_ 48 _ When they arrived in the King's presence, he treated them with great hospitality and gave orders for them to be shown the entire city. They were taken to the house of two Christian merchants, who showed the two men a letter, which they venerated. On it was a drawing of the Holy Spirit. When they had seen everything, the King sent them back with samples of cloves, pepper, ginger and corn for the captain, saying that we would be allowed to load them. On Tuesday, while raising the anchor to enter the port, the captain-major's ship was unable to turn and became stuck stern-first on a sandbank, so we dropped the anchors once again. When the Moors who were in our ships, saw that we were not leaving, they piled into a zavra. While we were going backwards, the two pilots whom we had brought from Mozambique, dived into the sea and were picked up by those in the zavra. When night fell, the captain tortured two Moors, from among those we had on board, with boiling oil to make them reveal if any treachery had been ordered. These confessed that they had orders to seize us when we entered the port, and thus avenge what we had done in Mozambique. The captain was about to torture one of them again when he threw himself into the sea, even though his hands were tied. The other jumped overboard during the
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