1492

A strange light was around us as though the tempest itself made a light. By it I marked the Admiral upright where he could best command the whole. He had lashed himself there for the ship tossed excessively. His great figure stood; his white blowing hair in that strange light made for him a nimbus. It was strange how the light seemed to seize that and his brow and his gray-blue eyes.... He looked what he was something more than a bold man and a brave sea captain and there streamed from him comfort. It touched his mariners; it came among them like tongues of flame. -from Chapter XXXI This 1922 book published in England under the title Admiral of the Ocean-Sea is a fictionalized account of Christopher Columbuss famous 1492 voyage told from the point of view of one of his sailors Jayme de Marchena a Spanish Jew whose kabbalistic perspective lends the tale an air of mystery and mysticism. A classic of historical fiction it is a stirring adventure of exploration of the wide world and the inner soul. MARY JOHNSTON (1870-1936) also wrote Lewis Rand Pioneers of the Old South and To Have and to Hold.