_ 582 _ each other, and meanwhile one of the ships ran on to a rock and broke up, and another ship collided with yet another and also broke up. The crew and the merchandise were saved and taken to the other ships, burning the first ones. The captain left the port immediately with three ships and 500 quintals of cloves he had loaded but left much of his merchandise and 25 men on land as prisoners. He sailed for Ceylon, sinking several ships loaded with spices because they would not surrender. Later he conquered 2 ships, one of them loaded with pepper and the other with rice. He transferred the pepper to two of his ships and the rice to the third and arrived at Cape Comorin there he heard that the Viceroy had left for Portugal and was on bad terms with Afonso de Albuquerque. He sent 2 ships to Cochin and arrived with his own in Portugal on 17 June (of the present year?). He had left Lisbon on 26 October 1508 and Malacca on 26 October 1509. Item: On 24 June, the feast of St John’s, there arrived from India a ship of 400 tons of the Marshal’s(A) fleet, with pepper and some lesser spices, especially cinnamon. The ship had left India together with two others until they arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, but the other two, which were shipping (A) D. Fernando Coutinho,Marshal of Portugal. He left for India in 1509 with a fleet of 15 ships.
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