When only a few weeks from home this fleet of forty ships encountered a single small French vessel. Part of the Portuguese crew of the fleet was sick. The others made ready to flee at once. After a few hours it was seen that the Frenchman had no evil intentions, and continued his way without a closer inspection of his enemies. Then peace returned to the fleet of Fonseca. A few days later the ship reached the equator. The customary initiation of the new sailors, followed by the usual festivities and a first-class drunken row, took place. The captain was run down and trampled upon by his men, tables and chairs were upset, and the crew fought one another with knives. This quarrel might have ended in a general murder but for the interference of the archbishop, who threw himself among the crazy sailors, and with a threat of excommunication drove them back to work. Half a dozen were locked up, others were whipped, and the ships continued their voyage in this happy-go-lucky fashion. Then it appeared that nobody knew exactly where they were. Observations finally showed that the fleet was still fifty miles west of the Cape of Good Hope. As a matter of fact, they had passed the cape several days before, but did not discover their error until a week later. Then they sailed northward until they reached Mozambique, where they spent two weeks in order to give the crew a rest and to repair the damages of the equatorial fight. On the twentieth of August they continued their voyage until the serpents which they saw in the water showed them that they were approaching the coast of India. From that time on luck was with the expedition. The ships reached the coast near the town of destination. After a remarkably short passage of only five months and thirteen days the fleet landed safely in Goa. Jan Huygen was very proud of the record of his ship. Only thirty people had died on the voyage. It is true that all the people on board had been under a doctor's care, and every one of the sailors and passengers had been bled a few times; but thirty men buried during so long a voyage was a mere trifle. In the sixteenth century, if fifty per cent. of the men returned from an Indian voyage, the trip was considered successful. The next five years Jan Huygen spent in Goa with his ecclesiastical master. He was intrusted with a great deal of confidential work, and became thoroughly familiar with all the affairs of the colony. In Goa he heard wonderful tales about the great Chinese Empire, many weeks to the north. He began to collect maps for an expedition to that distant land, but lack of funds made him put it off, and he never went far beyond the confines of the small Portuguese settlement.