Oliver was considering how he could explain a ship's compass to the birds, but only the tail end of his thinking slipped out. "They call some of them men-of-war, too," he chuckled. "You must have thought it funny the first time you saw one," said Dorcas Jane. "Not me, but my ancestors," said the Man-of-War Bird; "_they_ saw the Great Admiral when he first sailed in these waters. They saw the three tall galleons looming out of a purple mist on the eve of discovery, their topsails rosy with the sunset fire. The Admiral kept pacing, pacing; watching, on the one hand, lest his men surprise him with a mutiny, and on the other, glancing overside for a green bough or a floating log, anything that would be a sign of land. We saw him come in pride and wonder, and we saw him go in chains." Like all the Museum people, the Man-of-War Bird said "we" when he spoke of his ancestors. "There were others," said the Flamingo. "I remember an old man looking for a fountain." "Ponce de Leon," supplied Dorcas Jane, proud that she could pronounce it. "There is no harm in a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had come sailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like a parachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with the thunder of their guns and the smoke of burning huts." The children turned toward the Pelican among the mangrove trees, crowded with nests of egret and heron and rosy hornbill. The shallow water of the lagoon ran into gold-tipped ripples. In every one the low sun laid a tiny flake of azure. Over the far shore there was a continual flick and flash of wings, like a whirlwind playing with a heap of waste paper. Crooked flights of flamingoes made a moving reflection on the water like a scarlet snake, but among the queer mangrove stems, that did not seem to know whether they were roots or branches, there was a lovely morning stillness. It was just the place and hour for a story, and while the Brown Pelican opened her well-filled maw to her two hungry nestlings, the Snowy Egret went on with the subject. "They were a gallant and cruel and heroic and stupid lot, the Spanish gold-seekers," she said. "They thought nothing of danger and hunger, but they could not find their way without a guide any further than their eyes could see, and they behaved very badly toward the poor Indians." "We saw them all," said the Flamingo,--"Cortez and Balboa and Pizarro. We saw Panfilo Narvaez put in at Tampa Bay, full of zeal and gold hunger, and a year later we saw him at Appalache, beating his stirrup irons into nails to make boats to carry him back to Havana. We alone know why he never reached there." The Pelican by this time had got rid of her load of fish and settled herself for conversation. "Whatever happened to them," she said, "they came back,--Spanish, Portuguese, and English,--back they came. I remember how Lucas de Ayllon came to look for the pearls of Cofachique--" "Pearls!" said the children both at once.