36 ball on the deck which fell at the Commander’s feet, and they were so broken that pieces of their flesh struck his face. In addition, twenty men were wounded on the flagship (which bore the brunt of the attack), and the Commander hit in the shoulder and thumb. The oared vessels could not take part or be of assistance in this engagement because of the gale but ran into danger through trying to follow the high-sided ships; but the soldiers that Rui Freire had left on the flagship and other galleons were very effective. This in brief is what happened in the three battles fought between these two fleets almost as though they had been in an arena, so that it is thought here in the East that there has never been anything like it in the seas. It is not my intention to give individual praise to those who were involved in the fighting but to recount what I saw with my own eyes of the encounters of our fleet with those of England and Holland. Nevertheless, I must comment that it was wonderful to see the two Commanders, Nuno Alvares Botelho and Rui Freire de Andrade, the first time they had met, talking together in the middle of the first battle as though they were in some garden. As soon as the enemy saw them conferring together, they aimed everything at them for as long as they continued talking, one on board the flagship and other from his rowboat, for a long time, until everything was settled between them. When a Kinsman of NunoAlvares tried to persuade him to move because the balls were raining down on them, he was so impatient with him that he pushed him away as though he were an unfriendly stranger. God. who
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