It was at that time, properly speaking, when God first communicated to Xavier the gift of tongues in the Indies; according to the relation of a young Portuguese of Coimbra, whose name was Vaz, who attended him in many of his travels, and who being returned into Europe, related those passages, of which himself had been an eye witness. The holy man spoke very well the language of those barbarians, without having learnt it, and had no need of an interpreter when he instructed. There being no church which was capable of containing those who came to hear him, he led them into a spacious plain, to the number of five or six thousand persons, and there getting up into a tree, that he might the farther extend his voice, he preached to them the words of eternal truth. There it was also, that to the end the compass of the plain might serve in the nature of a church, he sometimes celebrated the divine mysteries under the sails of ships, which were spread above the altar, to be seen on every side. The Brachmans could not suffer the worship of the pagods to be abandoned in this manner; but were resolved to be revenged on the author of so strange an alteration. In order to execute their design, they secretly engaged some idolaters to lie in wait for him, and dispatch him privately. The murderers lay in ambush more than once, and in the silence of the night endeavoured to shoot him with their arrows. But divine Providence would not suffer their malice to take place; of all their arrows, one only wounded him, and that but slightly; as it were rather to give him the satisfaction of shedding some blood in testimony of the faith, than to endanger his life. Enraged and desperate for having missed their aim, they sought him everywhere; and not finding him, they set fire on three or four houses, where they thought he might possibly be lodged. The man of God was constrained one day to hide in the covert of a forest, and passed the following night upon a tree, to escape the fury of his enemies, who searched the whole forest to have found him. There was a necessity sometimes that the faithful should keep guard about him day and night, and to that purpose they placed themselves in arms about the house where he was retired.