At the dawn of day I began to walk, little by little, searching for a monastery of monks, that I might repair[24] to it [or might recover in it] as best I could, which I arrived at with much trouble and toil. I found it deserted, and the church and images of the saints burned and completely ruined, and twelve Spaniards hanging within the church by the act of the Lutheran English, who went about searching for us to make an end of all of us who had escaped [from the perils of the sea. All the monks had fled] to the woods[25] for fear of the enemies, who would have sacrificed them as well if they had caught them, as they were accustomed to do, leaving neither place of worship nor hermitage standing; for they had demolished them all, and made them drinking-places for cows and swine. In order that you may occupy yourself somewhat after dinner, by way of amusement, in reading this letter, which will almost appear as if taken from some book of chivalry, I write it at such length, so that you may imagine the risks and hardships that I have experienced. As I did not meet with any one at the said monastery, except the Spaniards hanging within from the iron window gratings of the church, I sallied forth speedily, and betook myself to a road which lay through a great wood. When I had gone by it for the matter of a mile, I met with a woman of more than eighty years of age, a rough savage, who was carrying off five or six cows to hide them in that wood, so that the English who had come to stop in her village might not take them. As she saw me, she stopped and recognised me, and said to me: "Thou Spain." I said yes to her by signs, and that I had been shipwrecked. She began to lament much and to weep, making me signs that I was near her house, but not to go there, as there were numerous enemies in it, and they had cut the heads off many Spaniards. All this was affliction and hardship for me, as I travelled alone, and badly injured by a stick of timber, which almost broke my legs in the water. At last, with the information of the old woman, I decided to go to the shore, where the ships lay that were wrecked three days before, where many parties of people went about carting away and removing to their huts all our effects [spoils]. I did not venture to show myself, nor to approach them, in order that they might not strip me of the poor linen garment I had on my back or kill me, until I saw two poor Spanish soldiers approaching, stripped naked as when they were born, crying out and calling upon God to help them. The one bore a bad wound in the head, which they had given him when stripping him. They came to me, as I called to them from where I was concealed, and recounted to me the cruel deaths and punishments which the English had inflicted upon more than one hundred Spaniards they had taken.