The jumpy nerves of the sailors were easily upset. They might have been calmer if the sea had been less calm. It is hard for Spanish blood to endure inaction and suspense together. Day after day a soft strong wind wafted them westward. Ruiz, one of the pilots, bluntly declared that he did not see how they could ever sail back to Spain against this wind, whether they reached the Indies or not. "Pedro," said the Admiral quietly, "what do you think?" Pedro hesitated only an instant. "My lord," he answered boldly, "if we cannot go back we must go on--around the world." "So we can," smiled the Admiral. "But it will not come to that." And Ruiz, reassured and rather ashamed of his fears, told the other grumblers if they had seen as much rough weather as he had they would know when they were well off. But after a time even the pilots took fright. The compass needle no longer pointed to the North Star, but half a point or more to the northwest of it. They had visions of the fleet helplessly drifting without a guide upon a vast unknown sea. It was not then known that the action of the magnetic pole upon the needle varies in different parts of 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.