other that their troubles were over. Cathay, it is Cathay! they cried;
and they steered straight for the shining city. But, worst of all their
troubles, even as they sailed toward the land they thought to be Cathay,
behold! it all disappeared--island and castle and palace and temple and
city, and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about them.

For this that they had seen was what is called a mirage--a trick of the
clouds and the sun and the sea that makes people imagine they see what
they would like to, but really do not. But after this Columbus had a
harder time than ever with his men, for they were sure he was leading
them all astray.

And so with frights and imaginings and mysteries like these, with
strange birds flying about the ships and floating things in the water
that told of land somewhere about them, with hopes again and again
disappointed, and with the sailors growing more and more restless and
discontented, and muttering threats against this Italian adventurer
who, was leading the ships and sailors of the Spanish king to sure
destruction, Columbus still sailed on, as full of patience and of faith,
as certain of success as he had ever been.

On the seventh of October, 1492, the true record that Columbus was
keeping showed that he had sailed twenty-seven hundred miles from the
Canaries; the false record that the sailors saw said they had sailed
twenty-two hundred miles. Had Columbus kept straight on, he would have
landed very soon upon the coast of Florida or South Carolina, and would
really have discovered the mainland of America. But Captain Alonso
Pinzon saw what looked like a flock of parrots flying south. This made
him think the land lay that way; so he begged the Admiral to change his
course to the southward as he was sure there was no land to the west.