The mutineers went back to their work, and the ships went on. For three days previous, the Admiral, following some indications he had noted from the flight of birds, had steered southwest. Through that night of the 10th and through the day of the 11th he still kept that course; but just at evening of the 11th he ordered the helm again to be put due west. The squadron had made eighty-two miles that day, and his practiced senses now taught him that land was indeed near. Without any hesitation he called together his chief officers, and announced to them that the end of their voyage was at hand; and he ordered the ships to sail well together, and to keep a sharp lookout through the night, as he expected land before the morning. Also, they had strict orders to shorten sail at midnight, and not to advance beyond half speed. Then he promised a velvet doublet of his own as a present to the man who should first make out the land. These details are well known, and they are authentic; and it is true also that these dispositions of the Admiral spread life throughout the squadron. Nobody slept that night. It was only twenty-four hours since they were ready to throw him overboard; but they now believed in him and bitterly accused one another. THE TRACK OF COLUMBUS. From a paper in _New England Magazine_, 1892, taken originally from a volume of "Reminiscences" left by HORATIO J. PERRY, who made a voyage from Spain to New Orleans in 1847. A fortnight out at sea! We are upon the track of Christopher Columbus. Only three centuries and a half ago the keels of his caravels plowed for the first time these very waters, bearing the greatest heart and wisest head of his time, and one of the grandest figures in all history. To conceive Columbus at his true value requires some effort in our age, when the earth has been girdled and measured, when the sun has been weighed and the planets brought into the relation of neighbors over the way, into whose windows we are constantly peeping in spite of the social gulf which keeps us from visiting either Mars or Venus. It is not easy to put ourselves back into the fifteenth century and limit ourselves as those men were limited. I found it an aid to my comprehension of Columbus, this chance which sent me sailing over the very route of his great voyage. It is not, even now, a frequented route. The bold Spanish and Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are no longer found upon it. The trade of the Indies has passed into other hands, and this is not the road from England to the West Indies or to America. Thus you may still sail for weeks in these seas without ever meeting a ship. Leaving Madeira or the Canaries, you may even reach those western lands he reached without having seen or felt any other sign or incident except precisely such as were noted by him. DEATH WAS COLUMBUS' FRIEND.