_ 106 _ were due. I am sending Your Lordship my commission, by Baltasar d'Almeida, from which you can see that it gives me no power for this, and I am sending it to Your Lordship by way of justification. As soon as men know that I cannot make them any payment they will not wish to serve or to remain in Ormuz. There are people here whose pay has not been established, to whom I do not give leave to go away but I cannot order them to be paid wages or maintenance. If Your Lordship would send me a writ to fix a wage for those who are old enough to earn it, they will leave here according to what Your Lordship orders in the general roll. The factor Francisco Lopes was sending a terrada secretly to Basra without asking my permission, and another half-filled with ginger and cloves and cloth which may well be goods belonging rather to His Highness than to him. I have been told that he was writing a letter to Muhammad Pasha, the captain of Basra, which was written in a wretched manner, and [1] contrived that neither the terrada nor the letter went, because it was wrong that they should go without permission. It is also said that he was sending him a present, which is something else that bodes no good, but all these things I dealt with as best I could. But he was very upset.
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