"Lord! After that storm that went on for a whole week, where in the world have we been blown to? Between eight and nine degrees north latitude, this far south, we've actually run into land—and an unbroken stretch of tropical jungle at that... And this jungle's coastline runs from the southeast toward the northwest. We've already sailed at least one or two thousand li along it!..."
"Damn it! Is this some island, or a continent? And now there's such a broad freshwater estuary, washing even the sea into a pale color... No matter how you look at it, the upper reaches of this Great River must be extremely vast. It looks completely like one huge stretch of land!..."
"Holy Mother! At this latitude, how could there be a tropical continent, a continent that has never appeared in any sailing records, that the Kingdom's navigators never imagined, that even those Castilians before us never discovered?... Could this really be India?!..."
"Impossible! We sailed west from the Azores for only ten thousand li, and we've reached India?... India lies west of the Southern Continent, even closer than sailing east from the Southern Continent?... How could that be?! It makes no sense at all!... Surely this couldn't be a New Continent no one knows about?..."
Gray-white shoals reflected the deep-blue seawater, while boundless green rainforest joined into one continuous expanse along the twisting coast. Here, green seemed to be the only backdrop. The endless sea of trees stretched from the waterlogged marshes by the shore all the way to the estuary fanning inland. Even when the lookout climbed the tall mast and strained his eyes toward the south, he still could not see any color beyond green, still could not see a single break in the southern rainforest!
Bang! Bang!...
The sound of