Spice and the Devil's Cave Read Online Free PDF

glass – they’d all admitted that it made studying the maps at night as easy as by day. “A regular lighthouse” someone had laughingly dubbed it – and the name had stuck.
    But he must get to work; before he knew it, midday would be afternoon. There was so much to do . . . the astrolabe . . . the compass box. He opened a cupboard, and stood looking at two plates of copper within. Gently he took one up – almost as if it were alive – turned it in his hands. No, not that today; too much else to be done. Besides, before he could cut the copper into the proper discs, he must first put on paper the design that he had pretty well in mind. Already he could see in its completeness the new instrument that he had in mind: a metal astrolabe like those the Arabs had used for centuries, but as yet unknown to western navigation. This was Abel’s newest and most precious secret, and that was why his fingers trembled a little, as he put the plate back into the cupboard.
    He’d better go on with the compass box, he decided, since it was begun; but the piece of mahogany on which he’d started was so hard that first he must sharpen his saw.
    As he began filing, he had a mental picture of Ruth – Ruth as she would presently stand, in the doorway, fix him with her bright, black eyes, and say – he knew well enough what she would say: “The time you waste in this workshop of yours, Abel! . . . Think of the money you could be making!”
    Ruth had a heart of gold, he reflected, but when it came to imagination, one had to be patient with her. Besides, to do her justice, she wasn’t alone in her opinion; for he knew it was said, here in Lisbon, that Abel Zakuto’s astuteness could have made him rich even in this city whose Jews were known over Europe for their sagacity.
    â€œRich!” Abel snorted contemptuously. “Money!” What money could buy the wealth of this room? Poor enough it might look to some with its bare table and plain chairs. But think of the men who’d sat around that table! . . .
    Diego Cam, with his first glowing tales of how he’d seen the Congo’s vast flood rush far into the sea, of how he’d set up at its mouth the stone pillar of Portugal; Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, who’d come here, sad and disheartened by King John’s indifference, but who’d gone away fired with the courage that they’d found here in the workshop; and Pero d’Alemquer, chief pilot of the Diaz expedition to the Cape; and Martin Behaim, the German. Conceited Martin was, Abel reflected, but such charts as he had made, with such German thoroughness! Would these men have gathered in his workshop, if he’d been only a money maker? Would Bartholomew Diaz come here night after night, if he, Abel Zakuto, had been merely a rich man?
    He laid down the sharpened saw, and stood up to reach a partly worked piece of mahogany. He lingered to survey a row of shelves on which were ranged delicate tools and packets of metal and blocks of fine-grained wood. There was one shelf that ran entirely to compasses. Mentally Abel contrasted them with the unwieldy “Genoese Needle” 1 – and gave a sigh of content. . . . Not but what he could improve on his present workmanship – and would!” Getting money,” he mused, “when one could be making instruments to help find new worlds!”
    His eyes roved to a niche in the wall, and lovingly dwelt there – his precious, even if tiny, library! What wealth would tempt from him those parchment treatises on astronomy and geometry, or that volume of Marco Polo’s Travels transcribed from the very copy once owned by the Great Navigator, 2 and bound by Abel’s own hands in boards half-covered with sheepskin.
    He sat down at his carpenter’s bench and made fast the mahogany block. This was to be a compass larger than those on the shelf, and in his mind it had already been