They plunged into a golden haze that shrouded them from mortal eyes. Ghostly towers, castles, and palace-gates loomed dimly before Usheen, then melted away. A hornless doe bounded near him, chased by a white hound. They vanished into the haze. Then a Fairy Damsel rode swiftly past Usheen, holding up a golden apple to him. Fast behind her, galloped a horseman, his purple cloak streaming in the still air, a sharp sword glittering in his hand. They, too, melted mysteriously away. And soon Usheen himself vanished into the Land of Youth, into Fairy Land. These are some of the wonder tales that folk used to tell about the mysterious Atlantic Ocean, when Columbus was a boy. THE ABSURD TRUTH When Columbus was a boy, there was a story told that the Earth was round. Nearly every one who heard it thought it foolish--absurd. “The Earth round!” they said; “do we not know that the Earth is flat? And does not the sun set each night at the edge of the World?” But young Columbus had a powerful, practical imagination. He believed there were good reasons to think that the Earth was not flat. He attended the University of Pavia. He studied astronomy and other sciences. He learned map-making. He read how the ancient philosophers thought the Earth to be a sphere and how they had tried to prove their theory by observing the sun, moon, and stars. Then, too, there were scholars in Europe, when Columbus was young, who agreed with the philosophers. But no scholar or philosopher had ever risked his life in a frail ship and ventured across the terrible Sea of Darkness to battle with its horrors, and prove his theory to be fact. The surging billows of the Atlantic with angry leaping crests of foam, still guarded their mystery. Young Columbus became a sailor, cruising with his uncle on the Mediterranean, sometimes chasing pirate ships. When older, he made long voyages. He learned to navigate a vessel. He visited, so some historians say, England and Thule. They say, too, that Thule was Iceland. Then if he visited Iceland, Columbus must have heard the strange tale of how Leif, son of Erik the Red, the bold Northman, sailed in a single ship over the Sea of Darkness, and discovered Vinland the Good on the other side of the Atlantic. Columbus talked with sailors about their voyages. He heard how the waves of the Sea of Darkness sometimes cast upon the Islands of the Azores, gigantic bamboos, queer trees, strange nuts, seeds, carved logs, and bodies of hideous men with flat faces, the flotsam and jetsam from unknown lands far to the west. Columbus’s imagination and spirit of adventure were fired. He became more eager than ever to explore that vast expanse of water, and learn what really lay in the mysterious region, where the sun set each night and from which the sun returned each morning.