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Many curious sea superstitions can be traced to noises which, when heard by the old navigators, were found unusual and terrifying. There is a curious passage bearing on this in the voyage of J. S. Stavorinus to the East Indies in 1768. He heard a sound just like the groaning of a man out of the sea, near the ship’s side. It was repeated a dozen times over, but seemed to recede proportionally as the ship advanced until it died away at the stern. An hour afterwards the gunner came to the author and said that on one of his Indian voyages he had met with the same occurrence, and that a dreadful storm had succeeded, which forced them to hand all their sails and drive at the mercy of the wind for twenty-four hours. The author adds that when the gunner told him this there was no sign of bad weather, yet before four o’clock in the afternoon they were scudding under bare poles before a violent tempest. Upon so singular an experience the sufferers might claim a right to base a superstition; and from that time any sound resembling that of a man bawling in the water over a ship’s side must take a barometrical character, and prove an exhortation to the mariner to see all snug.