s, for the making of which periaga (as they call it) he did,
with the same industry that he did every thing else, employ his own
hand and adze, and endure no little hardship, lying abroad in the woods
many nights together. This periaga with the tender, being anchored at
a place convenient, the periaga kept busking to and again,[1] but could
only discover a reef of rising shoals thereabouts, called "The
Boilers," which, rising to be within two or three feet of the surface
of the sea, were yet so steep that a ship striking on them would
immediately sink down, who could say how many fathom, into the ocean.
Here they could get no other pay for their long peeping among the
Boilers, but only such as caused them to think upon returning to their
captain with the bad news of their total disappointment. Nevertheless,
as they were upon their return, one of the men, looking over the side
of the periaga into the calm water, he spied a sea-feather growing, as
he judged, out of a rock; whereupon he bade one of their Indians to
dive and fetch this feather, that they might, however, carry home
something with them, and make at least as fair a triumph as
Caligula's.[2] The diver, bringing up the feather, brought therewithal
a surprising story, that he perceived a number of great guns in the
watery world where he had found his feather; the report[3] of which
great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company, and at once turned
their despondencies for their ill success into assurances that they had
now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been looking for;
and they were further confirmed in these assurances when, upon further
diving, the Indian fetched up a sow, as they styled it, or a lump of
silver worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds. Upon this they
prudently buoyed the place that they might readily find it again; and
they went back unto their captain, whom for some while they distressed
with nothing but such bad news as they formerly thought they must have
carried him. Nevertheless, they so slipped in the sow of silver on one
side under the table, where they wore now sitting with the captain, and
hearing him express his resolutions to wait still patiently upon the
providence of God under these disappointments, that when he should look
on one side he might see that odd thing before him. At last he saw it.
Seeing it he cried out with some agony, "Why! what is this? Whence
comes this?" And then, with changed counten