as he had done in coming; but he actually passed, in the darkness of night, before the fort at Sanboangan, in the strait which is made by the said island with Basilan, for a distance of a league and a half, more or less, from the fort. This was astonishing audacity; and if, for our sins, he had returned unhindered to Mindanao, they would have lost all fear of that fort and the royal arms. He actually passed the strait without being noticed, and at dawn arrived at a place where he could not be seen by our people. The day on which he passed before our fort was a Wednesday, December seventeenth, on the evening of the Expectation of our Lady, about eight o'clock. The next day just as Father Gregorio Belin [68] was preparing to say mass, there arrived a Lutao Indian, who has always displayed fidelity to the Spaniards; and told him, as above, how that night the enemy had passed near there on their return, and that it would be easy to go forth in pursuit of them, because they were heavily loaded and weighed down, for they had been at sea for eight months. Beside this, the Mindanaos had a superstition or idolatry according to which all those who are returning to their land victorious are obliged to proceed to a hill that is encountered after doubling Punta de Flechas, [69] and at the point. Each man brings from the ships one of the lances that they carry, made of bamboo hardened in the fire; and these are usually hurled into the ground on this hill, because it is of soft stone. The Indian said that this superstition was so infallible and established among them that on no account would they omit going together to this place; and thus it was necessary that we should come to blows with them. The father placed the whole matter before Sargento-mayor Bartolome Diaz Barrera, governor of Sanboangan, and Sargento-mayor Nicolas Gonzales--who is an excellent officer, a captain of infantry in the garrison there. These men, overcoming many difficulties, prepared, in two hours, with incredible promptness and diligence, a fleet of six ships with one hundred infantrymen and one hundred and fifty volunteer Bisayan warriors, with their cannon and all necessary supplies; and the said governor detailed Sargento-mayor Nicolas Gonzales to pursue the enemy. The latter set out with his fleet, with such energy that although some of our vessels were mere rafts, and all had but scanty equipment, and let in much water, he allowed nothing to hinder him, but [kept on his course], overcoming many difficulties. On the first day he sent back to the fort one of his six vessels, because he saw that it was falling behind the rest on account of leaking badly; and with only the five remaining he pursued the enemy, with remarkable persistence, for three days and three nights.