July 30 we met two Dutch ships, which were apparently going from Palliacate [i.e., Palicat] to carry aid to Maluco.  Our galleon fought singlehanded with those two ships, because the other galleons were far to leeward.  The enemy had waited two days between us, without our knowing it, in order to show themselves at a favorable opportunity.  So great is the confidence of the Portuguese that they did not fear them.  They said that they were ships from Cochin, and that, had they known in time that they were enemies, they could have captured them easily.  In short they remained a cannon-shot from the flagship, and so fought until night, when they made off badly battered—­as we learned later from the people of Achen, on whose coast one of the ships was immediately wrecked, having sprung a leak through the effect of our balls and their own firing.  They only killed two of our men.  After the battle, our galleon ran aground on a shoal, on the eve of our Lady of the Assumption, near Pulo Parcelar.  At the first shock, the helm was shifted seaward, and all that night we tossed up and down dreadfully until, next morning, we miraculously got off the shoal.  We reached the strait of Sincapura on August 10, where, as the pilots said the Manila monsoon was over, we determined to run to Malaca.

In Malaca the ships were very inhospitably received, for soldiers are wont to commit depredations.  But within a few days they were made to see that the landing there of the galleons was for their relief and the salvation of their city; for a month after their arrival the king of Achen came with sixty thousand men to besiege it.  Information of this number and of the other things that will be related, was given by the Portuguese who were captives in Achen and returned to Malaca.  They had three hundred and fifty sail—­among them sixty galleys, each with three pieces in the bows; the piece in the midship gangway fired balls of sixty libras, as we saw in those found in the galleons after the war.  Along the sides they carried five falcons, firing balls of six libras.  In the royal galley, called “Espanto del mundo” [i.e., Fear of the world] by the people of Achen, were sixteen hundred soldiers and one hundred and fifty falcons and half-sized falcons.  That king of Achen, the most powerful on the sea of all this Orient, had concerted with the Dutch that both should take Malaca.  Consequently they took a few days in arriving.  The king of Achen arrived first at the bay of Malaca with a squadron of eighteen galleys, in order to reconnoiter the place.  Finding our four galleys anchored in the port, and learning that they were war-vessels, they put to sea to await the Dutch.  When our men saw them depart and go toward the strait, where they might capture the boats from China and unite with the Dutch, they resolved to set sail and give battle.  They did so with the four galleons and six galliots—­ten small vessels.  They encountered the Achen boats on November 15, and fought for two and one-half days.