Six days after sending home the Royal Merchant from Saldanha bay, our admiral, Captain Raymond, in the Penelope, and Captain James Lancaster in the Edward Bonadventure, set forward to double the Cape of Good Hope, which they now did very readily.  When we had passed as far as Cape Corientes, on the east coast of Africa, at the entry into the channel of Mozambique, we encountered a dreadful storm, with excessive gusts of wind, during which we lost sight of our admiral, and could never hear of him nor his ship more, though we used our best endeavours to seek him, by plying up and down a long while, and afterwards staid for him several days at the island of Comoro, which we had appointed our rendezvous in case of separation.  Four days after this unfortunate separation, we had a tremendous clap of thunder at ten o’clock one morning, which slew four of our men outright, without speaking one word, their necks being wrung asunder.  Of 94 other men, not one remained untouched, some being struck blind, some bruised in their arms and legs, others in their breasts, so that they voided blood for two days:  some were as it were drawn out in length, as if racked.  But, God be praised, they all recovered, except the four men who were struck dead.  With the same flash of lightning our mainmast was terribly split from the head to the deck, some of the spikes that went ten inches into the wood being melted by the fervent heat.

From thence[13] we shaped our course north-east, and not long afterwards fell in with the north-west point[14] of the island of St Lawrence, or Madagascar, which, by God’s blessing, one of our men espied late in the evening by moonlight.

[Footnote 13:  The place of shaping this course is by no means obvious.  It could not be from Comoro, which is farther north than the north end of Madagascar, and was therefore probably from near Cape Corientes.—­E.]

[Footnote 14:  From the sequel, the text is certainly not accurate in this place, as they were not so far as this cape by 100 leagues.  It probably was Cape St Andrews.—­E.]

Seeing from afar the breaking of the sea, he called to some of his comrades, asking what it meant, when they told him it was the sea breaking upon shoals or rocks, upon which we put about ship in good time, to avoid the danger we were like to have incurred.  Continuing our voyage, it was our lot to overshoot Mozambique, and to fall in with Quitangone, two leagues farther north, where we took three or four barks belonging to the Moors, laden with millet, hens, and ducks, going as provisions for Mozambique, and having one Portuguese boy on board.  These barks are called pangaias in their language.