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The following days we had moderate winds, but the 
sea was high and boisterous. I found myself extreme- 
ly weak, being unable to eat any thing, or to keep any 
kind of food on my stomach, and I vomited blood. 
Almost all the passengers found themselves equally 
sick, and in the most deplorable condition. Our wick- 
ed captain added to our misery, as he prolonged our 
voyage by furling the sails during the night, that he 
might go to bed and sleep at his ease, after having sung 
Bachanalian songs for a whole hour, surrounded with 
bottles; this he did also on the night of the tempest. I 
never expected to find a Turkish captain so complete 
a drunkard, and so little anxious to conceal his intem- 
perance. He begged rrie several times to rise, and to 
observe our course, because he had utterly lost his 
reckoning; he was like a blind man in the midst of the 
sea, without knowing on which side to steer: the pas- 
sengers thus reduced to despair, entreated me to get 
them out of this difficulty. 
I got myself carried like a dying man several times 
upon deck by the sailors; and as we had no reckoning, 
I made several observations upon the Sun and the 
planet Venus; and by successive approximations I at 
length succeeded in ascertaining out course, which was 
already near Alexandria. This news gave consolation 
to the passengers. 
The next morning, the third of March, having found 
my longitude approach that of Alexandria, I made them 
steer south, in order to find the land; which in reality 
we discovered before noon, and from this moment there 
was universal joy; but as the coast is low, and does not 
