Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/29

Rh of fire whose radiance suffuses the scene with an unearthly brilliancy. All the time the wind howls through the rigging with a shrieking noise which deafens the ear and adds another element of horror to impressions already fully charged with fateful significance.

It was into such a scene as this that the two ships were hurried on that eventful September day in 1591. For a time they kept company, but on the evening of the fourth day after leaving Table Bay those on the deck of the Edward Bonaventure saw an immense wave engulf the Penelope. As from that moment her lights were no longer visible, they drew the inference—correct as it proved—that she had foundered with all on board. The Edward Bonaventure continued to battle with the storm for four days. Then an appalling catastrophe occurred which seemed for the moment to have sealed the vessel's fate. About ten o'clock in the morning a flash of lightning, accompanied by a deafening crash of thunder, struck the ship. Not a single soul on board escaped the shock. Four men were killed outright, "their necks being wrung in sonder without speaking any word," as the graphic narrative of the historian of the expedition puts it. As to the other members of the crew, "some were stricken blind, others were burned in their legs and others in their breasts so that they voided blood; while others, again, were drawn out at length as though they had been racked."

Happily this was the dying effort of the storm. In a few days the conditions had so much improved that the crew were able to rest and recover from the effects of the lightning. A call at Zanzibar enabled Lancaster to take on board a pilot who knew the East Indies. He is described in the narrative of Edmund Barker, Lancaster's