18 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
where every coast-line had been neatly and accurately 
charted there lay an infinite expanse of water, but south- 
ward as the Torrid Zone was approached the sea became 
covered with darkness, the waves rose to mountain height, 
the wind dropped calm, the water itself evaporated into a 
saline mud in which dwelt monsters of indescribable size 
and variety. Blackest horror of all, the huge hand of 
the Devil himself would be thrust up above the boiling 
sea groping for wandering ships; one of the fantastic 
islands in the Atlantic on a mediaeval map bears the title, 
de la man de Satanaxio . We hear at the present day of 
the superstitions of sailors, and multiplying these super- 
stitions by the centuries which have passed since Prince 
Henry organised his pioneer exploration, we can dimly 
apprehend what the courage of the old mariners was, 
nerving them to contend against far greater obstacles 
than those interposed by Nature. 
Year after year, from 1418 until he died in 1460, Prince 
Henry sent out his ships under stout skippers trained at 
his naval observatory at Sagres in the knowledge of 
Ptolemy and the Arabs, and posted up in all the informa- 
tion brought back by their contemporaries. The farthest 
south of these days was Cape Nun (28° 46' N.) long held 
impassable ; it was passed by Gil Eannes in 1433 or J 434- 
Ten years later the dreary harbourless coast of the Great 
Desert was passed and the name of Cape Verde, the Green 
Cape, testifies to the joy and surprise of the navigators in 
their discovery that the Torrid Zone was not all Sahara, 
but contained fertile and inhabited land. The Navigator 
died long before the achievement of crossing the equator 
by one of the ships which followed voluntarily in the 
track which he had opened with the labour of a life-time. 
This occurred abo^t 1470. 
