_ 63 _ We found ourselves at dawn in a bay eleven brasas(A) deep, and we could not get out of it on any side. Letter from Father Manuel Cabral SJ to Father Doctor Diogo Mirão 1564. We were there for each of nine or ten days in sight of Ormuz and in continual storms, one of them so great that I fervently wished myself back in the college. Matters reached such as point that we jettisoned forty barrels, dismantled forty cabins in the carrack, which was like some Portuguese ones, took down the sails and were on the point of cutting down the masts. I worked like the other Portuguese sailing in the carrack (I am not saying like the sailors, for they are all Moors, and when they are in weather like this, they all agree and say that this is their nasivo(B) and they will not work). I heard confession from them and said prayers with them and we performed other acts of devotion, which, for brevity’s sake, I shall not detail. My relics, which were never touched by water during the whole voyage from (A) brasa a measure of depth equivalent to 2.2 meters [Translator’s note]. (B) Arabic nasib. ‘Fortune, fate, destiny’ in Asia and Africa (Dalgado II 88).
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