ich accounts for so many useless boats being seen at
fishing villages. If a man be drowned in or from a boat, sailors and
fishermen are reluctant to put to sea again with her. It is an evil
sign to see sharks following a ship. Inadvertently turning a hatch
upside down, is considered an unfavourable sign. A four-footed beast
should not be named at sea. A child's caul hung in the cabin, prevents
the ship from sinking. A legend of Vanderdecken, the Flying Dutchman,
is believed by seamen. It runs thus:--

Three hundred years ago a large Dutch Indiaman, commanded by Mynheer
Vanderdecken, attempted to round the Cape of Good Hope against a head
wind. His vessel was frequently driven back, but he doggedly
persevered, in spite of many signs and warnings of failure, and
declared that he would double the Cape, though he sailed till the day
of judgment. For this impious saying, and disregard of signs and
warnings, the ship and wicked captain, with his crew, were doomed to
sail continually in the latitude of the Cape, without doubling it.
Sailors have asserted that, in the midnight gale, the ship may be
seen, with her antique build and rig, and the figure of Vanderdecken,
on the poop, giving orders to his ghostly crew, contending with the
wind and waves, which they can never overcome.

One day in the Middle Ages, as a troop of Condottieri crossed the
Roman country, a young peasant, named Attendole, stood under an oak to
admire them. Some of the soldiers invited him to join their company.
The peasant was inclined to follow them, but being undecided he said,
"I will throw the axe I hold in my hand against this oak, and if it
enter far enough into the bark to remain fixed, I will be a soldier."
So saying, he threw the axe with so much violence that it entered the
tree deep and stuck fast. From that moment all hesitation was over:
tearing himself from his friends, he joined the troop. Because it was
with all his force he decided what his vocation was to be, his
comrades called him Sforza. He fought in more than one hundred
battles, and, after having served in Rome and at Milan, he at an
advanced age perished while endeavouring to save one of his own pages
from drowning. He left a son, who, like his father, gained renown. He
rose so high in Italy as to be considered a suitable match for Bianca
Visconti, the heiress of Milan. Their son Galeazza, Duke of Milan,
used to look on the fair city and say, "See what I owe to my
grandfather's ax