_ 224 _ service, to which he added many words of fulsome praise for him, which he was constrained to pronounce against his will. It was then that the captain learned about what had happened in Muscat, which greatly depressed him, but as he was unaware of the way in which those people had been taken prisoner, he declined to give an answer to João Baliero, who left without one. After only twenty days’ siege, the Pasha ordered his men to embark. When they withdrew, they spread throughout the city and after sacking it and leaving it destroyed and almost completely razed, embarked and stationed themselves offshore, from where Piri Reis dispatched an Italian galley master in the galley’s skiff. When he arrived close to the fortress with a white flag he engaged our men in conversation and said that he was bearing a message from the Pasha for the captain, who gave orders to let him pass. The galley master disembarked together with Bartolomeu Rodrigues de Morais, Apolinario Mendes, João de Lisboa’s wife, the soldier and bombardier from Simão da Costa’s foist, who had been left hanging from the oars of the galley of Piri Reis’ son. The galley master introduced them all to the captain and said that the Pasha was making him a gift of these men and this woman, as well as of a rich
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