And falling into a place where two seas met
An "isthmus", on each side of which the sea ran; and which the
inhabitants of Malta, as Beza says, show to this day, and call
it, "la Cala de San Paulo", or the Descent of Saint Paul. The
meeting of these two seas might occasion a great rippling in the
sea like to a large eddy, or counter tide; and here might be a
sand on which
they ran the ship aground;
for this place where the two seas met, as the same annotator
observes, could not be the shore itself; for otherwise, to what
purpose should they cast themselves into the sea, as they
afterwards did, if the head of the ship struck upon the shore,
and stuck fast there? but must rather mean a shelf of sand,
opposite, or near the entrance into the bay, and where the
shipwreck was.
And the fore part stuck fast, and remained
unmovable;
so that there was no getting her off:
but the hinder part was broken by the violence of the
waves;
that is, the stern; by which means there were boards and broken
pieces for the company to get ashore upon.
