the whole ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned the blood and took down the braves of the most hardy mariner of them all.... The leake which drunk in our greatest seas, and took in our destruction fastest could not then be found nor ever was by any labour, counsell or search.... Every man came duely upon his watch ... working with tyred bodies and wasted spirits three days and foure nights destitute of outward comfort, and desperate of any deliverance.... During all this time the Heavens looked so black upon us that it was not possible the elevation of the pole might be observed; nor a starre by night, not a sun beame by day was to be seene. Onely upon Thursday night, Sir George Somers being upon the watch, had an apparition of a little round light like a faint starre, trembling and streaming along with a sparkeling blaze, halfe the height upon the main mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were, upon any of the foure shroudes ... half the night it kept with us; running sometimes along the main yard to the very end, and then returning. At which, Sir George Somers called divers about him, and showed them the same.... It did not light us any whit the more to our known way, who ran now as hoodwinked men, at all adventures, sometimes north and north-east, then north and by west, and in an instant varying two or three points, and sometimes half the compass.... It being now Friday, the fourth morning, it wanted little, but that there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches, and commending our sinfull soules to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea. Surely, that night we must have done it, and that night had we then perished: but see the goodnesse and sweet introduction of better hope, by our merciful God given unto us. Sir George Somers, when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered and cried land! The storm drove the ship toward the dangerous and dreaded islands of Bermuda. Nearing the shore, the ship was caught between rocks as in a vise and held there while all the one hundred and fifty persons reached the shore in safety. As soon as they were conveniently settled, after the landing, the long boat was fitted up in the fashion of a pinnace with a little deck made of the hatches of the wrecked ship, so close that no water could enter, and with a crew of six sailors, using sails and oars, Thomas Whittingham, the cape merchant, and Henry Ravens, the master's mate, as pilot, the boat sailed for Virginia. It was hoped, when news reached Jamestown of the safe landing of the passengers from the wrecked _Sea Venture_ on Bermuda, that a ship or pinnace from the fleet in Virginia would be sent to take them home, but the long boat was never heard from again. BUILDING THE _Deliverance_ AND THE _Patience_