"In hoc signo vinces!" exclaimed Joam da Coimbra, throwing his hands towards the south.
"Amen," responded the terrified crew, and still their ship bore on.
"Thou art right, Joam," said Vasco da Lobiera; and the courage of the crew revived, for their pilot was a mariner of great experience, and, like Chaucer's shipman—
"By many a tempest had his beard been shaken."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
LEGEND CONTINUED—THE CATASTROPHE.
The moon, which had hitherto been concealed in dense vapour, now glanced at times through the flying clouds. It was one of those stormy moons well known in that quarter of the world. She seemed small, but keen and bright, gilding with whitest silver the ragged edges of the torn vapour, which fled past with such speed as to give her literally the aspect of sailing through the sky.
A mournful and moaning sound now came upon the wind which traversed that dashing sea, and the mariners of Lobiera, who had never looked on such a scene, nor beheld such lightnings as those that girdled like a fiery belt the flat summit of the Table Mountain, were becoming more bewildered and faint of heart, when a cry of dismay burst from Joam da Coimbra, and now even the resolute Vasco stood speechless and aghast.
Above the Table Mountain the clouds rapidly rolled themselves into a denser and darker mass, which assumed the outline of a human figure that grew in volume while they gazed upon it, until it towered into the sky, against the moonlit blue of which it was defined with terrible distinctness.
"The spectre—il demonio del Cabo dos Tormentos!" said each in his heart, while it continued to tower, with mighty arms outstretched, as if to clutch the devoted ship, or bury it in the sea that seethed around this dreadful cape—the great promontory of the southern world.