_ 53 _ Strait with this booty, this will be the cause of their coming every year to Muscat. Dom Paio has decided to stay here and has requested his fleet of me because he thinks that in this he will serve the King. I granted it to him, and he will go as its Commander-in-Chief. The Captains and soldiers who go in this fleet must be men of honour and probity. I shall send two caturs and more oarsmen to Cape Ras-el-Had at the beginning of August to keep which there and to observe the vessels which come out of the Strait, how many of them there are, and if they come on ahead, to advice the fleet what is to be done in Muscat. If it were to be the case that these vessels did not come from the Strait, there is a great deal to do about the Baluchis. They go about to insolently that a Portuguese carrack in which André Cortés was sailing, loaded with many fine goods, ran disastrously aground on a spit of land which runs out from the island of Masirah and was wrecked. The nautaques stone all the goods and killed all the Portuguese, sparing only André Cortés, his wife and a daughter of him who were later rescued. André Cortés lost everything he had, but by putting up a good fight escaped with eight arrow-wounds, all of them
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