They had drifted to them, we thought, from a people far more skilled.
The Admiral cried, "When and when and when shall we come to this people ?" I answered, "I tell you what is in my mind, and I have got it, I think, from your inmost mind, out of which you will not let it come forth because you have had a great theory and think you must stand to it.
But what if this that you have underneath is a greater one?
What if the world truly is larger than Alfraganus or the ancients thought?
What if all this that we have found since the first island and that means only beginnings of what is to be found; what if it is not Asia at all?
What if it is a land mass, great as Europe or greater, that no one knew anything of?
What if over by the sunset there is Ocean-Sea again, true ocean and as many leagues to Asia as to Spain?
What if they cannot lead us to Quinsai, Cambaluc or Zaiton, or to the Ganges' mouth, or Aurea Chersonesus, because they never heard of them, and they have no ships to pass again an Ocean-Sea?
What if it is all New, and all the maps have to be redrawn ?" He looked at me as I spoke, steadily and earnestly.

What Juan Lepe said was not the first entry into his mind of something like that.

But he was held by that great mass of him that was bound by the thinking of the Venerable.

He was free far and far beyond most, but to certain things he clung like a limpet.

"The Earthly Paradise!" he said, and he looked toward that Paria that we thought ran across our south.