back to my own coast; but I found that my pilot knew not where we were. Upon the tenth day, a seaman being sent to look out for land from the masthead, gave notice that right ahead he perceived a great blackness.
The pilot changed color at this account, and throwing his turban on the deck with one hand, and beating his breast with the other, cried, “O sir, we are all lost; not one of us can escape; and with all my skill it is not in my power to effect our deliverance.” I asked him what reason he had thus to despair. He exclaimed, “The tempest has brought us so far out of our course, that to-morrow about noon we shall be near the black mountain, or mine of lodestone which at this very minute draws all your fleet toward it by virtue of the iron in your ships; and when we approach within a certain distance, the attraction of the lodestone will have such force, that all the nails will be drawn out of the sides and bottoms of the ships, and fasten to the mountain, so that your vessels will fall to pieces and sink. This mountain,” continued the pilot, “is almost inaccessible. On the summit there is a dome of fine brass, supported by pillars of the same metal, and on the top of that dome stands a horse, likewise of brass, with a rider on his back, who has a plate of lead fixed to his breast, upon which some talismanic characters are engraven. Sir, the tradition is, that this statue is the chief cause why so many ships and men have been lost and sunk in this place, and that it will ever
96
