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“Dixit dominus domino meo: sede a dextris meis.”

The Gregorian chant swelled up, and Frey Juan, peering through the luminous mist set up by the tapers into the twilight beyond, was gratified to see his kneeling guest in an attitude of rapt devotion.

Anon, because of the interest aroused in him, the Prior was not content that supper should be served to the stranger in the bare hall where charity was dispensed to casual wayfarers, but, treating him as an honoured guest, bade him to his own table.

Colon accepted the invitation as his due, without surprise or hesitation, and the brethren ranged at the trestles set against the walls along the refectory’s length, furtively observed this meanly garbed stranger striding beside the Prior with the proud carriage of a prince, and asked themselves what hidalgo might be honouring their house.

Up that long bleak hall Frey Juan conducted him to the Prior’s table on a shallow dais across the end of it, surmounted by a fresco of the Last Supper so crudely painted as to be presumed the work of one of the friars. Another fresco no less crude, of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, adorned the ceiling, now dimly revealed in the light of a six-beaked oil lamp suspended from it. For the rest two Dukes of Medina Celi, painted in life-size and as if their limbs and trunks and heads were made of wood, scowled at each other across the hall from walls that were coated with the whitewash which the Arab had brought to Spain. The windows, square and barred, were set along the northern wall, at a height which admitting light afforded no distracting view of the outer world.

The food was plain but good: fish fresh from the port below in a pungent stew, followed by a broth of veal. There was wheaten bread and a sharp but wholesome wine of Palos, from the vineyards on the western slopes beyond the pinewoods.

They ate to the drone of a friar’s voice, reading from a stone pulpit in the southern wall, a chapter from a Vita et Gesta of St. Francis.

Colon was seated on the Prior’s right with the almoner on his other side. On Frey Juan’s left the Sub-Prior and the master of the novices completed the group at the Prior’s table. Seen through the misty light from the candlebranch that graced it, the grey lines of the minorites below looked ghostly in the crepuscular gloom enshrouding them.

When at last the reading ceased they stirred into life, and in that hour of relaxation a subdued hum of talk arose. To the Prior’s table came a dish of fruit—sleek oranges, dried figs of Smyrna and some half-withered apples, besides a flagon of Malmsey. Frey Juan brimmed a cup for his guest, perhaps with intent to loosen a tongue that should have much to tell. After that, as he still sat bemused, the Prior ventured to spur him by a direct question.

“And so, sir, having voyaged far and wide you are now come to rest here in Huelva.” Thick-lipped, he lisped a little in his speech.

Colon roused himself. “To rest?” His tone derided the suggestion. “This is but a stage in a new journey. I may stay some days there, with a relative of my wife, who is now in the peace of God. Then I go forth again on my travels.” And he added almost under his breath: “Like Cartaphilus, and perhaps as vainly.”

“Cartaphilus?” The Prior searched his memory. “I do not think I have heard of him.”

“The cobbler of Jerusalem who spat upon Our Lord, and who is doomed to walk the earth until the Saviour comes again.”

Frey Juan showed him a shocked countenance. “Sir, that is a bitter comparison.”

“Worse. It is a blasphemy wrenched from me by impatience. Am I not named Cristobal? Is there no omen to hearten me in such a name? Cristobal. Christum ferens. Bearer of Christ. That is my mission. For that was I born. For that am I chosen. To bear the knowledge of Him to lands as yet unknown.”

The Prior’s eyes were round with inquiry. But before he could give it utterance, the Sub-Prior on his left inclined his head to murmur to him. Frey Juan assented by a nod, and a general rising followed for the “Deo gratias” which the Sub-Prior pronounced.

Colon, however, was not to go with the departing friars. As they trooped out, Frey Juan resumed his seat in the high chair, and with a hand on his guest’s sleeve drew him down to sit again beside him. “We need not hasten,” he said, and refilled Colon’s cup with the sweet Malmsey.

“You spoke, sir, of lands as yet unknown. What lands be these? Have you in mind the Atlantis of Plato, or the Island of the Seven Cities?”

Colon’s eyes were lowered so that Frey Juan might not detect their sudden gleam at the very question he desired, the question that suggested that the scholarly friar who might influence a queen was caught already in the web of interest his guest was spinning.

“Your reverence jests. Yet, was Plato’s Atlantis such a fable? May not the Fortunate Isles and the Azores be remnants of it? And may there not be still other, greater remnants in seas as yet uncharted?”

“These are, then, your unknown lands?”

“No. I have no such speculative things in mind. I seek the great empire in the west, which I know to be of more definite existence, and with which I will endow the crown that may be given grace to support my quest.”

A sudden vehemence in him first startled the Prior; then its histrionic note drew a smile to his pursy lips. He scoffed good-naturedly.

“You know of the existence of these lands. You know, you say. You have seen them, then?”

“With the eyes of the soul. With the eyes of the intellect with which God’s grace has endowed me to the end that I may spread in them the knowledge of Him. So clear my vision, reverend sir, that I have charted these lands.”

It was not for a man of Frey Juan’s faith to mock at visions. Yet of visionaries, being a practical man, he was naturally suspicious.

“I am, myself, a humble student of cosmography and philosophy, yet I may be a dullard. For such knowledge as I possess does not explain how that may be charted which has not been seen.”

“Ptolemy had not seen the world he charted.”

“But he possessed evidence to guide him.”

“So do I. And more than evidence. Your paternity will admit that it is by logical inference from the known that we proceed to discover the unknown. Were it not so philosophy must stand arrested.”

“In matters of the spirit that may be true. In matters physical I am not so clear, and I must prefer evidence to imaginings however logically founded.”

“Then let me urge such evidence as exists. Storms blowing from the west have borne to the shores of Porto Santo oddly carved timbers that have never known the touch of iron, great pines such as do not grow in the Azores, and huge canes, so monstrous that they will hold gallons of wine in a single section. Some of these may be seen in Lisbon now, where they are preserved. And there is more. Much more.”

He paused a moment, as if collecting himself; actually, in order to observe his host. Discerning a rapt attention in that full pallid face, he sat forward, and began his exposition, his tone quiet, level and precise.

“Two hundred years ago a Venetian traveller, Marco Polo by name, journeyed farther east than any European before or since. He reached Cathay and the dominions of the Grand Khan, a monarch of fabulous wealth.”

“I know, I know,” Frey Juan interposed. “I possess a copy of his book. I have mentioned that these are matters of which I, too, am a humble student.”

“You possess his book!” There was a sudden eagerness in Colon’s face that brought to it an increase of youth. “That spares me a deal. I did not know,” he lied, “that I talk to one already enlightened.”

“You are not to flatter me, my son,” said Frey Juan, not innocent perhaps of irony. “What did you find in Marco Polo that I have lacked the wit to discover?”

“Your paternity will recall the allusion to the Island of Zipangu, known by the people of Mangi—the farthest point he, himself, had reached—to be situated fifteen hundred miles farther to the east.” Frey Juan’s nod encouraged him to continue. “You will remember the fabulous abundance of the gold in those regions. Its sources, he says, are inexhaustible. So common is the metal that the very roof of the king’s palace is covered with plates of it, as we cover ours with lead. He tells us, too, of the great abundance of precious stones and pearls, and in particular of a pink pearl of great size.”

“Vanitas vanitate,” the Prior deprecated.

“Not, by your leave, if well applied. Not if employed for the furtherance of worthy ends. Wealth is not mere vanity then; and here is wealth beyond all European dreams.”

The very thought of it seemed to plunge him into a state of contemplation from which he was impatiently aroused by Frey Juan.

“But what has this Zipangu of Marco Polo to do with your discoveries? You spoke of lands across the western ocean. Assuming all the eastern marvels of Marco Polo to be true, how are they evidence of your western lands?”

“Your paternity believes the earth to be a sphere?” He took an orange from the dish, and held it up. “Like this.”

“That is now the general belief among philosophers.”

“And you accept, of course, the division of its circumference into three hundred and sixty degrees?”

“A mathematical convention. That offers no difficulty. And then?”

“Of these three hundred and sixty degrees the known world includes but some two hundred and eighty. That is a fact upon which all cosmographers agree. Thus, the known lands from the westernmost point, say Lisbon, to the extreme of the charted eastern lands, leave still some eighty degrees—nearly a quarter of the earth’s total—to be accounted for.”

The Prior made a dubious lip. “We are told that it is all a waste of water, so storm-tossed and wild that there can be no hope to navigate it.”

Colon’s eyes flashed scorn. “A tale of weaklings who dare not make the attempt. There were also fables of an impassable belt of flame along the equinoctial line, a superstition which Portuguese navigators along the coast of Africa have derided.

“Give me your attention, reverend sir. Here, then, is Lisbon.” He marked a point upon the orange. “And here the uttermost point of Cathay: a vast distance of some fourteen thousand miles by my own measurement of the degree, which on this parallel I compute to be of fifty miles.

“Now if instead of travelling east by land, we travel west by water, thus ...” and his finger now went leftwards round the orange from the point where he had placed Lisbon, “... we come, within eighty degrees, to the same charted point. Your paternity will perceive that it is not merely a paradox to say that we may reach the east by travelling west. To the golden Zipangu of Polo the distance by the west cannot be much above two thousand miles. Thus far we go by evidence. Inference justifies the belief that Zipangu is by no means the farthest limit of the Indies. It is merely as far as the Venetian’s knowledge went. There must be other islands, other lands, an empire that awaits possession.”

With such ardour had he made his exposition that Frey Juan was touched by something of his fire. The simple homely demonstration with the orange had disclosed one of those obvious facts which until indicated can elude the acutest mind. The Prior had been swept almost helplessly along by the strong current of the young cosmographer’s enthusiasm. But here of a sudden he perceived an obstacle, to which his sanity must cling lest he be carried utterly away.

“Wait. Wait. You say there must be other lands. That is to go farther than I dare follow you, my son. It is no more than your belief, a belief in which you may be deceived.”

Colon’s exaltation was not cooled. Rather, being fanned, it flamed more hotly. “If it were only that, it would not be an inference. And a well-founded inference your paternity shall acknowledge it. It is based no longer on mathematics, but on theology. We have it upon the authority of the Prophet Esdras that the world is six parts land to one of water. Apply that here, and tell me where I am at fault. Or let it pass unheeded. Leave out of account my imagined lands, which would halve the distance.” He dropped the orange back into its dish. “It still remains that the Indies lie within two thousand miles of us to westward.”

“And is that naught?” The Prior was suddenly aghast at the vision that rose before his eyes. “Two thousand miles of empty waters holding perils known to God alone. The very thought is terrifying. Where is the courage that would so adventure itself into the unknown?”

“It is here.” Colon smote his breast. He sat erect, all pride, the glow of his eyes fanatical. “The Lord, Who with so palpable a hand opened my understanding, so that reason, mathematics and charts are as naught to my inspiration, opened up also my desire and endowed me with the spirit necessary to an instrument of the Divine Will.”

The force in him was one to bludgeon reason, the confidence a fire in which to consume all doubt. Frey Juan, already won by Colon’s cosmography and logic, found himself now subdued into participation in the man’s fanatical assurance.

“In my vanity—for which God forgive me—I have thought that I had some learning. But you reveal me to myself a mere groper in these mysteries.” He hung his head in thought for a moment. Colon, sipping his Malmsey, watched him like a cat.

Suddenly the Prior asked: “Whence are you, sir? For from your speech it is clear that you are not of Spain.”

Colon hesitated before giving an answer that was yet no answer. “I am from the Court of his Highness King John of Portugal, and on my way to France.”

“To France? What do you seek there?”

“I do not seek. I offer. I offer this empire of which I have spoken.” He alluded to it as to something already in his possession.

“But to France?” Frey Juan’s face was blank. “Why to France?”

“Once I offered it to Spain, and was left to the judgment of a churchman, which was like sending me to a mariner for a judgment on theology. Then I went to Portugal, and wasted time upon learned dullards whose armour of prejudice I had no arts to pierce. There, as in Spain, there was none to sponsor me, and the lesson I have learnt is that without sponsoring a man but wastes his time in seeking the ear of the rulers of these kingdoms. There is no land upon which I would more gladly bestow these treasures than upon Spain. There is no sovereign I would more gladly serve than Isabel of Castile. But how am I to reach her Highness? If I commanded an interest powerful enough to deserve her ear, intelligent enough to perceive the value of what I bring, and persuasive enough to induce her to receive me, then ... why then I should be content to stay. But where am I to find such a friend?”

Absently the Prior’s forefinger was tracing a circle on the oaken table with a drop of spilled wine.

Covertly watching him, after a momentary pause, Colon answered his own question. “I command no such friend in Spain. That is why I seek the King of France. If I fail with him, too, then I shall challenge fortune in England. You begin to perceive, perhaps, why I liken myself to the errant Jew, Cartaphilus.”

Still the Prior’s forefinger continued its absent-minded tracing.

“Who knows?” he murmured at last.

“Who knows what, reverend sir?”

“Eh? Ah! Whether you are wise. Sleep brings counsel, they say. Let us sleep on this, and talk again.”

Colon was content to leave it there. Not much had been achieved, perhaps, and yet enough to give him hope that he had not wasted time in coming to La Rabida.