We accordingly set sail, homeward bound, on the 8th December, 1592; but some days before our arrival within sight of the Cape of Good Hope, we were forced to divide our bread, to each man his portion, in his own keeping, as certain flies had devoured most of it before we were aware. We had now only thirty-one pounds of bread a man to carry us to England, with a small quantity of rice daily. We doubled the Cape of Good Hope on the 31st March, 1593, and came next month to anchor at the island of St Helena, where we found an Englishman, a tailor, who had been there fourteen months. Having sent ten men on shore in the boat, they found this man in the chapel, into which he had gone to avoid the heat; and hearing some one sing in the chapel, whom our people supposed to have been a Portuguese, they thrust open the door, and went in upon him: but the poor man, on seeing so many men of a sudden, and believing them to be Portuguese, was at first in great fear, not having seen a human being for fourteen months, and afterwards knowing them to be English, and some of them his acquaintance, he became exceeding joyful, insomuch that between sudden and excessive fear and joy, he became distracted in his wits, to our great sorrow. We here found the carcasses of forty goats, which he had dried. The party which left him had made for him two suits of goats’-skins, with the hairy side outmost, like the dresses worn by the savages of Canada. This man lived till we came to the West Indies, and then died.
We remained at St Helena all the month of April, and arrived at the island of Trinidada, in the West Indies, in June, 1593, hoping to procure some refreshments there, but could not, as the Spaniards had taken possession. We got here embayed between the island and the main; and, for want of victuals, our company would have forsaken the ship, on which our captain had to swear every man not to forsake her till the most urgent necessity. It pleased God to deliver us from this bay, called Boca del Dragone, from whence we directed our course for the island of San Juan de Puerto Rico, but fell in with the small island of Mona, between Porto Rico and Hispaniola, where we remained about fifteen days, procuring some small refreshment. There arrived here a ship of Caen, in Normandy, of which Monsieur Charles de la Barbotiere was captain, who greatly comforted us by a supply of bread and other provisions, of which we were greatly in need, after which we parted.
Having foul weather at Mona, we weighed anchor and set sail, directing our course for Cape Tiberoon, at the west end of Hispaniola; and, in doubling that cape, we had so violent a gust of wind from the shore, that it carried away all our sails from the yards, leaving us only one new fore-course, the canvass of which we had procured from the Frenchman. Having doubled the cape in that distress, the before-mentioned Captain de la Barbotiere gave us chase with his pinnace; and when come near, I went on board to inform him of