The King's Fifth Read Free

raised a spyglass to look at the coast.
    There was no sign he knew that a mutinous plan to
seize his ship was afoot. And yet, watching him, I wondered. Was he only biding his time?

    That the ship was restless anyone could see. For more than a week it had been so. There were sailors who predicted that the
San Pedro
would sail northward to the very marge of the sea and never overtake Coronado. Some said that Admiral Alarcón had no thought of meeting him. Instead, using the supplies meant for Coronado's army, he planned to sail on to California and there search for black pearls, in which that mysterious island was rich. Bolder men said that the Admiral was a braggart, who thought more of his magnificent bronze beard than he did of his crew.
    At this moment, as Admiral Alarcón sat under the green and gilt canopy enjoying his breakfast, a knot of sailors was gathered at the rail. In their midst stood Mendoza. They seemed to be scanning the coast, but from time to time I saw them glance toward the Admiral. These glances Alarcón must have noticed, but he gave no sign. He ate roundly, washing down his chicken with Jerez. At last he threw the carcass to the dog and disappeared.
    I went back to my chart. But now and again I paused to watch the coastline moving past. Through the small transom I could see rust-colored hills stretching away to the east and far off against the horizon the dim shape of a mountain range. This was the country marked unknown. Beyond it somewhere to the east lay the land called Cíbola, the country of the Seven Cities about which Captain Mendoza had spoken.
    Cíbola I had heard of many times before. Aboard ship there was talk of little else, and in the City of Mexico, and in Seville, even in the town of Ronda men spoke of cities where the houses were fashioned of gold and the streets themselves paved with it, street after street. But these tales had meant little to me. The making of maps was the only thing I had thought of.

    It was the only thing I thought of now as I sat at my table. Yet as the day wore on and the ship bore northward to the straining of blocks and the play of dolphins around us, my mind must have wandered. In less than an hour I made two unaccountable mistakes which took me long after suppertime to correct.
    Night had come and the ship was quiet. The lantern swung gently in its gimbals. The map was again going well when the door opened and Captain Mendoza slipped quietly into the cabin. It was a hot night but he was muffled to the chin.
    "You did not come to supper," he said, "so I bribed the cook, a greedy fellow as you know, and brought along a lamb shank."
    From the folds of his cape he drew forth a well-larded bone, for which I thanked him, of a sudden very hungry.
    Closing the door, he turned to look over my shoulder. "The map progresses, I see. But more than half of it, all eastward from the ocean, still remains a blank."
    "It will remain so, I fear. For a time."
    "You might draw in a mountain or two, at least." Mendoza said. "A few wild animals and an Indian. A river. It would make things look better all around."
    "Perhaps there are no Indians there, or rivers or mountains," I said. "Possibly it is an ocean sea, like the one we sail."

    Mendoza reached up and adjusted the lantern wick. I waited, thinking that he was about to speak again of the Seven Cities, new tales that I had not heard, though I had heard many.
    "If I were you, if I were a cartographer," he said, "I could not rest until I beheld that vast country which you have marked with the word UNKNOWN. It would haunt me day and night, just to look at it and think that no white man had set foot there."
    "It does not haunt me," I said. "But I think of it. I would like to travel and see it."
    "If you do," he replied, "then no longer will it be unknown. For the map you would make of it would be published in Seville. In Paris. And Amsterdam. And London. Everywhere. Overnight you would win renown. A boy of sixteen, yet