Grant, led my men up the side of the carak; but his force being small, and not being manfully seconded by the crew of the Exchange, the enemy were bolder than they would have been, so that six of my men were presently slain, and many more wounded; which made those that remained return on board, and they would never more give the assault.  Some of the Exchanges men did very well, and I have no doubt that many more would have done the like, if there had been any principal men to have led them on, and not to have run into corners themselves.  But I must allow that the carak was as well provided for defence as any ship I have seen; and perhaps the Portuguese were encouraged by our slackness, as they plied our men from behind barricades, where they were out of danger from our shot.  They plied us also with wildfire, by which most of our men were burnt in some parts of their body; and while our men were busied in putting out the fire, the enemy galled them sore with small arms and darts.  This unusual casting of wildfire did much dismay many of our men, and caused them greatly to hang back.

[Footnote 394:  Probably a boom or outrigger for the management of the after-sails.—­E.]

Finding that our men would not again board, we plied our great ordnance at them, elevated as much as possible, as otherwise we could do them little harm.  By shooting a piece from our forecastle, we set fire to a mat at the beak head of the enemy, which kindled more and more, communicating from the mat to the boltsprit, and thence to the top-sail-yard; by which fire the Portuguese abaft were much alarmed, and began to make show of a parley:  But their officers encouraged them, alleging that the fire could be easily extinguished, on which they again stood stiffly to their defence; yet at length the fire grew so strong, that I plainly saw it was beyond all help, even if she had yielded to us.  We then wished to have disentangled ourselves from the burning carak, but had little hope of success; yet we plied water with great diligence to keep our ship safe.  At this time I had little hope but our ship, myself, and several of our wounded men must have been all destroyed along with the carak.  Most of our people indeed might have saved themselves in boats on board our consorts.  When we were at the worst, by Gods providence our spritsail-yard with the sail and ropes, which were fast entangled with the spritsail-yard of the carak, were so burned that we fell away, with the loss of some of our sails.  The Exchange also, being farther aft and more distant from the fire, was more easily cleared, and fell off abaft.