venerable person, and so valiant that, after being brought down with an arquebus-shot, so that he could not move, he raised his campilan in the air, calling out to his troops to fight until death. They came well supplied with women and goods, and the materials for making powder. They brought gilded field-beds to sleep on, with cushions of silk and chairs to sit upon, and richly worked cloths for their use. There was so much with this and other things that the booty must have been worth six thousand ducats; and though, as always, the soldiers took the lesser part, yet even thus some of them are a little better off.
I am well aware that I was very fortunate on that occasion, and if our Lord was pleased to grant me success, still fortune will change and the enemy will have it. Not only will that which remains to me here be lost, but even the Pintados Islands have been in great danger, having run the risk each year of being harried by these enemies. But though I knew that God was helping us in a time of such need, yet I had almost lost hope of success. On the other hand, finding myself puzzled and almost desperate at seeing that at the end of six months there had come no reply from the lord governor, nor in any way any intimation of his will or determination, and that it almost seemed as if he were forgetting us, as if we were a lost people without hope, I resolved to do what I did as one who was destitute of aid, and who must live by his own hands. The success was such that I may be pardoned. When I took the site of Buyaen I was so nearly out of supplies that there was not a cannonball left for me to use; and on this so important occasion, as I with reason believe it to be—and I may say that since the Philipinas were discovered there
