"So vpon Saturday in the afternoone the 31 of August, we changed our
course, and returned backe for England, at which very instant, euen in
winding about, there passed along betweene vs and towards the land which
we now forsooke a very lion to our seeming, in shape, hair and colour, not
swimming after the maner of a beast by moouing of his feete, but rather
sliding vpon the water with his whole body (excepting the legs) in sight,
neither yet in diuing vnder, and againe rising aboue the water, as the
maner is, of Whales, Dolphins, Tunise, Porposes, and all other fish: but
confidently shewing himselfe aboue water without hiding: Notwithstanding,
we presented our selues in open view and gesture to amase him, as all
creatures will be commonly at a sudden gaze and sight of men. Thus he
passed along turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with
ougly demonstration of long teeth, and glaring eies, and to bidde vs a
farewell (comming right against the Hinde) he sent forth a horrible voyce,
roaring or bellowing as doeth a lion, which spectacle wee all beheld so
farre as we were able to discerne the same, as men prone to wonder at
euery strange thing, as this doubtlesse was, to see a lion in the Ocean
sea, or fish in shape of a lion. What opinion others had thereof, and
chiefly the Generall himselfe, I forbeare to deliuer: But he tooke it for
Bonum Omen [a good omen], reioycing that he was to warre against such an
enemie, if it were the deuill."
When they came north of the Azores, very violent storms met them; most
"outrageous seas," the narrator says; and they saw little lights upon the
mainyard called then by sailors "Castor and Pollux," and now "St. Elmo's
Fire"; yet they had but one of these at a time, and this is thought a sign
of tempest. On September 9, in the afternoon, "the general," as they
called him, Sir Humphrey, was sitting abaft with a book in his hand, and
cried out more than once to those in the other vessel, "We are as near to
heaven by sea as by land." And that same night about twelve o'clock, the
frigate being ahead of the _Golden Hind_, the lights of the smaller
vessel suddenly disappeared, and they knew that she had sunk in the sea.
The event is well described in a ballad by Longfellow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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