"Every one on board saw the old woman, and knew her to be Dame Kirby. So did poor Mrs Derick; and after gazing at her wildly for some time, she could bear the dreadful sight no longer, and fell back in a swoon. Her husband ran to raise her, and as he supported her in his arms, he shouted out to the old woman to begone, and to be content with the mischief she had already caused. Indeed, there was not a soul on board who did not believe that she had done all the damage we had suffered. The hag only laughed and jeered at him the more he stormed, and so madly enraged did he become at her mockery, that I do believe had he not been holding his wife in his arms, he would in his passion have flung himself overboard to get hold of her. "It must not be supposed that the officers and crew were idle all this time, for as soon as the foremast went we set to work to get up a jury mast on the stump of the foremast, to prevent the ship from broaching to; this, three men at the wheel had meantime the greatest difficulty in preventing her doing. At length, after much labour, we got up a spare topgallant mast, and set a topgallant sail on it, and all present danger was over. No sooner had we done this, than the witch uttered a loud `Ha, ha, ha,' which sounded like what one might suppose to be the croak of a frog in a merry mood, only a hundred times louder and shriller than any frog ever croaked; and about she put her skiff, and away she went right in the wind's eye, accompanied by a storm of lightning and rain, at the rate of not less than twenty knots an hour. When she had disappeared, the poor lady began to come to herself again, and her husband tried to persuade her that what she had seen was all fancy, and laughed heartily at the idea of an old woman in a red cloak coming out into the middle of the Atlantic in a skiff, which could not live a moment in such a sea as there was running. "But she knew well enough all the time what she had seen, and nothing he could say to the contrary could persuade her that some dreadful disaster would not happen to them. I will do him the justice to say that, with all his faults, he was as brave a fellow as ever stepped, or he would not have borne up as he did. Any one to look at him, or to hear him, would suppose that he had no more seen the old woman than if she had never existed, while all the time it was on his account especially that she thus haunted us. "Where we should have got to, I don't know, at the rate we were driving, but the next day the wind shifted right round again to the north-east, and sent us back as fast as we came till we were off the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the Brazils. "We managed to steer into that magnificent harbour, and as we were in evident distress we were allowed to remain and refit; but the Portuguese in those days were not a bit wiser than their Spanish neighbours, and would allow no foreign trader to come into their ports.