Columbus, ploughed its way through the darkness. The moon had long since disappeared and one by one the stars had left the sky until only the morning star remained to guide Alonzo de la Calle, crouching above his pilot wheel. The man's eyes ached for sleep, his fingers were numb from dampness and fatigue, his heart heavy with despair. "Dawn," he muttered at last, "almost the last of the night watches; Gonzalo will take my place at the wheel and I can sleep."

In the shifting light of the ship's lantern, swinging from the mast above his head, the pilot saw Bernal, the ship's doctor, advancing toward him; a little dark man, who dragged one foot as he walked. He would have passed without speaking; but Alonzo, hungry for companionship, caught his arm.

"You are in high favor with Columbus," he began, "and he confides in you. Tell me, is he still determined to go on if the next few days do not bring us to land?"

The ship's doctor nodded almost sullenly, yet there was pride in his voice when he spoke. "The admiral will not turn back. Not though the very boards of our three vessels mutiny and refuse him obedience. He will go on!"

"It is madness. It is already seventy days since we left our fair land of Spain, and——"

Bernal interrupted him with a mocking laugh. "'Our fair land of Spain'," he sneered, "is not the land of the Jew nor have we found it fair." But before he could speak further, the other clapped a warning hand over his mouth.

"Hush!" exclaimed the little pilot, "Hush! We may be overheard, and, though our admiral is gentle to the sons of Israel, it might fare ill with us if the crew were to learn that there were 'secret Jews' on board. See, some one is coming——. Be silent," and he pointed to one who moved slowly toward them.

But Bernal laughed. "It is only Luis de Torres, the interpreter, one of our own people. Shalom Aleicha," he addressed himself to the newcomer, who answered, "Aleichem Shalom," but softly, glancing over his shoulder as he did so.

"Even in the midst of the Sea of Darkness you fear to use our holy tongue," taunted the physician. "We are no longer in Spain where the very walls of our houses had ears to hear our Shema and tongues to betray us to the officers of the Inquisition when we failed to come to their cursed masses." His face twisted with rage as he pointed to his useless foot. "In Valencia I was denounced to the Inquisition, tortured almost unto death. But I escaped with my life; and now instead of spending my last days in peace in the land of my fathers I have come on this mad voyage across a sea without shore." He laughed harshly. "Yet even on these endless waves, I am safer than in the pleasant land of Spain."

Luis de Torres, who had stood leaning over the vessel's side, turned toward the speaker, his sensitive face showing pale and grave in the light of the swaying lantern. "Ah, Bernal," he said sadly, "has not the whole world become a great sea of endless waves for the unhappy children of Israel?" He shuddered slightly and drew his rich cloak more tightly about him. "I am a strong man; but I sicken and grow faint when I think of the tens of thousands of our brethren we saw scourged from the land of Spain even as we embarked and our three vessels were about to leave the port."

"Truly," Alonzo muttered, "truly, even a strong man may wish to forget what our eyes have seen. Night after night as I stand at my wheel I can see them, old men and little children and women with their babes. Where will they find rest?"

"There is no rest for Israel." It was Bernal who spoke in his sullen passion. "'Twas the ninth of Ab when our brethren were driven forth—the ninth of Ab; the day on which our Temple fell. Then we were scattered beneath the sky, but we thought at last that in the land of Spain we had found a refuge. But there is no refuge for Israel, no rest for Him until death."

The sad eyes of Luis de Torres glowed with a strange light. "Nay, friend," he corrected gently, "the God of Israel will not forget His children forever. Who knows that this new route to India, of which the admiral dreams, may not lead us to a new land, an undiscovered place where no Jew will suffer for his faith. But, O God!" he cried with sudden pain, "We have waited so long, and still our people wander and are tossed to and fro, as we are tossed about by the waves of this unknown sea. Must each century bring its new Tisha B'ab, must we indeed suffer forever? Where is rest for us? What land will give us refuge?"

He raised his face to the brightening sky, his hands tearing at the gold chain about his throat. No one spoke for a moment, nor even moved until Alonzo turned back to his wheel, his eyes bright with strange tears. A cry burst from him; a cry of unbelieving joy.

"Land! Land!" and he pointed a trembling finger toward the misty outlines of palm trees, straight and slender beneath the early morning sky. Bernal echoed his cry with a great shout and in a moment, from every part of the ship, men came pouring, wide-eyed and unbelieving that they had crossed the Sea of Darkness at last. In their midst came a quiet man; a tall man with iron-gray hair and a firm mouth, who at first spoke no word, only gazed dumbly at the fulfillment of his dreams, stretching before him in the silvery light.

"We have reached India," said Columbus at last.

Those about him laughed shrilly in their joy or wept or prayed. Alonzo, his eyes snapping with excitement, wrenched his wheel with hands no longer tired, and Bernal, the sneer for once absent from his lips, gazed with tense face toward the palm trees.

Only Luis de Torres stood apart, his face still convulsed from his passionate outburst of grief for his people. For, like the others, he could not know that instead of a new route to India a mighty continent had been discovered; nor did the unhappy dreamer dream that a very land of refuge and of hope for the wandering sons of Israel, lay before him across the smiling waters.

WHEN KATRINA LOST HER WAYToC

A Tale of the First Jewish Settlers of New Amsterdam.

The warm spring sunshine forced its way through the tiny diamond-shaped window panes to fall in a bright pool of light upon the table cloth and blue cups and bowls Mary Barsimon had brought with her from Holland. It was a pleasant room, shining with the exquisite neatness that characterized the dwelling of every Dutch housewife in New Amsterdam with the same simple, well-made furniture and bright hand-woven rugs. Yet it differed strikingly in two or three details from the other homes in the Dutch settlement; on the mantle-piece, above the blue-tiled fire-place, stood two brass candle-sticks for the Sabbath, while on the eastern wall hung a quaint wood-cut representing scenes from the Bible; Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Jacob dreaming of the ladder reaching up to heaven. This Mizrach, Samuel's father had once told him, hung upon the eastern wall of every good Jewish home, that at prayer all might be reminded to turn toward the east and face the site of the Temple at Jerusalem. For centuries the Temple had been in ruins and the children of those who had worshipped there scattered to the four corners of the earth. Jacob Barsimon himself had wandered from Spain to Holland, from Amsterdam to Jamaica, from Jamaica to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam upon the Atlantic; yet in all