In late summer, an hour before dawn, the winds began combing the endless mane of deep waters of the Carribean coast of Central America. By sunrise they had stepped higher, littering the broad waters with endless writhing whitecaps dancing under gray and lowhung clouds. From the deck of the Pelican, you could see nothing but gray skies, surly seas, and the endless litter of bone white waves, as though the infinite dead souls below the deep waters had risen up in a mad and reckless saraband, discarding their bones to the upper world in wild abandon.

Scudding before the wind, the round-waisted caravel took the running seas on her quarter, rising and falling with unfailing grace to the fevered caresses of her tireless lover, the Spanish ocean. The light softened from gloom to gray, and the wind countered by hardening to Force 5, whipping long-toothed combers across the rollingback of the sea. Gripping the edge of the doorwayfrom the Captain's quarters beneath the poopdeck, a groggy, broadshouldered Englishman made his way to the helm station aft of the mizzen and stood surveying the heeling, rolling movement of his vessel. The whipping caresses of a high breeze at sea brought the light back into his eyes, and he grinned with a ferocious delight as the canting deck was briefly deluged in a cloud of spray from the galloping prow as another rising wave astern raised the vessel and pitched her nose down into its own passing trough.

"There's land just yon, over that horizon", he said to the tired quartmaster wrestling with the large wheel. "I can smell it. We're just forty miles off the beaches this morning, Jamison. And ten miles north of the Plate, by God. We'll see those muletrains freed of their burdens before this summer is out, mark my words. My oath on it!!"

"Aye, Cap'n", Jamison replied, leaning into the helm as another stern sea lifted the ship and tried to make it change course dramatically.

"When you raise the horizon, Jamison, bring her northly, to nor' noreast. More of a beam, but we'll suffer it. We have work to do before our presence here is made known."

"Nor'noreast, aye!", replied Jamison, as the Captain turned to return to his quarters and map table. "Count on it, Cap'n Drake".