"It was Cipango," persisted Francisco, "for the Emperor himself came and gave me a rope of pearls. There were five thousand of them, and each would buy a house or a fine horse or a suit of velvet2. And the Emperor took me by the hand, and he said, 'Dear Brother—' You might have thought I was a king—and by the mass, I was a king! I felt it right away! And then he took me into a garden, and there were three beautiful women, and one of them would push me to the other, and that one to the third, and that to the first again, as though they were playing ball, and they all laughed, and I laughed. Then there came a great person with five crowns on his head, and all the light blazed up gold and blue, and somebody said, 'It's Prester John'!"
His dream kept a two-days' serenity3 upon the ship. It came to the ear of the Admiral, who said, "'In dreams will I instruct thee.'—I have had dreams far statelier than his."
Pedro Gutierrez too began to dream,—fantastic things which he told with an idle gusto. They were of wine and gold and women, though often these were to be guessed through strange, jumbled4 masks and phantasies. "Those are ill dreams," said the Admiral. "Dream straight and high!" Fray5 Ignatio, too, said wisely, "It is not always God who cometh in dreams!"
But the images of Gutierrez's dreams seemed to him to be seated in Cathay and India. They bred in him belief that he was coming to happiness by that sea road that glistered before us. He and Roderigo de Escobedo began to talk with assurance of what they should find. Having small knowledge of travelers' tales they made application to the Admiral who, nothing loth, answered them out of Marco Polo, Mandeville and Pedro de Aliaco.
But the ardor6 of his mind was such that he outwent his authors. Where the Venetian said "gold" the Genoese said "Much gold." Where the one saw powerful peoples with their own customs, courts, armies, temples, ships and trade, the other gave to these an unearthly tinge7 of splendor8. Often as he sat in cabin or on deck, or rising paced to and fro, we who listened to his account, listened to poet and enthusiast9 speaking of earths to come. Besides books like those of Marco Polo and John Mandeville and the Bishop10 of Cambrai he had studied philosophers and the ancients and Scripture11 and the Fathers. He spoke12 unwaveringly of prophecies, explicit13 and many, of his voyage, and the rounding out of earth by him, Christopherus Columbus. More than once or twice, in the great cabin, beneath the swinging lantern, he repeated to us such passages, his voice making great poetry of old words. "Averroes saith—Albertus Magnus saith—Aristotle saith—Seneca saith—Saint Augustine saith—Esdras in his fourth book saith—" Salt air sweeping14 through seemed to fall into a deep, musical beat and rhythm. "After the council at Salamanca when great churchmen cried Irreligion and even Heresy15 upon me, I searched all Scripture and drew testimony16 together. In fifty, yea, in a hundred places it is plain! King David saith—job saith—Moses saith—Thus it reads in Genesis—"
Diego de Arana smote17 the table with his hand. "I am yours, senor, to find for the Lord!" Fray Ignatio lifted dark eyes. "I well believe that nothing happens but what is chosen! I will tell you that in my cell at La Rabida I heard a cry, 'Come over, Ignatio the Franciscan!'"
And I, listening, thought, "Not perhaps that ancient spiritual singing of spiritual things! But in truth, yes, it is chosen. Did not the Whole of Me that I can so dimly feel set my foot upon this ship?" And going out on deck before I slept, I looked at the stars and thought that we were like the infant in the womb that knows not how nor where it is carried.
We might be four hundred leagues from Spain. Still the wind drove us, still we hardly shifted canvas, still the sky spread clear, of a vast blue depth, and the blue glass plain of the sea lay beneath. It was too smooth, the wind in our rigging too changeless of tune18. At last, all would have had variety spring. There began a veritable hunger for some change, and it was possible to feel a faint horror. What if this is the horror—to go on forever and ever like this?
Then one morning when the sun rose, it lit a novel thing. Seaweed or grass or herbage of some sort was afloat about us. Far as the eye might reach it was like a drowned meadow, vari-colored, awash. All that day we watched it. It came toward us from the west; we ran through it from the east. Now it thinned away; now it thickened until it seemed that the sea was strewn with rushes like a castle floor. With oars19 we caught and brought into ship wreaths of it. All night we sailed in this strange plain. A yellow dawn showed it still on either side the Santa Maria, and thicker, with fewer blue sea straits and passes than on yesterday. The Pinta and the Nina stood out with a strange, enchanted20 look, as ships crossing a plain more vast than the plain of Andalusia. Still that floating weed thickened. The crowned woman at our prow21 pushed swathes of it to either side. Our mariners22 hung over rail, talking, talking. "What is it—and where will it end? Mayhap presently we can not plough it!"
I was again and again to admire how for forty years he had stored sea-knowledge. It was not only what those gray eyes had seen, or those rather large, well molded ears had heard, or that powerful and nervous hand had touched. But he knew how to take, right and left, knowledge that others gathered, as he knew that others took and would take what he gathered. He knew that knowledge flows. Now he stood and told that no less a man than Aristotle had recorded such a happening as this. Certain ships of Gades—that is our Cadiz—driven by a great wind far into River-Ocean, met these weeds or others like them, distant parents of these. They were like floating islands forever changing shape, and those old ships sailed among them for a while. They thought they must have broken from sea floor and risen to surface, and currents brought other masses from land. Tunny fish were caught among them.
And that very moment, as the endless possibilities of things would have it, one, leaning on the rail, cried out that there were tunnies. We all looked and saw them in a clear canal between two floating masses. It brought the Admiral credence23. "Look you all!" he said, "how most things have been seen before!"
"But Father Aristotle's ship—Was he 'Saint' or 'Father'?"
"He was a heathen—he believed in Mahound."
"No, he lived before Mahound. He was a wise man—"
"But his ships turned back to Cadiz. They were afraid of this stuff—that's the point!"
"They turned back," said the Admiral. "And the splendor and the gold were kept for us."
A thicker carpet of the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab24!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land to the west?"
"But it is caught here! What if we are caught here too? These weeds may stem us—turn great crab pincers and hold us till we rot!"
"If—and if—and if" cried the Admiral. "For Christ, His sake, laugh at yourselves!"
On, on, we went before that warm and potent25 wind, so steadfast26 that there must be controlling it some natural law. Ocean-Sea spread around, with that weed like a marsh27 at springtide. Then, suddenly, just as the murmuring faction28 was murmuring again, we cleared all that. Open sea, blue running ocean, endlessly endless!
The too-steady sunshine vanished. There broke a cloudy dawn followed by light rain. It ceased and the sky cleared. But in the north held a mist and a kind of semblance29 of far-off mountains. Startled, a man cried "Land!" but the next moment showed that it was cloud. Yet all day the mist hung in this quarter. The Pinta approached and signaled, and presently over to us put her boat, in it Martin Pinzon. The Admiral met him as he came up over side and would have taken him into great cabin. But, no! Martin Pinzon always spoke out, before everybody! "Senor, there is land yonder, under the north! Should not we change course and see what is there?"
"It is cloud," answered the Admiral. "Though I do not deny that such a haze30 may be crying, 'Land behind!'"
"Let us sail then north, and see!"
But the Admiral shook his head. "No, Captain! West—west—arrow straight!"
Pinzon appeared about to say, "You are very wrong, and we should see what's behind that arras!" But he checked himself, standing31 before Admiral and Don and Viceroy, and all those listening faces around. "I still think," he began.
The other took him up, but kept considerate, almost deferring32 manner. "Yes, if we had time or ships to spare! But now it is, do not stray from the path. Sail straight west!"
"We are five hundred leagues from Palos."
"Less than that, by our reckoning. The further from Palos, the nearer India!"
"We may be passing by our salvation33!"
"Our salvation lies in going as we set forth34 to go." He made his gesture of dismissal of that, and asked after the health of the Pinta. The health held, but the stores were growing low. Biscuit enough, but bacon almost out, and not so many measures of beans left. Oil, too, approached bottom of jars. The Nina was in the same case.
"Food and water will last," said the Admiral. "We have not come so far without safely going farther."
Martin Alonso Pinzon was the younger man and but captain of the Pinta, while the other stood Don and Admiral, appointed by Majesty36, responsible only to the Crown. But he had been Master Christopherus the dreamer, who was shabbily dressed, owed money, almost begged. He owed large money now to Martin Pinzon. But for the Pinzons, he could hardly have sailed. He should listen now, take good advice, that was clearly what the captain of the Pinta thought! Undoubtedly37 Master Christopherus dreamed true to a certain point, but after that was not so followable! As for Cristoforo Colombo, Italian shipmaster, he had, it was true, old sea wisdom. But Martin Pinzon thought Martin Pinzon was as good there!—Captain Martin Alonso said good-by with some haughtiness38 and went stiffly back over blue sea to the Pinta.
The sun descended39, the sea grew violet, all we on the Santa Maria gathered for vesper prayer and song. Fray Ignatio's robe and back-thrown cowl burned brown against the sea and the sail. One last broad gold shaft40 lighted the tall Admiral, his thick white hair, his eagle nose, his strong mouth. Diego de Arana was big, alert and soldierly; Roderigo Sanchez had the look of alcalde through half a lifetime. I had seen Roderigo de Escobedo's like in dark streets in France and Italy and Castile, and Pedro Gutierrez wherever was a court. Juan de la Cosa, the master, stood a keen man, thin as a string. Out of the crowd of mariners I pick Sancho and Beltran the cook, Ruiz the pilot, William the Irishman and Arthur the Englishman, and two or three others. And Luis Torres. The latter was a thinker, and a Jew in blood. He carried it in his face, considerably41 more markedly than I carried my grandmother Judith. But his family had been Christian42 for a hundred years. Before I left forecastle for poop I had discovered that he was learned. Why he had turned sailor I did not then know, but afterwards found that it was for disappointed love. He knew Arabic and Hebrew, Aristotle and Averroes, and he had a dry curiosity and zest43 for life that made for him the wonder of this voyage far outweigh44 the danger.
There was a hymn45 that Fray Ignatio taught us and that we sang at times, beside the Latin chant. He said that a brother of his convent had written it and set it to music.
Thou that art above us,
Around us, beneath us,
Thou who art within us,
Save us on this sea!
Out of danger,
Teach us how we may
Serve thee acceptably!
Teach us how we may
Crown ourselves, crowning Thee!
Beltran the cook's voice was the best, and after him Sancho, and then a sailor with a great bass46, William the Irishman. Fray Ignatio sang like a good monk47, and Pedro Gutierrez like a troubadour of no great weight. The Admiral sang with a powerful and what had once been a sweet voice. Currents and eddies48 of sweetness marked it still. All sang and it made together a great and pleasurable sound, rolling over the sea to the Pinta and the Nina, and so their singing, somewhat less in volume, came to us. All grew dusk, the ships were bat wings sailing low; out sprang the star to which the needle no longer pointed35. The great star Venus hung in the west like the lantern of some ghostly air ship, very vast.
Thou that art above us,
Around us, beneath us,
Thou that art within us,
Save us on this sea!
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收听单词发音
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1
fabulously
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| 难以置信地，惊人地 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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jumbled
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| adj.混乱的；杂乱的 | |
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fray
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| v.争吵；打斗；磨损，磨破；n.吵架；打斗 | |
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ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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12
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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13
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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15
heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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17
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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18
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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19
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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20
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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21
prow
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| n.(飞机)机头，船头 | |
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mariners
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| 海员，水手（mariner的复数形式） | |
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23
credence
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| n.信用，祭器台，供桌，凭证 | |
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24
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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28
faction
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| n.宗派，小集团；派别；派系斗争 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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31
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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32
deferring
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| v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的现在分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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33
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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haughtiness
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| n.傲慢；傲气 | |
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39
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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40
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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41
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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42
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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outweigh
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| vt.比...更重，...更重要 | |
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45
hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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46
bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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47
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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48
eddies
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| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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