Having entered the straits the beginning of April, 1599, they obtained a good supply of penguins for food; but the commander stopping to wood and water, they were overtaken by the winter then just setting in, during which they lost more than a hundred men by cold and hunger, and were thus detained—though, according to Adams, there were many times when they might have gone through—till the 24th of September, when at last they entered the South Sea. A few days after, they encountered a violent storm, by which the ships were separated. Captain Wert, with the “Faith” and “Fidelity,” was driven back into the straits, where he fell in with Oliver Noort, who had left Holland a few days after the Verhagen fleet, had followed in the same track, had encountered many of the same difficulties, but who, more fortunate, not only passed the strait, but succeeded in completing the fourth circumnavigation of the globe,—a feat accomplished before his voyage only by the ships of Magellan, Drake, and Cavendish. As Noort was unable to afford him any aid, Wert abandoned the enterprise, and returned with his two ships to Holland. The other three ships steered separately for the coast of Chili, where a rendezvous, in the latitude of forty-six degrees, had been appointed. The “Charity,” in which Adams was, on reaching the place of rendezvous found some Indian inhabitants, who at first furnished sheep in exchange for bells and knives, with which they seemed well satisfied, but who shortly after disappeared, probably through Spanish influence. Having waited twenty-eight days, and hearing nothing of her consorts, the “Charity” ran by Valdivia to the island of Mocha, and thence toward the neighboring island of Santa Maria. Seeing on the mainland near by a number of people, boats were sent for a parley; but the people would suffer none to land from the boats, at which they shot a multitude of arrows. “Nevertheless,” says Adams, “having no victuals in our ship, and hoping to find refreshing, we forcibly landed some seven-and-twenty or thirty of our men, and drove the wild people from the water-side, having the most of our men hurt with their arrows. Having landed, we made signs of friendship, and in the end came to parley, with signs that our desire was to have victuals for iron, silver, and cloth, which we showed them. Whereupon they gave our folks wine, with batatas (sweet potatoes) and other fruits, and bade them, by signs and tokens, to go aboard, and the next day to come again, and they would bring us victuals.”