the earth, but the quick mind of the Admiral found an explanation which
quieted their fears. He told them that the real north pole was a fixed
point indeed, but not necessarily the North Star. While this star might
be in line with the pole when seen from the coast of Spain, it would
not, of course, be in the same relative position when seen from a point
hundreds of miles to the west.

On September 15 a meteor fell, which might be another omen--nobody could
say exactly what it meant. Then about three hundred and sixty leagues
from the Canaries the ships began to encounter patches of floating
yellow-green sea-weed, which grew more numerous until the fleet was
sailing in a vast level expanse of green like an ocean meadow. Tuna fish
played in the waters; on one of the patches of floating weed rested a
live crab. A white tropical bird of a kind never known to sleep upon the
sea came flying toward them, alighting for a moment in the rigging. The
owners of the _Pinta_ predicted that they would all be caught in this
ocean morass to starve, or die of thirst, for the light winds were not
strong enough to drive the ships through it as easily as they had sailed
at first. The Admiral, quite undisturbed, suggested that in his
experience land-birds usually meant land not very far away.

Colón always answered frankly the questions put to him, but there was
one secret which he kept to himself from the beginning. Knowing that he
would be likely to have trouble when he reached the seven-hundred-league
limit his crews had set for him, he kept two reckonings. One was for his
private journal, the other was for all to see. He took the actual
figures of each day's run as set down in his private record, subtracted
from them a certain percentage and gave out this revised reckoning to
the fleet. He, and he alone, knew that they were nearly seven hundred
leagues from Palos already, instead of five hundred and fifty. According