Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/453

Rh the entry or passage by which the devil comes up to this world.

leagues E. by S. of this island there is a dangerous shoal with great overfalls, on which a French ship struck in the year 1751, and was saved with very great difficulty. Jibbel Teir is the point from which all our ships, going to Jidda, take their departure, after sailing from Mocha, and passing the islands to the southward.

left Jibbel Teir on the 11th with little wind at west, but towards mid-day it freshened as usual, and turned northward to N.N. east. We were now in mid-channel, so that we stood on straight for Dahalac till half past four, when a boy, who went aloft, saw four islands in a direction N. W. by W.¼ west. We were standing on with a fresh breeze, and all our sails full, when I saw, a little before sun-set, a white-fringed wave of the well-known figure of a breaker. I cried to the Rais for God's sake to shorten sail, for I saw a breaker a-head, straight in our way. He said there was no such thing; that I had mistaken it, for it was a sea-gull. About seven in the evening we struck upon a reef of coral rocks. Arabs are cowards in all sudden dangers, which they consider as particular directions or mandates of providence, and therefore not to be avoided. Few uncultivated minds indeed have any calmness, or immediate resource in themselves when in unexpected danger. The Arab sailors were immediately for taking the boat, and sailing to the islands the boy had seen. The Abyssinians were for cutting up the planks and wood of the inside of the vessel, and making her a raft.