"It is a history," said he, as he lighted his long clay pipe in the cabin, after the _Princess_ got under weigh next evening, and stood out of the anchorage under her courses and topgallant sails, with her royals, spanker, and gaff-topsail set.
"Or the narrative of an unfortunate voyage," suggested Hartly, thinking, doubtless, of his own.
"Or the revelation of some dreadful crime, or unfortunate love-story," lisped Mrs. Baylis, all impatience, pausing and looking up in the act of pouring out our tea.
"It is none of these," said I; "but seems to be the translation of a Portuguese legend, connected in some way with the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope."
And so, while the good captain lounged in his shirt sleeves on the cabin sofa, and puffed away with his long clay pipe, while his buxom wife made tea for us, and Hartly lit his Havannah, I commenced to read the MS. we had found so singularly; and it ran thus--but requires a chapter or two to itself.
It is written--says the Spanish Dominican Friar and Missionary Priest, the Padre Navarette--that the first time reports reached Europe of a spectre haunting the Cape of Storms, was by the narratives of certain Portuguese adventurers, who sailed into the Southern Sea, with the Senhor Bartholomew Diaz, in the early part of the fifteenth century, when Dom Joam II. occupied the throne of Portugal.
His cousin and successor, King Emmanuel, fired by the discoveries made in the reigns of his predecessors, who had planted their flag and cross on the shores of Madeira, the Azores, and Isles of the Cape de Verd, resolved to accomplish what they had failed in, and with praiseworthy zeal despatched an admiral to discover a passage to India by sea.
After a long absence this cavalier returned and reported that he had found the _southern_ extremity of the mighty African continent; but, that his ships had encountered great perils when off a flat-headed mountain of wondrous form, which he had named _El Cabo dos Tormentos_.
The King of Portugal suggested that "_El Cabo de Buena Esperanto_, (_i.e._, the Cape of Good Hope), would be a better term;" and it was at once adopted by his courtiers, though the mariners of the Admiral adhered to "the Cape of Torments," as they alleged that, not only had they nearly been swallowed by the waves of a black and stormy sea, but that they had seen a stupendous form, resembling a human figure, riding upon the whirling scud above the Table Mountain, and spreading his giant arms as if to clasp them in his terrible embrace, and hurl them into the yawning deep.