In his sober fashion Jan Huygen had looked on. He did not take much stock in this sudden piety, and called it "a lot of useless noise." Then he watched the men repairing the rudder. It was discovered that there was no anvil on board the ship, and a gun was used as an anvil. A pair of bellows was improvised out of some old skins. With this contrivance some sort of steering-gear was finally rigged up, and the voyage was continued. After that, except for occasional and very sudden squalls, when all the sails had to be lowered to save them from being blown to pieces, the _Santa Maria_ was past her greatest danger, though the heavy seas caused by a prolonged storm proved to be another obstacle. No further progress was possible until the ship had been lightened. For this purpose the large boat and all its valuable contents were simply thrown overboard. [Illustration] The recital of Jan Huygen's trip is a long epic of bungling. The captain did not know his job; the officers were incompetent; the men were unruly and ready to mutiny at the slightest provocation; and everybody blamed everybody else for everything that went wrong. The captain, in the last instance, accused the good Lord, Who "would not allow His own faithful people to pass the Cape of Good Hope with their strong and mighty ships," while making the voyage an easy one for "the blasphemous English heretics with their little insignificant schooners." In this statement there was more wisdom than the captain suspected. The English sailors knew their business and could afford to take risks. The Portuguese sailors of that day hastened from one coastline and from one island to the next, as they had done a century before. As long as they were on the high seas they were unhappy. They returned to life when they were in port. Every time the _Santa Maria_ passed a few days in some harbor we get a recital of the joys of that particular bit of paradise. If we are to believe Portuguese tradition, St. Helena, where the ship passed a week of the month of May of the year 1589, was placed in its exact geographical position by the Almighty to serve His faithful children as a welcome resting-point upon their perilous voyage to the far Indies. The island was full of goats, wild pigs, chickens, partridges, and thousands of pigeons, all of which creatures allowed themselves to be killed with the utmost ease, and furnished food for generations of sailors who visited those shores.