第35章 THE WOOD OF LIFE(4)

The man assessed Philip at a glance, and then, as if liking what he found in him, smiled so that white furrows appeared in his tanned cheeks.With a motion of his hand he swept aside his papers and beckoned the other to sit with him.He called on the drawer to bring a flask of Cyprus.

"I was about to have my evening draught," he said."Will you honour me with your company, sir?"The voice was so pleasant that Philip, who was in a mood to shun talk, could not refuse.He sat down by the board, and moved aside a paper to make room for the wine.He noticed that it was a map.

The Bishop of Cambray had made him curious about such things.He drew it to him, and saw that it was a copy of Andrea Bianco's chart, drawn nearly half a century before, showing the Atlantic Sea with a maze of islands stretching westwards.

The other shook his head."A poor thing and out of date.Here," and he plucked a sheet from below the rest, "here is a better, which Fra Mauro of this city drew for the great prince, Henry of Portugal."Philip looked at the map, which showed a misshapen sprawling Africa, but with a clear ocean way round the south of it.His interest quickened.He peered at the queer shapes in the dimming light.

"Then there is a way to the Indies by sea?""Beyond doubt.I myself have turned the butt of Africa....If these matters interest you? But the thought of that dry land has given me an African thirst.He, drawer!"He filled his glass from a fresh bottle."'Twas in June four years back.Iwas in command of a caravel in the expedition of Diaz.The court of Lisbon had a fit of cold ague and we sailed with little goodwill; therefore it was our business to confound the doubters or perish.Already our seamen had reached the mouth of that mighty river they called the Congo, and clearly the butt of Africa could not be distant.We had the course of Cam and Behaim to guide us thus far, but after that was the darkness."The man's face had the intent look of one who remembers with passion.He told of the struggle to cross the Guinea Deep instead of hugging the shore;of blue idle days of calm when magic fish flew aboard and Leviathan wallowed so near that the caravels were all but overwhelmed by the wave of him; of a storm which swept the decks and washed away the Virgin on the bows of the Admiral's ship; of landfall at last in a place where the forests were knee deep in a muddy sea, strange forests where the branches twined like snakes; of a going ashore at a river mouth full of toothed serpents and giant apes, and of a fight with Behemoth among the reeds.Then a second storm blowing from the east had flung them seaward, and for weeks they were out of sight of land, steering by strange stars.They had their magnets and astrolabes, but it was a new world they had entered, and they trusted God rather than their wits.At last they turned eastward.

"What distance before the turn?" Philip asked.

"I know not.We were far from land and no man can measure a course on water.""Nay, but the ancients could," Philip cried, and he explained how the Romans had wheels of a certain diameter fixed to their ships' sides which the water turned in its passing, and which flung for each revolution a pebble into a tally-box."The other's eyes widened."A master device! I would hear more of it.What a thing it is to have learning.We had only the hour-glass and guesswork."Then he told how on a certain day the crews would go no farther, being worn out by storms, for in those seas the tides were like cataracts and the waves were mountains.The admiral, Bartholomew Diaz, was forced to put about with a heavy heart, for he believed that a little way to the east he should find the southern cape of Africa.He steered west by north, looking for no land till Guinea was sighted."But on the second morning we saw land to the northward, and following it westward came to a mighty cape so high that the top was in the clouds.There was such a gale from the east that we could do no more than gaze on it as we scudded past.Presently, still keeping land in sight, we were able to bend north again, and when we came into calm waters we captains went aboard the admiral's ship and knelt and gave thanks to God for His mercies.For we, the first of mortals, had rounded the butt of Africa and prepared the sea-road to the Indies.""A vision maybe."

"Nay, it was no vision.I returned there under mild skies, when it was no longer a misty rock, but a green mountain.We landed, and set up a cross and ate the fruits and drank the water of the land.Likewise we changed its name from the Cape of Storms, as Diaz had dubbed it, to the Bona Esperanza, for indeed it seemed to us the hope of the world.""And beyond it?"

"Beyond it we found a pleasant country, and would doubtless have made the Indies, if our ships had not grown foul and our crews mutinous from fear of the unknown.It is clear to me that we must establish a port of victualling in that southern Africa before we can sail the last stage to Cathay."The man spoke modestly and simply as if he were talking of a little journey from one village to another.Something in his serious calm powerfully caught Philip's fancy.In all his days he had never met such a one.

"I have not your name, Signor," he said.

"They call me Battista de Cosca, a citizen of Genoa, but these many years a wanderer.And yours?"Philip gave it and the stranger bowed.The de Lavals were known as a great house far beyond the confines of France.

"You contemplate another voyage?"

The brown man nodded."I am here on the quest of maps, for these Venetians are the princes of mapmaking.Then I sail again.""To Cathay?"

A sudden longing had taken Philip.It was as if a bright strange world had been spread before him compared with which the old was tarnished and dingy.