Yet the Portuguese proceeded not against them with that severity.  But it seems that God revenged their quarrel, in afflicting the Spaniards with a contagious fever, which destroyed the greatest part of their fleet.  It was a sad spectacle to behold the mariners and soldiers, lying here and there in their ships, or on the shore, in cabins, covered only with leaves.  The disease which consumed them, kept all men at a distance from them; and the more necessity they had of succour, the less they found from the people of the island.

At the first report which came to Xavier of this pestilence, he left all things to relieve them; and it is scarce to be imagined, to what actions his charity led him on this occasion.  He was day and night in a continual motion, at the same time administering to their bodies and their souls; assisting the dying, burying the dead, and interring them even with his own hands.  As the sick bad neither food nor physic, he procured both for them from every side; and he who furnished him the most, was a Portuguese, called John d’Araus, who came in his company from Malacca to Amboyna.  Nevertheless the malady still increasing day by day, Araus began to fear he should impoverish himself by these charities; and from a tender-hearted man, became so hard, that nothing more was to be squeezed out of him.  One day Xavier sent to him for some wine, for a sick man who had continual faintings:  Araus gave it, but with great reluctance, and charged the messenger to trouble him no more; that he had need of the remainder for his own use; and when his own was at an end, whither should he go for a supply?  These words were no sooner related to Father Francis, than inflamed with a holy indignation, “What,” says he, “does Araus think of keeping his wine for himself, and refusing it to the members of Jesus Christ! the end of his life is very near, and after his death all his estate shall be distributed amongst the poor.”  He denounced death to him with his own mouth; and the event verified the prediction, as the sequel will make manifest.

Though the pestilence was not wholly ceased, and many sick were yet aboard the vessels, the Spanish fleet set sail for Goa, forced to it by the approach of winter, which begins about May in those quarters.  Father Xavier made provisions for the necessities of the soldiers, and furnished them, before their departure, with all he could obtain from the charity of the Portuguese.  He recommended them likewise to the charity of his friends at Malacca, where the navy was to touch; and wrote to Father Paul de Camerine at Goa, that he should not fail to lodge in the college of the company, those religious of the order of St Augustin, who came along with the army from Mexico, and that he should do them all the good offices, which their profession, and their virtue, claimed from him.