While making the aforesaid course the wind shifted to northeast, and
they stood out to sea, and they saw a sail coming, and the ships
anchored and the boats went to it and took it. It was a small junk and
carried nothing but cocoanuts; and they took in water and wood, and set
sail along the coast of the island to the northeast, until they reached
the extremity of the said island, and met with another small island,
where they overhauled the ships, and they gave it the name of Port St.
Mary of August, and it is in fully 7 deg..
As soon as they had taken these precautions they set sail and steered to
the southwest until they sighted the island, which is called Fagajam,
and this is a course of thirty-eight to forty leagues; and as soon as
they sighted this island they steered to the southwest, and again made
an island which is called Seloque, and they had information that there
were many pearls there; and when they had already sighted the island the
wind shifted to a head wind, and they could not fetch it by the course
they were sailing, and it seemed to them that it might be in 6 deg.. This
same night they arrived at the island of Quipe, and ran along it to the
southeast, and passed between it and another island called Tamgym; and
always running along the coast of the said island, and going thus, they
fell in with a parao laden with sago leaves (which is of a tree which is
named _cajare_), which the people of that country eat as bread. The
parao carried twenty-one men, and the chief of them had been in Molucca,
in the house of Francisco Semrryn; this was in 5 deg., a little more or
less. The inhabitants of this land came to see the ships, and so they
had speech of one another, and an old man of these people said he would
conduct them to Molucca.
In this manner, having fixed a time with the old man, an agreement was
made with him, and they gave him a certain price for this; and when the
next day came, and they were to depart, the old man intended to escape,
and they understood it, and took him and others who were with him, and
who also said that they knew pilots' work, and they set sail; and as
soon as the inhabitants saw them go, they fitted out to go after them;
and of the paraos, there did not reach the ships more than two, and
these reached so near that they shot arrows into the ships, and the wind
was fresh and they could not come up with them. At midnight of that day
they sighted some islands, and they steered more toward them; and next
day they saw land, which was an island; and at night following that day
they found themselves very close to it, and when night fell the wind
calmed and the currents drew them very much inshore; there the old pilot
cast himself into the sea and betook himself to land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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