At this news I took some courage; and with my stick in hand, I began to walk as best I could, making for the direction of the mountains [or for the north of the mountains], as the boy had told me.[35] That night I reached some huts, where they did not do me harm, because there was in them one who knew Latin; and in the necessity of the circumstances, our Lord was pleased that we should understand one another, talking Latin. I narrated to them my hardships. The Latin-speaking man sheltered me in his hut that night: he dressed my wound, gave me supper, and a place where I might sleep upon some straw. In the middle of the night his father arrived and his brothers, loaded with plunder and our things, and it did not displease the old man that I had been sheltered in his house and well treated. In the morning they gave me a horse and a boy to convey me over a mile of bad road that there was, with mud up to the girths. Having passed it by the distance of the shot of a cross-bow, we heard a very great noise, and the boy said to me, by signs, "Save yourself, Spain" (for so they call us); "many Sassana horsemen are coming this way, and they will make bits of thee if thou doest not hide thyself: come this way quickly." They call the English "Sassanas." He took me away to hide in some rugged places among the rocks, where we were very well concealed. They would be about one hundred and fifty horsemen going back to the coast to plunder as many Spaniards as they found. God delivered me from them; and, proceeding on our way, there fell in with me more than forty savages on foot, and they wished to make little pieces of me because they were all Lutherans. They did not do it, as the boy, who came with me, told them that his master had taken me prisoner, and he had me in custody, and had sent me on that horse to be cured. With all this, it did not suffice to obtain permission for me to pass in peace; for two of those robbers came up to me and gave me six blows of a stick, which bruised my shoulders and arms, and they stripped me of everything that I wore, so as to leave me as naked as when I was born. I speak the truth, by the holy baptism which I received. And seeing myself in this condition, I gave many thanks to God, beseeching of His Divine Majesty that He would fulfil His will on me, as that was what I desired. The boy of the savage wished to return to his hut with his horse, weeping to see how I was left, stripped naked, so badly treated, and so cold. I begged of God, very earnestly, that He would transport me to where I should die confessed and in His grace. I took some courage, being in the greatest extremity of misfortune that man ever saw, and with some bracken leaves and a small piece of old matting which I wrapped around my body, I protected myself from the cold as best I could.