The fleet was composed of ten galleons, four galleys, one patache, and three frigates.  It carried three hundred pieces of artillery, eight companies of Spanish soldiers, five hundred Japanese, two hundred volunteers, sixty artillerymen, and two hundred sailors. [Without signature. [79]]

Letter from Father Juan de Ribera, [80] rector of the residence of the Society of Jesus at Manila, in which he gives account of his voyage to and from India, and of the unfortunate fate of the four galleons that he took thence.

We set sail at Cabite November twenty-one, the day of the Virgin.  In a fortnight we entered the strait of Sincapura, having followed the new route, which is called that of China.  It is a very wide channel, some forty or fifty brazas deep.  We anchored at Malaca on Tuesday, December nine, by our account, but on Wednesday by that of Malaca.  We left there on Christmas eve, with favorable weather.  In the neighborhood of Punta de Gale [or Galle], which is located in Ceylan, we experienced a heavy storm.  When that had subsided, the currents carried us to the islands of Mal-Divar [i.e., Maldives], a voyage from which few emerge in safety.  We lost our reckoning, and were in great need of wood and water.  But by God’s help, after having approached one of those islands, our necessity was relieved by some Malabar pirates for money.  We were sailing among that great forest of islands when we became becalmed, the peril most feared by pilots.  When we were all grieving over that, the chief of the Lascars, a Moro by nation, and religion, arose.  Taking a dish in his hand, he begged us all for an alms for our Lady of Guadalupe of the city of Cochin, [81] assuring us that she would give us wind.  He pledged himself to give double the alms collected, even if she did not give the wind.  Much surprised in so great confidence in a Moro, and all of us being encouraged, he collected in a short time eighteen pesos, and after folding them in a cloth, he tied them to the mizzen-masthead begging the Virgin to fulfil her promise.  The fact was that from that day the wind to navigate (little or much) never failed us, until we reached Cochin.  That was on January twenty-three, and on entering the bar there, we met a fleet of Malabar pirates who were sufficiently powerful to oppose us.  But God so disposed that we came upon them when they were tired out, as we afterward learned, by a battle that they had waged for the space of two days with another pirate, also a Malabar—­who, conquered by them at last, scuttled his ship and went down with all on board, in order not to fall into their hands.  For that reason they did not attack us so quickly, and we had time to enter Cochin.