He
peered at the queer shapes in the dimming light.
"Then there is a way to the Indies by sea?"
"Beyond doubt. I myself have turned the butt of Africa. . . . If these
matters interest you? But the thought of that dry land has given me an
African thirst. He, drawer!"
He filled his glass from a fresh bottle. "'Twas in June four years back. I
was in command of a caravel in the expedition of Diaz. The court of Lisbon
had a fit of cold ague and we sailed with little goodwill; therefore it was
our business to confound the doubters or perish. Already our seamen had
reached the mouth of that mighty river they called the Congo, and clearly
the butt of Africa could not be distant. We had the course of Cam and
Behaim to guide us thus far, but after that was the darkness."
The man's face had the intent look of one who remembers with passion. He
told of the struggle to cross the Guinea Deep instead of hugging the shore;
of blue idle days of calm when magic fish flew aboard and Leviathan
wallowed so near that the caravels were all but overwhelmed by the wave of
him; of a storm which swept the decks and washed away the Virgin on the
bows of the Admiral's ship; of landfall at last in a place where the
forests were knee deep in a muddy sea, strange forests where the branches
twined like snakes; of a going ashore at a river mouth full of toothed
serpents and giant apes, and of a fight with Behemoth among the reeds.
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