ABSTRACT
On our voyage to Ma'bar [Coromandel] a gale sprang up and our ship nearly filled with water. We had no experienced pilot on board. We narrowly escaped being wrecked on some rocks, and then came into some shallows where the ship ran aground. We were face-to-face with death, and those on board jettisoned all that they had, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast and threw it overboard, and the sailors made a wooden raft. We were then about six miles from the shore. I set about climbing down to the raft, when my companions (for I had two slave girls and two of my companions with me) said to me “ Are you going to go on the raft and leave us ?” So I put their safety before my own and said “ You two go and take with you the girl that I like.” The other girl said “I am a good swimmer and I shall hold on to one of the raft ropes and swim with them.” So both my companions and the one girl went on the raft, the other girl swimming. The sailors tied ropes to the raft and swam with their aid. I sent along with them all the things that I valued and the jewels and ambergris, and they reached the shore in safety because the wind was in their favour. I myself stayed on the ship. The captain made his way ashore on the rudder. The sailors set to work to make four rafts, but night fell before they were completed, and the ship filled with water. I climbed on the poop and Stayed there until morning, when a party of infidels came out to us in a boat and we went ashore with them in the land of Ma'bar. We told them that we were friends of their sultan, under whose protection they live, and they wrote informing him of this. He was then two days' journey away, on an expedition. I too wrote to him telling him what had happened to me.
