It happened, however, that crossing the Mediterranean, the ship in which they were was overtaken by a tremendous gale; and to save the lives of the passengers, the captain ordered all the merchandize to be thrown overboard, so as to lighten the ship. The chest containing Alfonso Tostato’s works was cast into the sea with the rest.
Next morning, when the danger was past, the person who had been entrusted by Ximénez with the care of the manuscripts was in great distress at the irreparable loss: not daring to return to Spain, he wandered along the shore, hardly knowing what he did, when, lo and behold! to his intense delight, there appeared suddenly, floating in the sea, the identical chest, the loss of which was the cause of his mortification. A boat was quickly despatched to haul it in with great joy, and the event was commonly regarded as a marvellous interposition. But it would seem that the sagacious Ximénez, foreseeing the possible calamity, had ordered that the chest should be constructed of the lightest wood; and all who have ever had a swim in the Mediterranean know the peculiar buoyancy of its waters. Perhaps we may now account for the chest floating.
IV.
THE WHALE OF THE MANZANÁRES.
A modern Spanish writer gives the following solution of a popular tradition that a whale was once seen making its way up the Manzanáres. The Manzanáres is a singularly shallow river, at certain times of the year not half covering its bed, which rendered the tradition still more marvellous[2].
The solution is this: “A wine-merchant living on its banks was once unfortunate enough to have an accident in his storehouse or cellar, by which a number of wine-skins were sent floating down the stream. The wine-merchant ran along the bank, calling on the neighbours to arrest the float, the rather that one of the skins was full of wine; and as the danger of losing them increased, he went on crying frantically, “Una va llena!” (“One of them is full!”)
Now Spaniards make but a scarcely perceptible difference between the sound of b and v, so that his cry sounded in the people’s ears like una ballena, which would have meant a whale!