ABSTRACT
On the 28th day of April, of 1526, we set sail, the whole fleet together; it consisted of five sail, namely three royal galloons and two carvels. We reached the island of Camaran the 1st day of May, and there the wind wearied us. We were there three days, and whilst waiting I remembered how we had there buried Duarte Galvam, the ambassador to Prester John, who was sent by the king our sovereign. I was present at his decease, and I went to his burial, and with the licentiate Pero Gomez Teixeira, who was then judge, we marked the grave, so that if at any time any of his relations or friends came, they might know it, to remove his remains to a country of Christians if they chose. And I went with a slave of mine to where we had left him buried, and I ordered him to be dug up, and to dispose all his bones in order; but we did not find more than three teeth, and I put them in a small box, and we brought his remains to the galloon St. Leon, in which I went, without anyone knowing of it except one Gaspar de Saa, factor of the said fleet, and who was of his household. As soon as we had got the said remains on board the galloon, the wind changed to a stern wind, and that hour we set sail, and this factor said to me: "'Certainly, as Duarte Galvam was a good man and ended his days in the service of God, so God gives us a good wind
for him.'' And we had the same wind till the lOth of May, when we were opposite Aden, and already in the open sea, 1
and the winter weather from India was facing us, and we facing it. The storm was so great that the second night we passed in it, what with the great darkness and high wind, we lost one another and were separated without seeing each other again, or knowing what course each ship was making. This galloon St. Leon, in whic4 I went, had a large boat made fast astern with three ropes, and in it was a ship boy, a Frenchman by nation, who steered it. In the fourth night that we passed in this storm, the sea was so wild and high that we all thought we should be lost ; and at midnight a little more or less, all three ropes of the boat broke, and the galloon gave so many and so great lurches, that we thought we should go to the bottom of the sea. The master of the galloon sounded his whistle and gave out a Paternoster through the ship to all hands2 for the soul of the ship boy who was in the boat. On the following day an auction was held, that is, a valuation and sale of the pieces and things which the ship boy had with him, and with them and a slave of his a hundred and twenty pardaos3 were made. We sailed with this storm4 until we got to the strait of Ormuz, and on the 28th of May we reached the port of Mazq uate, which belongs to the Kingdom of Ormuz, and pays tribute to the King of Portugal our sovereign. There we found one of the carvels of our convoy and fleet, which gave an account of the storm which it had passed, and three days after that the other carvel, companion of the first, arrived ; and the same day ft galloon arrived, and each related the storms. Ten days after our arrival at this port of Mazquate, they saw tacking about on the sea the galloon Satn Donis, the flagship of the fleet, and she could not fetch
366 NOBLE CONDUCT OF HECTOR DA SILVEIRA.
