presently handed our topsails, furled the mainsail, and went away only
with our foresail. Before 2 in the morning it came on very fierce, and we
kept right before wind and sea, the wind still increasing: but the ship
was very governable, and steered incomparably well. At 8 in the morning
we settled our foreyard, lowering it 4 or 5 foot, and we ran very
swiftly; especially when the squalls of rain or hail from a black cloud
came overhead, for then it blew excessive hard. These, though they did
not last long, yet came very thick and fast one after another. The sea
also ran very high; but we running so violently before wind and sea we
shipped little or no water; though a little washed into our upper deck
ports; and with it a scuttle or cuttlefish was cast up on the carriage of
a gun.

The wind blew extraordinary hard all Wednesday the 7th of June but abated
of its fierceness before night: yet it continued a brisk gale till about
the 16th, and still a moderate one till the 19th day; by which time we
had run about 600 leagues: for the most part of which time the wind was
in some point of the west, namely from the west-north-west to the south
by west. It blew hardest when at west or between the west and south-west,
but after it veered more southerly the foul weather broke up: this I
observed at other times also in these seas, that when the storms at west
veered to the southward they grew less; and that when the wind came to
the east of the south we had still smaller gales, calms, and fair
weather. As for the westerly winds on that side the Cape, we like them
never the worse for being violent, for they drive us the faster to the
eastward; and are therefore the only winds coveted by those who sail
towards such parts of the East Indies as lie south of the equator; as
Timor, Java, and Sumatra; and by the ships bound for China, or any other
that are to pass through the Straits of Sunda. Those ships having once
passed the Cape keep commonly pretty far southerly, on purpose to meet