We are trapped! they cried.

The goblins in this dreadful sea are making our compass point wrong so as to drag us to destruction.

Go back; take us back! they demanded.
But Columbus, though he knew that his explanation was wrong, said the compass was all right.

The North Star, toward which the needle always pointed, had, so he said, changed its position.

This quieted the sailors for a while.
When they had been about forty days out from Palos, the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the Sargasso Sea.