In fact, as he afterwards discovered, the Portuguese were employing this interval in poisoning the minds of the natives against these new-comers, whom they represented as thieves and common sea-robbers, whom it was necessary to put to death to prevent any more of their freebooting countrymen from coming, to the ruin of the Japanese trade. But at length the emperor gave this answer: that, as these strangers had as yet done no damage to him nor to any of his people, it would be against reason and justice to put them to death; and, sending again for Adams, after another long conversation and numerous inquiries, he set him at liberty, and gave him leave to visit the ship and his companions, of whom, in the interval, he had heard nothing. He found them close by, the ship having in the interval been brought to Sakai, within seven or eight miles of Ōsaka. The men had suffered nothing, but the ship had been completely stripped, her whole company being thus left with only the clothes on their backs. The emperor, indeed, ordered restitution; but the plundered articles were so dispersed and concealed that nothing could be recovered, except fifty thousand rials in silver (five thousand dollars), which had formed a part of the cargo, and which was given up to the officers as a fund for their support and that of the men. Afterward the ship was taken still eastward to a port near Yedo. All means were used to get her clear, with leave to depart, in which suit a considerable part of the money was spent; till, at the end of two years, the men refusing any longer to obey Adams and the master, the remaining money was, “for quietness’ sake,” divided, and each was left to shift for himself. The emperor, however, added an allowance to each man of two pounds of rice a day, besides an annual pension in money amounting to about twenty-four dollars. In Adams’ case this pension was afterward raised to one hundred and forty dollars, as a reward for having built two ships for the emperor on the European model. Adams’ knowledge of mathematics also proved serviceable to him, and he was soon in such favor as to be able, according to his own account, to return good for evil to several of his former maligners. The emperor acknowledged his services, and endeavored to content him by giving him “a living like unto a lordship in England, with eighty or ninety husbandmen as his servants and slaves”; but he still pined for home, and importuned for leave to depart, desiring, as he says, “to see his poor wife and children, according to conscience and nature.” This suit he again renewed, upon hearing from some Japanese traders that Dutch merchants had established themselves at Acheen in Sumatra, and Patania on the east coast of Malacca. He promised to bring both the Dutch and English to trade in Japan; but all he could obtain was leave for the Dutch captain and another Dutchman to depart. This they presently did, for Patania, in a Japanese junk, furnished by the king