he had recourse to hard rowing to avoid being driven ashore,but most of them,thinking that the wind would soon subside,as it usually does in the springtime,moored themselves with anchors at either end, landward and seaward, pushing each other off with poles.As the wind grew more violent everything was thrown into confusion.The ships collided, broke their anchors, and were thrown quivering on the shore or against one another.Cries of alarm and groans of pain were mingled together,and exhortations that fell upon deaf ears.Orders could not be heard,and there was no distinction between pilot and common sailor, knowledge and authority being alike unavailing.The same destruction awaited those in the ships and those
who fell overboard, the latter being crushed by wind.The sea was full of sails, and men, living and dead.Those who sought to escape by swimming to land were dashed against the rocks by the surf.When the convulsion seized the water,as is usual in that strait, they were terrified, being unaccustomed to it,and then their vessels were whirled around and dashed against each other worse than ever.As night came on the wind increased in fury, so that they perished no longer in the light but in the darkness.Groans were heard throughout the entire night,and the cries of men running along the shore and calling their friends and relatives upon the sea by name,and mourning for them as lost when they could hear no responses;
and anon the cries of others lifting their heads above the waves and beseeching aid from those on shore.Not only was the sea inexorable to those engulfed in it, as well as to those still in the ships, but the danger was almost as great on land as at sea, lest the surf should dash them against the rocks. So distressed were they by this unexampled tempest that those who were nearest the land feared the land, yet could not get sufficient offing to avoid collision with each other, for the narrowness of the place and its naturally difficult outlet, together with the whirlpool of the deep, holding everything in its grasp, allowed neither tarrying nor escape.And so they perished, no longer even seeing each other.