FullReads

None durst contradict that which Ricaredo had propounded, and some held him to be valiant, magnanimous, and of good understanding and judgement, and others in their hearts to be more Catholic than he ought to have been.

Ricaredo then having resolved on this course, he put fifty musketeers into the Portugal ship all ready fitted and furnished, their pieces charged with shot, and their matches burning in their cocks. He found in the ship well near three hundred persons, with those that had escaped out of the galleys. He presently called for their cocket, or bill of lading, and the same person who at first spake to him from the deck made him answer that the Turkish pirate had already taken their cocket from them, and that it was drowned with him. He did instantly put his pulley in order, and bringing his lesser vessel and lashing it close to the side of the great ship, with wonderful celerity and with the help of strong ropes they hoisted all their ordnance with their carriages out of the lesser into the greater ship.

This being done, he forthwith made a short speech to the Christians. He commanded them to go into the ship that was now disencumbered, where they should find good store of victual for more than a month, and more mouths than they had. And as they went embarking themselves, he gave to every one of them four Spanish pistolets, which he caused to be brought from his own ship, for to relieve in part their necessity when they came on land; which was so near that from thence they might ken the high mountains of Abyla and Calpe. All of them gave him infinite thanks for the favour he had done them; and the last that went to embark himself was he who had been the mouth of the rest, who said unto Ricaredo:

“Most valiant sir, I should hold it a happiness for me, that you would rather carry me along with you to London than send me into Spain; for albeit that it be my country, and that it is not above six days since I left it, yet shall I not find anything therein which will not minister occasions unto me of reviving my former sorrows and solitudes. I would have you to know, noble sir, that in the loss of Cadiz, which is now some fifteen years since, I lost a daughter, which some of the English carried away into their own country; and with her I lost the comfort of my old age, and the light of mine eyes, which since they might not see her have never seen that thing which could be pleasing unto them. The great discontentment wherein her loss left me, together with that of my wealth, which likewise was taken from me, brought me to that low ebb that I neither would nor could any more exercise the trade of merchandise, whose great dealings in that kind made me in the opinion of the world held to be the richest merchant in all that city. And indeed so I was, for besides my credit, which would pass for many hundred thousands of crowns, the wealth that I had within the doors of mine own house was more than fifty thousand ducats, all which I lost; yet had I lost nothing so as I had not lost my daughter. After this general misfortune, and so particularly mine, necessity, the more to vex me, set upon me, never ceasing to give me over till such a time as not being able any longer to resist her, my wife and I (which is that sorrowful woman that sits there) resolved to go for the Indies, the common refuge of poor gentlemen. And having embarked ourselves but six days since in a ship of advice, we had no sooner put out of Cadiz but that those two vessels of the pirates took our ship, and we became their slaves; whereupon our misery was renewed, and our misfortune confirmed; and it had been greater had not the pirates taken that ship of Portugal, who entertained them so long, till that succeeded which you have seen.”