Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/594

 or cabalistic words. If the handle of his knife turned black the water spirit would not reach the ship, and they were safe; but if the danger increased, two sailors resorted to a more powerful charm, a practice which in some measure still prevails in the Levant. They drew their swords and struck them against each other, taking especial care that the weapons formed the figure of a cross every time they clashed. This remedy, in their judgment, was sure to succeed. Some misbelieving sailors would fire a gun against the waterspout in order to disperse it, but these practical fellows, who had no faith in necromancy, deserved to be drowned.

The sailors of the latter portion of the Middle Ages were, however, though superstitious enough, not so superstitious as some of their forefathers had been. They no longer believed that to cut their nails or their hair during fine weather was unlucky, and that such necessary and homely operations inevitably brought on a gale; but they thought, as many sailors still do, that to whistle in a calm would bring wind, and that to continue whistling when the wind came would arouse the anger of the gods and create a storm. They rejected as an idle fable the notion, that if a sailor heard a sneezing from the left hand when going on board ship, it was a fatal omen to which he ought to yield obedience; or, on the contrary, that the voyage would be propitious if the sneezing sound came from the right. But they still implicitly believed it to be a most unlucky sign if, at the moment when they were shipping provisions, the vessel gave a list to starboard. They believed devoutly in a goblin, and considered it a very mischievous imp, which delighted in torment