The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 5 of 55 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 289 pages of information about The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 5 of 55.

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 5 of 55 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 289 pages of information about The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 5 of 55.
the admiral’s galley in which he himself was.  With his artillery he shot away their mainmast, and killed several men.  The Japanese put out grappling-irons and poured two hundred men aboard the galley, armed with pikes and breastplates.  There remained sixty arquebusiers firing at our men.  Finally, the enemy conquered the galley as far as the mainmast.  There our people also made a stand in their extreme necessity, and made the Japanese retreat to their ship.  They dropped their grappling-irons, and set their foresail, which still remained to them.  At this moment the ship “Sant Jusepe” grappled with them, and with the artillery and forces of the ship overcame the Japanese; the latter fought valiantly until only eighteen remained, who gave themselves up, exhausted.  Some men on the galley were killed, and among them its captain, Pero Lucas, fighting valiantly as a good soldier.  Then the captain, Juan Pablo, ascended the Cagayan River, and found in the opening a fort and eleven Japanese ships.  He passed along the upper shore because the mouth of the river is a league in width.  The ship “Sant Jusepe” was entering the river, and it happened by bad fortune that some of our soldiers, who were in a small fragata, called out to the captain, saying to him:  “Return, return to Manila!  Set the whole fleet to return, because there are a thousand Japanese on the river with a great deal of artillery, and we are few.”  Whereupon Captain Luys de Callejo directed his course seaward; and although Juan Pablos fired a piece of artillery he did not and could not enter, and continued to tack back and forth.  In the morning he anchored in a bay, where such a tempest overtook them that it broke three cables out of four that he had, and one used for weighing anchor.  He sent these six soldiers in a small vessel to see if there was on an islet any water, of which they were in great need.  The men lost their way, without finding any water; and when they returned where they had left their ship they could not find it.  They met with some of those Indians who were in the galley with Juan Pablos, from whom it was learned that Juan Pablo had ascended the river two leagues and had fortified himself in a bay; and that with him was the galley, which had begun to leak everywhere, in the engagement with the Japanese.  The Indian crew was discharged on account of not having the supplies which were lost on the galley.  Most of these men went aboard the “Sant Jusepe.”  They said that the Japanese were attacking them with eighteen champans, [20] which are like skiffs.  They were defending themselves well although there were but sixty soldiers with the seamen, and there were a thousand of the enemy, of a race at once valorous and skilful.  The six soldiers came with this news, and on the way they met a sailor who had escaped from a Sangley ship which had sailed from here, with supplies of rice for Juan Pablo.  He says that the Sangleys mutinied at midnight and killed ten soldiers who were going with it as an escort, who had no sentinel.  This one escaped by swimming, with the aid of a lance that was hurled at him from the ship.

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The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 5 of 55 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.