Next day, the San Rafael, the vessel of Da Gama, which had been greatly shattered by the tempest, appeared off Table Bay, and on Vasco da Lobiera making signals, a boat was sent for him and he was brought on board, more dead than alive after all he had undergone.
To the wondering followers of his friend, he related his adventure. They deplored the loss of his caravella, and of so many good and pious Portuguese; but they shook their long beards doubtfully when he spoke of the spectre, though the unusual calmness of the weather about the Cabo dos Tormentos seemed to verify his story and the promises made to him.
On being joined by the vessels of Paulo da Gama and Gonzalo Nunez, they bore away to the eastward, and named the coast La Terra de Noel (or Natal) having anchored off it on Christmas Day. Sixty leagues from the Cape, they found a bay, which they named San Blaz, and in it an island, full of birds with bat's-wings. (Penguins.)
Thus the passage of the Cape of Storms was fully achieved and the spell broken by these valiant Portuguese; but they could nowhere discover the realms of Prester John, so the royal letters of Dom Emmanuel remained unopened.
On his return to Lisbon, Dom Vasco applied to the King of Portugal for a gift of the Table Mountain, and money to colonize the land about it, in virtue of his interview with the spectre; but he was laughed at by the courtiers, and especially by the priests, who proved his greatest enemies.
The King, after this, styled himself Lord of the Seas on both sides of Africa; Lord of Guinea, Ethiopia, Persia, India, Brazil, and many other lands; but how fared it with Dom Vasco da Lobiera?
Fury, pride, and mortification turned his brain; but he survived till the reign of King Joam III., when he was last seen, an old and impoverished man, with a white head and threadbare doublet, hovering in the Rua d'Agua de Flore in Lisbon, at the gate of the Estrella, or at the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Belem, raving to the passers about the friendly Demon of el Cabo de Buena Esperança, and the colony of which the King had deprived him.
So—says the Padre Navarette—ends this wild story.