_ 112 _ defend themselves against all the power of the city, while he would fight a fierce battle at sea with the fleet. Being a wide man, he commanded that before the door of the tower was closed eight wooden tanks should be put inside, of the sort that Moorish ships carry water, made in Melinde, as I have said, which he look from the Moors’ ships and paid for them well. They were put in the storeroom of the keep and each held sixty barrels of water, and the Captain-in-Chief ordered that they should be filled with very good water from the terradas coming from Kishm island, three leagues away. The labourers at work then drank the water from the tanks, and it was used up and then refilled, because each time the water improved; and when the tanks were inside, the door was closed. Because they needed thick timbers and planks for the roofs, the Captain-in-Chief ordered that the masts and planking that the Moors brought ashore from the ships that had been sunk should all be taken to the site, and he told the quartermaster and Gaspar Rodrigues the linguist to find who were the owners of the timber and planks and pay them what they asked. These Moors had already gone to Khwaja Attar to complain about the wood that had been taken from them. When the quartermaster and the linguist
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