"Gray Ocean, stretching endlessly and now coming close, were it not well if I drowned myself this gray morning while I can choose the death I shall die?" Told from the point of view of one of his sailors, Jayme de Marchena, a Spanish Jew whose point of view gives the tale a sense of mystery-as well as a layer of mysticism-this fictional account of Christopher Columbus"s famous 1492 voyage is a stirring, riveting adventure of exploration, both of the whole wide world, as well as of that of the inner soul.