_ 396 _ off the noses, ears and hands of the Moors in them and put the men ashore, where they went half dead into the city causing great terror and shock. As the people there were many and as with these things happening on one by day or night dared to cross to the mainland, especially for water of which they had a great need, some persons at night went to seek water in one of the three wells which were at one point of the island called Turumbaca, a little more than a league from the city and next to the beach. As these wells Khwaja Attar had posted a captain with two hundred archers and twenty five horsemen to defend the water from our men should they go there, and to distribute it among the people without having disturbance over it. When Afonso de Albuquerque learnt of this he sent Jorge Barreto de Castro with a boat from the flagship, Afonso Lopes de Costa and Joao da Nova with theirs and the necessary men among whom were some nobles, to go to block up those wells. This they did well and safely. Their arrival was before morning and almost immediately on the way they had captured an interpreter who gave them the advice that the men there were unprepared. Because of this unreadiness and sleepiness most of them perished and not only the men at arms, who were on guard including some of the
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