unmanageable, lots were cast to discover who occasioned the disaster—precisely as in the case of Jonah and in that of the Undutiful Daughter, and the man on whom the lot fell was cast overboard.
In an old English broadside ballad,—
They had not sailed a league, but three,
Till raging grew the roaring sea;
There rose a tempest in the skies,
Which filled our hearts with great surprise.
The sea did wash, both fore and aft,
Till scarce one sail on board was left;
Our yards were split, and our rigging tore,
The like was never seen before.
The boatswain then he did declare
The captain was a murderer,
Which did enrage the whole ship’s crew;
Our captain overboard we threw.
It is but a step from drowning a man as an offering to the hungry sea to allowing a man to drown, refusing him help, as was the case in Orkney and Shetland and in Cornwall as well. On the west coast of Ireland, when the Spanish sailors were wrecked from the Armada, the Irish murdered and threw them back into the sea, not that they bore them animosity—these Spaniards were Roman Catholics as well as the Irishmen, but because it was unlucky to rescue anyone from the sea, which exacts its toll of human life. It is not only the sea that makes these demands, but, as we have seen, rivers as well. So do lakes.
