They reel to and fro, and stagger like a
drunken man, and are at their wits end." In this
Extremity of foul
weather, the ship was so tossed and shaken, that, by its creaking noise,
and the leaking which was now more than ordinary, we were in great fear
that it would have shaken asunder, and had just cause to pray, a little
otherwise than the poet, though marring the verse, yet mending the
meaning:
Deus maris et caeli, quid enim nisi vota supersunt;
Solvere quassatae parcito membra ratis.
Yet it pleased God of his infinite goodness to deliver us out of this
danger. We made a new main-sail, which we fastened to the yard, and
repaired our other damages as well as we could. This was hardly done
when we were reduced to as great extremity as before, so that we had
almost lost our new main-sail, had not William Antony, the master of our
ship, when no one else would venture for fear of being washed overboard,
by crawling along the main-yard, then lowered close down upon the rails,
and with great danger of drowning, gathered it up out of the sea and
fastened it to the yard; being in the mean time often ducked overhead
and ears in the sea. So terrible were these storms, that some of our
company, who had used the sea for twenty years, had never seen the like,
and vowed, if ever they got safe to land, that they would never go to
sea again.
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