into a kind of pyramid or cone, while a livid cloud, tapering to a point,
bent down to meet it. Joining together, they formed a vast column, which
rapidly approached the ships, spinning along the surface of the deep, and
drawing up the waters with a rushing sound. The affrighted mariners, when
they beheld this water-spout advancing towards them, despaired of all
human means to avert it, and began to repeat passages from St. John the
evangelist. The water-spout passed close by the ships without injuring
them, and the trembling mariners attributed their escape to the miraculous
efficacy of their quotations from the Scriptures. [153]

In this same night, they lost sight of one of the caravels, and for three
dark and stormy days gave it up for lost. At length, to their great
relief, it rejoined the squadron, having lost its boat, and been obliged
to cut its cable, in an attempt to anchor on a boisterous coast, and
having since been driven to and fro by the storm. For one or two days,
there was an interval of calm, and the tempest-tossed mariners had time to
breathe. They looked upon this tranquillity, however, as deceitful, and,
in their gloomy mood, beheld every thing with a doubtful and foreboding
eye. Great numbers of sharks, so abundant and ravenous in these latitudes,
were seen about the ships. This was construed into an evil omen; for among
the superstitions of the seas, it is believed that these voracious fish
can smell dead bodies at a distance; that they have a kind of presentiment
of their prey; and keep about vessels which have sick persons on board, or
which are in danger of being wrecked. Several of these fish they caught,
using large hooks fastened to chains, and sometimes baited merely with a
piece of colored cloth. From the maw of one they took out a living
tortoise; from that of another the head of a shark, recently thrown from
one of the ships; such is the indiscriminate voracity of these terrors of
the ocean. Notwithstanding their superstitious fancies, the seamen were
glad to use a part of these sharks for food, being very short of