When the vessels last saw each other, the Senhor Vasco da Lobiera was much chagrined to perceive that his caravella had dropped far astern of her companions. He had ever prided himself upon the swiftness of her sailing, and now he burned lights, and strove to come abreast of the Captain-General, who had beat far to windward, and who he feared might attribute his drifting so much a-lee, and towards danger, to want of skill or seamanship.
He set as much canvas as he dared, and _Nossa Senhora da Belem_ tore through the angry sea with her foresail and foretopsail close reefed, and her jib and spritsail set, while the waves lashed her worn sides, and burst in foam over her carved and lofty prow at every furious plunge.
The seamen told their beads, lit candles before the shrine of Nossa Senhora in the great cabin, shook their heads, muttered under their long black beards, or maintained gloomy silence, fearing they knew not what, but anticipating all the terrors that had beset the followers of Bartholomew Diaz in the same waters.
And now wave after wave broke in thundering volume over her decks, till Lobiera was fain to cast overboard the brass culverins which had been consecrated by the Bishop of Lisbon, and his men averred that each uttered _a cry_ as it sank into the sea.
By midnight they were, as Joam da Coimbra stated, about six miles from the mouth of Table Bay.
Hoarsely roared the wind through the strained shrouds of the labouring caravella, as she rolled and pitched wildly amid the black and fearful waste of water, and ere long she was driving under bare poles with only her jib and staysail to lift her head from the sea, which rushed upon her like a succession of watery mountains.
With all the firmness of true mariners and cavaliers, Vasco da Lobiera and his friend Joam stood at the tiller, crossing themselves ever and anon when they shouted a command through the trumpet, or invoked our Lady of Belem. The deck had long since been cleared of every loose spar, bucket, or other material by the waves; and more than one poor mariner had been swept overboard to perish miserably in the midnight sea, for no human hand could assist them.
Some there were who asserted that they had seen the claws of a giant figure start from the black waves, and drag their shipmates down below by their beards and trunk hose.
