For what remains, though he was ever forming new designs, as if he were to live beyond an age, yet he laboured as if he had not a day to live, and so tugged at the work which he had in hand, that two or three days and nights passed over his head without once thinking to take the least manner of nourishment.  In saying his office, it often happened to him to leave, for five or six times successively, the same canonical hour, for the good of souls, and he quitted it with the same promptitude that afterwards he resumed it:  he broke off his very prayers when the most inconsiderable person had the least occasion for him; and ordered, when he was in the deepest of his retirements, that if any poor man, or even but a child, should desire to be instructed, he might be called from his devotions.

No man perhaps was ever known to have run more dangers, both by land and sea, without reckoning into the account the tempests which he suffered in ten years of almost continual navigation.  It is known, that being at the Moluccas, and passing from isle to isle, he was thrice shipwrecked, though we are not certain of the time or places; and once he was for three days and nights together on a plank, at the mercy of the winds and waves.  The barbarians have often shot their arrows at him, and more than once he fell into the hands of an enraged multitude.  One day the Saracens pursued him, and endeavoured to have stoned him; and the Brachmans frequently sought after him to have murdered him, even to that point of merciless barbarity, as to get fire to all the houses where they imagined he might lie concealed.  But none of all these dangers were able to affright him; and the apprehension of dying could never hinder him from performing his ordinary functions.  It seemed that even dangers served to the redoubling of his courage, and that, by being too intrepid, he sometimes entered into the extreme of rashness.  Being at Japan, he reprehended the king of Amanguchi so severely for the infamy and scandal of his vices, that Father John Fernandez, (who served him for interpreter, as being more conversant than the saint in the language of the court) was amazed and trembled in pronouncing what the Father put into his mouth; as we are given to understand in a letter written by the same Fernandez.  Xavier, one day perceiving the fear of his companion, forbade him absolutely either to change or soften any of his words:  “I obeyed him,” says Fernandez, “but expected every moment when the barbarian should strike me with his scymiter, and confess my apprehensions of death were as much too great, as the concernment of Father Francis was too little.”

In effect, he was so far from fearing death, that he looked on it as a most pleasing object.  “If we die for so good a cause,” said Xavier on another occasion, “we ought to place it amongst the greatest benefits we receive from God; and shall be very much obliged to those, who, freeing us from a continual death, such as is this mortal life, shall put us in possession of an eternal happiness:  So that we are resolved to preach the truth amongst them, in despite of all their threatenings, and, encouraged by the hopes of divine assistance, obey the precept of our Saviour, who commands us to prefer the salvation of others above our lives.”