resume his route to the east, but he did not dare trust to the continuance
of the wind, which, in these parts, appeared but seldom to blow from that
quarter. He resolved, therefore, to keep on in the present direction,
trusting that the breeze would soon change again to the eastward.

In a little while the wind began to blow with dreadful violence, and to
shift about in such manner as to baffle all seamanship. Unable to reach
Veragua, the ships were obliged to put back to Puerto Bello, and when they
would have entered that harbor, a sudden veering of the gale drove them
from the land. For nine days they were blown and tossed about, at the
mercy of a furious tempest, in an unknown sea, and often exposed to the
awful perils of a lee-shore. It is wonderful that such open vessels, so
crazed and decayed, could outlive such a commotion of the elements.
Nowhere is a storm so awful as between the tropics. The sea, according to
the description of Columbus, boiled at times like a caldron; at other
times it ran in mountain waves, covered with foam. At night the raging
billows resembled great surges of flame, owing to those luminous particles
which cover the surface of the water in these seas, and throughout the
whole course of the Gulf Stream. For a day and night the heavens glowed as
a furnace with the incessant flashes of lightning; while the loud claps of
thunder were often mistaken by the affrighted mariners for signal guns of
distress from their foundering companions. During the whole time, says
Columbus, it poured down from the skies, not rain, but as it were a second
deluge. The seamen were almost drowned in their open vessels. Haggard with
toil and affright, some gave themselves over for lost; they confessed
their sins to each other according to the rites of the Catholic religion,
and prepared themselves for death; many, in their desperation, called upon
death as a welcome relief from such overwhelming horrors. In the midst of
this wild tumult of the elements, they beheld a new object of alarm. The
ocean in one place became strangely agitated. The water was whirled up