Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/42

 Columbus was sailing on a theory. Pinzon, like any other practical navigator in a strange sea, was feeling his way, and answering the indications of the waters, the skies, the green grasses that drifted on the surface of the waves, the flocks of birds that wheeled, and dipped, and showed their heels to the far-wandered navigators, and seemed to know their way so well over that remote and uncharted wilderness of the deep. Columbus had said, "We will sail to the west, and ever to the west, until the west becomes the east." Which to the men before the mast was sheer lunacy. But Pinzon had already found strange Afric lands. The scent of their leaves and flowers seemed to lie in his nostrils.

Martin Alonzo Pinzon put off in a boat, later on that 7th day of October, and came back to the Santa Maria, in which was the Admiral. He brought the information that he had seen "a great multitude of birds