Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/246

 increasing height of the waves, till the vessel is covered in like a house. Thus they roll about amid the billows, and as they have a prow at both extremities alike, and a convertible arrangement of oars, they may be paddled in one direction or another, indifferently and without risk."

It was in such frail craft as these that the Goths committed themselves to a sea with which they were wholly unacquainted, yet, under the guidance of local and impressed mariners, they succeeded in surprising the city of Trebizond, wherein immense treasures had been collected for safety, its capture, with many of its merchants, being the reward of their daring.

Seven years after obtaining possession of Dacia they were, however, again driven from it by Probus; but the skill and courage of these barbarous tribes were always conspicuous at sea; and in no instance more so than in the case of a party of Franks, who had been settled near the sea coast, and who, being suddenly seized with the desire of returning to their homes, surprised a small fleet then on the Euxine, and were thus enabled to carry out their plan. Unskilled in the art of navigation, and unacquainted with any other except the Baltic and the Black Seas, these adventurers made their way through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean, and, after sacking Syracuse and other towns, boldly steered through the Straits of Gibraltar, entered the Atlantic with a degree of