The frigate was put about, a manoeuvre immediately followed by the _Queen Margaret_, and both steered for the Isle of May: by this time the two strange sails were placed upon the lee-bow. The bustle caused by this manoeuvre brought on deck Father Zuill, the ship's chaplain, a grave but kind old man, whose brains were so much steeped in abstruse study, lore, and scientific vagaries, as to be of little use either to himself or others. To defend him from the cool, fresh air of the morning sea, he was well muffled in a coarse blue over-coat, shaped like a cassock, with wide sleeves, and a cowl which fell behind; on his head was a coarse blue bonnet. A cord encircled his waist, and thereat hung his cross and rosary, with a pocket-dial, or perpetual almanack, of brass. In one hand he had a pen, in the other a little volume, bound in vellum and clasped with gold; he had been studying it overnight, till his eyes became red and inflamed, and he had applied himself to it immediately again, after morning prayers. It was one of this good man's crotchets to imagine that, by discovering the true burning-glasses of the ancients, he would supersede the use of cannon and gunpowder, and this idea being ever uppermost in his head, he saw everything through its medium. "If these should be English ships," said he, "have you no scruple, Sir Andrew anent fighting on Sunday?" "Scruple! gadzooks, no--the devil a bit! There is no Sunday in five-fathom water; and here, I believe, we have somewhere about seventy by the line; besides, Father Zuill, bethink thee of the saw--'the better day, the better deed.' Barton, run out that spanker-boom, and sheet home the foretopsail; keep all hands or deck." These orders were obeyed in the time I have taken to write them. "Hast thou heard, father," resumed the admiral, "that Vasco de Gama, a certain valiant mariner of Portugal, hath sailed from the Rock of Lisbon to reach India by weathering the Cape of Storms?" "Yes--but he will never do it," replied the friar, emphatically. "I fear me so, for the good Bartholomew Diaz--he who gave me this Moorish poniard--tried it with two fair barks of fifty tons each, four years ago, and failed completely." "'Tis because of an evil spirit who dwells on the top of the Table-Mountain," said the chaplain; "a spirit whose angry breath can whelm the largest caravel in the ocean." "Yea, father, the Storm Fiend," replied the admiral; "old Diaz told me that he saw his shadowy form in the clouds, over hanging his mainmast head, for many days." "But De Gama hath received from his king a consecrated banner, having in its centre the white cross of the Military Order of Christ; and, moreover, he hath a letter to Prester John, of the Indies." "Would that I were with him!" said Sir Andrew.