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42 did the vessels drop anchor in this veritable harbour of refuge. As the ships had progressed on the voyage the scurvy had tightened its terrible grip on the unfortunate crews. On the Hector, the Susan and the Ascension, the conditions were such that there were not enough men to do the routine duties of the ships, and Lancaster had to send his own men on board to furl the sails. The Red Dragon had enjoyed a practical immunity from sickness, for the simple reason that Lancaster had taken a supply of lemon water on board and had served it out regularly to his men. He must have understood its qualities as an anti-scorbutic, but the full value of the fruit can hardly have been realized, for the melancholy tale of disease continued long years after this period.

It was often at or near the Cape that the fell malady reached its highest point of destructive energy. Out of that circumstance probably grew the grisly tradition of the Carlmilhan, the phantom ship which in the watches of the night appeared with its ghastly crew lying prone in agonized attitudes about its decks or hanging in the awful realism of death over the bulwarks to carry terror into the minds of the superstitious seamen. The history of the sea at this period has, at all events, a number of well accredited cases in which an entire crew perished, and the vessel, deprived of intelligent direction, was carried aimlessly about until some day the pitiful truth was revealed to a passing ship which had put off to ascertain the character of the derelict. Not without cause, indeed, was the great African promontory given in the first instance the designation Cape of Torments. The horrors of one of the most painful of diseases were there associated with Nature's elemental manifestations in their most terrifying aspect,