Page 24 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

24- EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

tons, the Merchant Royal, was in charge of Samuel Fox-
V
croft. It will thus be seen that the united tonnage of this
fleet, as it was grandiloquently called, did not exceed
that registered for a good sized pleasure yacht of our d&y.
The expedition sailed from Plymouth on April 10, 1591, l
touched at the Canary Islands about a month later, and I
in August dropped anchor off Saldania, in the modern
Table Bay. Although the voyage had thus far not been
I
an unduly protracted one “ the disease of the sea,” the
terrible scurvy, had worked havoc amongst the crew.
The ravages of the malady were so great that Raymond p
decided to send back the Merchant Royal with the worst
of the sick cases in order that his further operations might
not be hampered, and the safety of the fleet possibly
HI imperilled by the presence of these miserable human wrecks *,
in his vessels. The voyage was resumed by the Penelope
) and the Edward Bonaventure on September 8. The Cape
was doubled on the following day, and almost immediately
\ the ships fell in with one of those hurricanes which have
given unenviable distinction to the great South African
promontory in the annals of navigation.
In the whole range of natural phenomena there is, per­
haps, nothing more awe-inspiring than one of these Atlantic
tempests. Immense waves fifty or sixty feet high, whose i
white tip of foam accentuates their inky blackness, sweep
! in majestic grandeur along, conveying in their irresistible
might a sense of power which seems to reduce to absolute
nothingness the puny human efforts to avert the calamity
which each mountainous mass of water appears to threaten. ■j
The sky overhead, thick with sombre masses of cloud, is
gashed with great streaks of lightning which, playing about
the masts of the labouring ship, form from time to time balls
; \

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