other ways, and steering very badly, continually letting the ship's
head fall off to the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances
from the captain to the man at the wheel. Altogether rather a trying day
for Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal
had; but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so
long as this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the
Santa Maria with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble
below.


On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing
forty-eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on
this day they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged
to a ship of at least 120 tons burden. This was not an altogether
cheerful sight for the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who
wondered ruefully what was going to happen to them of forty tons when
ships three times their size had evidently been unable to live in this
abominable sea!

On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made
a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time.
He noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of
north instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all
mariners knew it to have. In other words, he had passed the line of true
north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude
28 deg. N. and longitude 29 deg. 37' W. of Greenwich. With his usual
secrecy he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the
pilots on the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so
exact in their observations as he was. On the next day, Friday, the wind
falling a little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues. "Here the