Since in his voyage to Goa he was to visit the fishing coast, he would not take the three Japonians with him, and gave the care of conducting them to George Alvarez. He only wrote by them to the rector of the College of St Paul, giving him orders to instruct them with all diligence. He put on board the ship of another Portuguese, called Gonsalvo Fernandez, twenty or thirty young men whom he had brought from the Moluccas, in order to their studies in the same college; after which, himself embarked in another vessel, which went directly for Cochin. In passing the Strait of Ceylon, the ship which carried Xavier was overtaken with the most horrible tempest which was ever seen. They were constrained, at the very beginning of it, to cast overboard all their merchandize; and the winds roared with so much violence, that the pilot not being able to hold the rudder, abandoned the vessel to the fury of the waves. For three days and nights together they had death continually present before their eyes; and nothing reassured the mariners but the serene countenance of Father Xavier amidst the cries and tumults in the ship. After he had heard their confessions, implored the help of heaven, and exhorted all of them to receive, with an equal mind, either life or death from the hand of God, he retired into his cabin. Francis Pereyra, looking for the man of God in the midst of the tempest, to have comfort from him, found him on his knees before his crucifix, wholly taken up and lost to all things but to God. The ship, driven along by an impetuous current, already struck against the sands of Ceylon, and the mariners gave themselves for lost, without hope of recovery; when the Father coming out of his cabin, asked the pilot for the line and plummet, with which he was accustomed to fathom the sea; having taken them, and let them down to the bottom of the ocean, he pronounced these words: "Great God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have mercy on us!" At the same moment the vessel stopped, and the wind ceased; after which they pursued their voyage, and happily arrived at the port of Cochin on the 21st of January, 1548. There the Father gave himself the leisure of writing divers letters into Europe, by a vessel of Lisbon, which was just in readiness to set sail. The first was to the King of Portugal, John III.: the letter was full of prudent counsels concerning the duties of a king: he advertised him anew, that his majesty should be guilty before God of the evil government of his ministers, and that one day an account must be given of the salvation of those souls which he had suffered to perish, through neglect of application, or want of constancy in his endeavours; but he did it with all manner of precaution, and softened his expressions with Christian charity.