the two days and nights while the pirate delayed; and no opportunity was neglected, nor was any person excused from the work, notwithstanding his rank, for the courageous soldiers well knew that, if they remained alive, the fatigue and weariness would soon pass away.  With this incessant work, they were enabled to make a fort out of planks, and casks filled with sand, with such other means of defense as these few hours permitted.  They brought out four pieces of very excellent artillery that were in the city.  These were placed in good position, and all the people were gathered in the little fort thus made.  This occurred, as we believe, through the providence of God, our Lord, who did not choose that the many souls baptized in those islands, and sealed with the light of the knowledge of His most holy faith, should return into the power of the devil, from whose grasp He had drawn them by His infinite mercy.  Neither did He wish that the convenient proximity of those islands to the great kingdom of China be lost, by which means, perhaps, his divine Majesty has ordained the salvation and rescue of all that country.  The night before the assault, Captain Juan de Salcedo, lieutenant-governor of the town of Fernandina, arrived—­who, as we said, was coming for the purpose of aiding the Spaniards of Manila.  His coming and that of his companions was clearly the chief remedy for both the city and its inhabitants; for, besides being few, the work of the late resistance and that of preparing the defenses for the coming assault, together with the fear left in their hearts by the danger in which they beheld themselves, had rendered them feeble and in great need of help such as this; and he seemed to all of them to have been sent miraculously by God.  With this arrival, all recovered courage and the assured hope of making a courageous resistance.  They prepared themselves for this immediately, because the pirate, before dawn of the morning following—­two days after the assault, as above related, by the four hundred soldiers at his orders—­appeared with his entire fleet in front of the port.  He disembarked about six hundred soldiers, who without delay fell upon the city, which they were able to sack and burn at will, as indeed they did; for the inhabitants had abandoned it, as above stated, at the order and command of the governor, gathering at the fort for greater security.

Having set fire to the city, they attacked the fort, flushed with their past murders, and fully persuaded that the inmates would offer little resistance.  But the outcome was not so certain as they thought, because of the great valor and courage of those inside, through which all the pirates who had the daring to enter the fort paid for their boldness with their lives.  Upon seeing this, the Chinese withdrew, after fighting almost all that day, and losing two hundred men (who were killed in the assault), besides many wounded.  Of the Spaniards but two were killed, namely, the ensign Sancho Ortiz, and the alcalde of the same city, Francisco de Leon.