Which Writing I Folded And Sealed Up And Superscribed To Your
Highnesses, Promising A Reward Of 1000 Ducats To Whoever
Might deliver it
sealed into your hands; that, in case it might be found by a foreigner,
the promised reward
Might induce him not to communicate the intelligence.
I then caused a great cask to be brought to me, and having wrapped the
writing in oiled cloth, which I surrounded with a cake of wax, I placed
the whole in the cask: I then carefully closed up the bung-hole and threw
the cask into the sea, all the people fancying that it was some act of
devotion. Apprehending that this might never be taken up, and the ship
coming still nearer to Spain, I made another packet like the first, which
I placed on the poop, that when the ship sunk the cask might float upon
the water, and take its chance of being found."
Sailing on in such extreme danger, at break of day on Friday the 15th of
February, one Ruy Garcia saw land from the round top bearing E.N.E. The
pilot and seamen judged it might be the rock of Lisbon, but the admiral
concluded that it was one of the Azores. Yet though at no great distance,
they could not come to anchor there that day because of the weather, and
the wind being easterly, they lost sight of that island, and got sight of
another, towards which they used every effort to approach, struggling with
continual labour against wind and weather, but unable to reach the land.
In his journal, the admiral says that on the night of Saturday the 16th of
February he arrived at one of the Azores, but could not tell which; and
having had no rest from the foregoing Wednesday, and being lame in both
legs by being continually wet and in the open air, he took some sleep that
night.
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