_ 95 _ The next day the Armenian and Abdullah came with the owners of the ships and went aboard the ships to talk to the Captains; but they would not allow anyone within the ships so that they could not see how few men there were. Each Captain asked thirty or forty thousand xerafins for the ships but said they should go to the Captain-in-Chief’s ship and there they would negotiate. The Captains assembled together, and they went aboard before the Moors so that, with the people who accompanied the Captains, it looked as though there were many people on board. When they were all on the quarter-deck, the Captains, the Moors, Abdullah, the Armenian, the quartermaster and Gaspar Rodrigues the linguist, there were many different valuations suggested for redeeming the ships. The Captains finally claimed a hundred and fifty thousand pardaos, because there were more than forty ships, apart from over twenty that had been sent to the bottom, and the Moors made a great commotion about the amount of money asked after they had suffered so much loss. So, they waited for the Captain-in-Chief to come out of his cabin he had arranged that all this should happen and sat down with the Captains, and they discussed the price of the ships and agreed what the Captain-in-Chief should say. Then he spoke to the Moors and the Armenian and the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy