decks in cataracts of foam, and the shriekings of the gale in the
rigging drowned the exhortations of the half-drowned priest. Cannon,
cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard, and the chests of the
sailors would have followed, had not the latter, despite their fright,
raised such a howl of remonstrance that the order was revoked. At length
day dawned. At least there was light to die by. Plunging, reeling, half
submerged, quivering under the crashing shock of the seas, whose
mountain ridges rolled down upon her before the gale, the ship lay in
deadly jeopardy from Friday till Monday noon. Then the storm abated; the
sun broke forth; and again she held her course.

They reached Dominica on Sunday, the fifth of August. The chaplain
tells us how he went on shore to refresh himself,--how, while his
Italian servant washed his linen at a brook, he strolled along the beach
and picked up shells,--and how he was scared, first, by a prodigious
turtle, and next by a vision of the cannibal natives, which caused his
prompt retreat to the boats.

On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of Porto Rico, where they
found two of their companion-ships, from which they had parted in the
storm. One of them was the San Pelayo, with Menendez on board. Mendoza
informs us that in the evening the officers came on board his ship, when
he, the chaplain, regaled them with sweetmeats, and that Menendez
invited him not only to supper that night, but to dinner the next day,
"for the which I thanked him, as reason was," says the gratified
churchman.

Here thirty men deserted, and three priests also ran off, of which
Mendoza bitterly complains, as increasing his own work. The motives of
the clerical truants may perhaps be inferred from a worldly temptation