To say something of fishes:  In all the places of calms, and especially in the burning zone near the line, there continually waited on our ship certain fishes, called tuberones[401] by the Portuguese, as long as a man, which came to eat such things as might fall from the ship into the sea, not even refusing men themselves if they could light upon any, and if they find any meat hung over into the sea, they seize it.  These have waiting upon them continually six or seven, small fishes, having blue and green bands round their bodies, like finely dressed serving men.  Of these two or three always swim before the shark, and some on every side, [whence they are called pilot fish, by the English mariners.] They have likewise other fishes [called sucking fish] which always cleave to their bodies; and seem to feed on such superfluities as grow about them, and they are said to enter into their bodies to purge them, when needful.  Formerly the mariners used to eat the sharks, but since they have seen them devour men, their stomachs now abhor them; yet they draw them up with great hooks, and kill as many of them as they can, thinking thereby to take a great revenge.  There is another kind of fish almost as large as a herring, which hath wings and flieth, and are very numerous.  These have two enemies, one in the sea and the other in the air.

[Footnote 401:  Evidently sharks, from the account of them.—­E.]

That in the sea is the fish called albicore, as large as a salmon, which follows with great swiftness to take them; on which this poor fish, which cannot swim fast as it hath no fins, and only swims by the motion of its tail, having its wings then shut along the sides of its body, springeth out of the water and flieth, but not very high; on this the albicore, though he have no wings, giveth a great leap out of the water, and sometimes catcheth the flying fish, or else keepeth in the water, going that way as fast as the other flieth.  When the flying fish is weary of the air, or thinketh himself out of danger, he returneth to the water, where the albicore meeteth him; but sometimes his other enemy, the sea-crow, catcheth him in the air before he falleth.

With these and the like sights, but always making our supplications to God for good weather and the preservation of our ship, we came at length to the south cape of Africa, the ever famous Cape of Good Hope, so much desired yet feared of all men:  But we there found no tempest, only immense waves, where our pilot was guilty of an oversight; for, whereas commonly all navigators do never come within sight of land, but, contenting themselves with signs and finding the bottom, go their course safe and sure, he, thinking to have the winds at will, shot nigh the land; when the wind, changing into the south, with the assistance of the mountainous waves, rolled us so near the land that we were in less than 14 fathoms, only six miles from Capo das Agulias, and there