ABSTRACT
Then they took me to him, naked as I was, and I found him to be a youth known to the savages by the name Karwattuware. He commenced to speak to me in French, which I could not well understand, and the savages stood round about and listened. Then, when I was unable to reply to him, he spoke to the savages in their own tongue and said: “Kill him and eat him, the good-for-nothing, for he is indeed a Portuguese, your enemy and mine.” This I understood, and I begged him for the love of God to tell them not to eat me, but he replied only: “They will certainly eat you.” Whereupon I bethought me of the words of the Prophet Jeremy (chapter xvii) when he said: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man,” and I departed from them with a heavy heart. I had on my shoulders a linen cloth which the savages had given me, although I know not where they can have obtained it. This I tore off and flung it at the French man’s feet, saying to myself (for the sun had burnt me severely) that it was useless to preserve my flesh for others if I was to die. And they carried me back to the hut which was my prison where I stretched myself in my hammock. God alone knows the misery that I endured, and weeping I commenced to sing the verse: “Let us now beseech the Holy Ghost to save and guard us when death approaches and we pass from sorrows into peace. Kyrioleys.” But the savages said only:
