our knots or miles an hour. We were this day at noon
about the middle of the bay of Biscay, when the wind once more deserted
us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in
many hours. My fresh-water reader will perhaps conceive no unpleasant
idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could
have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with
indignation long after the injury which first raised them is over, so
fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship
up and down, backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, that
there was scarce a man in the ship better able to stand than myself.
Every utensil in our cabin rolled up and down, as we should have rolled
ourselves, had not our chairs been fast lashed to the floor. In this
situation, with our tables likewise fastened by ropes, the captain and
myself took our meal with some difficulty, and swallowed a little of our
broth, for we spilt much the greater part. The remainder of our dinner
being an old, lean, tame duck roasted, I regretted but little the loss
of, my teeth not being good enough to have chewed it.

Our women, who began to creep out of their holes in the morning, retired
again within the cabin to their beds, and were no more heard of this
day, in which my whole comfort was to find by the captain's relation
that the swelling was sometimes much worse; he did, indeed, take this
occasion to be more communicative than ever, and informed me of such
misadventures that had befallen him within forty-six years at sea as
might frighten a very bold spirit from undertaking even the shortest
voyage. Were these, indeed, but universally known, our matrons of
quality would possibly be deterred from venturing their tender offspring
at sea; by which means our navy would lose the honor of many a young
commodore, who at twenty-two is better versed in maritime affairs than
real seamen are made by experience at sixty. And this may, perhaps,
appear the more extraordinary, as the education of both seems to be
pretty much the same; neither of them having had their courage tried by
Virgil's description of a storm, in which, inspired as he was, I doubt
whether our captain doth not exceed him. In the evening the wind, which
continued in the N.W., again freshened, and that so briskly that Cape
Finisterre appeared by this day's observation to bear a few miles to the
southward. We now indeed sailed,