, gazing from the top of the castle built up on the poop of the Santa Maria, thought that far away in the warm darkness he saw a glancing light.

“Pedro,” he said to the boy near him, “do you see a light out there?  Yes?  Call Senor Gutierrez and we will see what he makes of it.  I have come to the pass where I do not trust my own eyes.”

Gutierrez saw it, but when Sanchez of Segovia came up, the light had vanished.  It seemed to come and go as if it were a torch in a fishing-boat or in the hand of some one walking.  But at two in the morning a gun boomed from the Pinta.  Rodrigo de Triana, one of the seamen, had seen land from the mast-head.

The sudden sunrise of the tropics revealed a green Paradise lapped in tranquil seas.  The ships must have come up toward it between sunset and midnight.  No one had been able to imagine with any certainty what morning would show.  But this was no seaport, or coast of any civilized land.  People were coming down to the shore to watch the approach of the ships, but they were wild people, naked and brown, and the sight was evidently perfectly new to them.