Notwithstanding after we had lost anchors, hoisting up the sails for to get the ship a coast [to the coast] in some safer place or when it should please GOD: it pleased His mercy suddenly, where no man looked for help, to fill our sails with wind from the land, and so we escaped, thanks be to GOD! And the day following, being in the place where they are always wont to catch fish, we also fell a fishing, and so many they took, that they served all the ship for that day and part of the next. And one of them pulled up a coral of great bigness and price. For there they say (as we saw by experience) that the coral grows in the manner of stalks upon the rocks in the bottom, and waxes hard and red. The day of peril was the 29th of July, 1579.
And you shall understand that the Cape passed; there be two ways to India, one within the Isle of Saint Lawrence [Madagascar], which they take willingly, because they refresh themselves at Mozambique a fortnight or a month, not without great need; and thence in a month more, land at Goa. The other is without the Isle of St. Lawrence, which they take when they set forth so late and come so late to the Point that they have no time to take the foresaid Mozambique: and then they go heavily [sadly] because in this way they take no port, and by reason of the long navigation, and want of food and water, they fall into sundry diseases; their gums wax great and swell, and they are fain to cut them away; their legs swell and all the body becometh sore and so benumbed that they cannot stir hand nor foot, and so they die for weakness, others fall into fluxes [diarrhoea] and agues and die thereby.
And this way it was our chance to make, yet though we had more than one hundred and fifty sick, there died not past twenty-seven; which loss they esteemed not much, in respect of other times [i.e. voyages]. Though some of ours [i.e. the company of Jesuits of whom STEVENS was one] were diseased in this sort; yet thanks be to GOD, I had my health all the way, contrary to the expectation of many. GOD send me my health so well in the land, if it may be, to His honour and service!
This way is full of privy rocks and quicksands, so that sometimes we durst not sail by night; but by the providence of GOD we saw nothing nor never found bottom until we came to the coast of India. When we had passed again the line
