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.